The B-2 Spirit heavy, stealth strategic bomber is a “cool aircraft” that, unlike others, “is much more difficult to find and track,” writes the American magazine Popular Mechanics.
The publication recalls how “for the first time in history, two B-2s were sent to infiltrate enemy airspace in wartime without the aid of allied support aircraft.” “Just 12 days earlier, an enemy surface-to-air missile in the same airspace shot down an American F-117 aircraft, which had the same stealth characteristics as the B-2,” the magazine writes.
Popular Mechanics notes that the B-2 Spirit “did not have any defensive weapons and did not have sufficient speed to outrun enemy surface-to-air missiles or fighters.” “While the B-2 was originally intended to penetrate deep into the USSR to drop nuclear gravitational bombs, in the mid-1990s it additionally received the ability to drop conventional bombs weighing 20 tons,” the publication says.
The publication notes that since the B-2 Spirit flew at high altitudes, it “dropped bombs with amazing accuracy through clouds, wind and rain.” “According to the US Air Force, the B-2 was responsible for destroying 33 percent of Serbian targets in the first eight weeks of US involvement in the Kosovo war. After 78 days, the war ended when the Serbs surrendered, “the magazine assures, noting that” the combat debut of the B-2 was stellar. “
In April 2020, the American military-industrial corporation Northrop Grumman released on YouTube a commercial for the heavy, stealthy strategic bomber B-2 Spirit. “When the United States goes to war, the B-2s go first – as was the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia and Libya (in 2011 and 2017),” the video said.
The B-2 Spirit is the most expensive aircraft in history. The cost of one bomber (without equipment) is estimated at one billion dollars, when fully equipped, the price more than doubles. Northrop produced 21 of these machines between 1987 and 2000.
