Northrop B-2 Spirit: America's Stealth Bomber

hello everybody welcome back to mega projects just before we get started i will say that this video is brought to you by surf shark safety and security online are super important shouldn't be a mega project and it's very easy with surf shark plus 83 off and three months are free through the link in the description below [Music] now at first glance this mega project might look more extraterrestrial than of this world the iconic triangular shape and the whisper thin design has the capability of slipping almost undetected in and out of enemy skies and the weaponry to deliver utter devastation on the ground this deadly phantom is the b-2 spirit otherwise known as the stealth bomber the b-2 spirit is simply a mesmerizing aircraft on many levels but it certainly starts with its rather sumptuous design it is an aircraft of grace and of elegance which contrasts with well the absolute hell that it is capable of unleashing having just passed the grand old age of 31 you might expect that this dark night of the skies could be nearing retirement age or at least a back seat roll to more modern aircraft but that isn't the case at all the b2 spirit remains one of the most feared aircraft on the planet and a key component to the us air force like many pieces of military hardware developed in the 1970s and 80s the fall of the berlin wall and the subsequent collapse of the soviet union meant that they entered service in a very different world than they'd originally been designed for the long distance stealth bombing raids on soviet targets was always slightly unrealistic if you look at how the cold war developed but from 1991 the long-held enemy disappeared basically overnight just as the most sophisticated bomber the world had ever seen was emerging and that's a case of really expensive bad timing for the u.s military [Music] this was a long development process and was to prove controversial because of its vast vast costs by the mid-1970s stealth technology was beginning to emerge while most assume that the b-2 and indeed the f-117 which we've already done a video here on megaprojects about are completely invisible to radar but that's not quite the case their design severely limits the ability of enemy radar to track them but they're certainly not completely invisible in 1975 two separate companies were awarded contracts to begin developing the stealth technology lockheed was a little faster out of the gate and went on to design the f-117 also known as the stealth fighter while northrop who was already developing classified technology at area 51 would eventually go on to build the b-2 but we're getting ahead of ourselves by the late 1970s it was becoming clear that a long-range strategic stealth bomber was not only a possibility but was now within grasp u.s president jimmy carter was facing a stern test ahead of the 1980 presidential election in which he would go head-to-head with ronald reagan the challenger had repeatedly claimed carter was weak on defense and perhaps to counteract some of this the carter administration announced in august 1980 that the u.s was indeed developing a stealth aircraft now as you probably know it didn't work and reagan won in an absolute landslide the advanced technology bomber atb program was now a year into being with two separate teams competing to build the world's first stealth bomber northrop and boeing on one side and a lockheed and rockwell on the other on october the 20th 1981 the northrop design was chosen but a change in mission profile meant that the design was altered from a high altitude bomber to a low altitude terrain following bomber just a small change which added two years to development and a massive one billion dollars that's 2.4 billion dollars today to the eventual cost the f-117 and the b-2 are often confused they both carry a menacing futuristic appearance and roughly share the same style and shape which at the time was what computer programs deemed to be the best for stealth flight the biggest difference during development at least was what kind of project it was while the f-117 was considered a black project the kind of shady secretive undertaking that only a handful of people truly knew about the b-2 was built as a grey project meaning it was semi-secret but much more widely known about still those working on the b-2 were sworn to secrecy and required to undergo extensive background checks before they were allowed anywhere near the old ford facility at pico rivera in california which had been purchased and completely refitted to accommodate the b-2 development teams this was of course a time of heightened political espionage with just about everybody spying on everybody else two northrop employees nearly 25 years apart were caught and tried for selling secrets to foreign countries thomas cavanaugh was arrested in 1984 for passing b2 information onto the soviets and was only paroled in 2001 while nashir gawaria was apprehended in 2005 for selling secrets to china and is currently serving a 32-year sentence now you might not be protecting plans for a stealth bomber but you probably do have information that you would rather remain personal and that's where today's sponsor surf shark comes in the internet is kind of a weird place there are people out there who want to ruin your day they want to take your details steal your identity which is a pain in the ass but fortunately surfshark has something called hacklock this searches databases for your passwords which sounds like a bad thing but no surf shark they're the good guys they'll let you know if your password is for sale out there if you've been pawned which keeps you safe because then you can go change the other passwords and protect everything else because look we all have the same password for everything or at least a lot of things i mean not me i'd never do that but you know people do but it's not just about safety with surf shark maybe you're like now that i am all safe feeling nice and comfortable i'm going to watch some netflix and then you're like what the show i want to see is only available in the uk and i live in minnesota well what you can do is just use surfsharkvpn flip it over to the uk and be like great now i can watch that show because you know netflix has different programs in different countries surf sharks also totally unlimited so if you want to go and download a movie in like raw ak or something well you totally can also there's great support and 30 days money back if you don't like it you can get 83 off and three months for free through the link in the description below or use my code mega [Music] the b2 made its first public appearance on the 22nd of november 1988 at the united states air force plant 42 in palmdale california the now famous photo of the craft head-on revealed just how incredibly thin the new stealth bomber was and though the media were not allowed to take photos of the rear of the aircraft aviation week discovered that there was no flight restriction on the airspace above the base so they flew a plane over and managed to take a sneaky picture of what the air force was hiding the suppressed engine exhausts which reduces the exhaust temperature and so makes it even more difficult for the plane to be tracked and more on that a little later in the video so as you can probably imagine everyone was pretty satisfied with what they saw despite the massive amount of money that gone into development by 1989 23 billion 48.2 billion dollars today had been spent on research and development alone according to the general accounting office the cost of each aircraft including spare parts and software support was 929 million dollars which is 1.5 billion dollars today it's a bit more than microsoft update it was a huge amount of money to be spending but as long as it kept the dreaded soviets at bay well that was all that mattered and this is where things began to change with the dissolution of the soviet union the need for these aircraft was immediately called into question in the mid-1980s 132 b2s had been ordered a number which quickly came down to 75 before the end of the decade in 1992 as the world faced a very different situation president bush announced the number of b2s would be limited to just 20. the clinton administration which followed authorized that a final b2 that had been a prototype model be added and that's where things remained 19 of the aircraft were named after states preceded by spirit of and the two exceptions were spirit of america and the spirit of kitty hawk named after kitty yaw where the wright brothers made their first controlled flight in 1903. first things first this plane is good looking the famed triangular shape is based on a northrop aircraft that was trialled in the 1950s the yb-49 and the two also have the same wingspan of 52.4 meters much of the b2 is made of a carbon graphite composite material which has the benefit of being stronger than steel lighter than aluminium and excellent at deflecting radar and while we're on the subject of radar the b2 has a reported radar cross-section rcs of about 0.1 meters squared making it about as stealthy as you're possibly going to get interestingly and apologies for the vagueness in advance the b2 does not always operate in the same stealth mode apparently a stealth up mode can be activated as the aircraft nears its target alas that is a piece of information like much on the b2 that remains highly classified and we just have to be satisfied with that i suppose the shape of the b2 is based on the infinite flat plate shape which is generally considered to be the ideal design for a stealth aircraft if you look closely you'll see that it is composed of multiple curves and rounded surfaces that merge to form a single beautiful yet deadly shape this technique is known as continuous curvature and was only made possible by advancements in computational fluid dynamics in the mid to late 80s but the shape is only one of several aspects that contributes to the b2 stealth it also comes with reduced acoustics infrared and visual capabilities which combine to create a multi-spectral camouflage effect where an object is disguised to evade detection in a number of ways as i mentioned earlier the exhaust is a little different and doesn't use afterburners which would increase the infrared signature as well as the chances of it being seen or heard from the ground the four general electric f-118 ge-100 engines are buried deep within the fuselage which reduces the infrared signature even further and if you think that the color is just by chance well the dark grey anti-reflective paint is designed to blend it into the sky making it difficult to spot with a human eye the aircraft comes with a crew of two with the pilot in the left seat and a mission commander in the right there is the option to include a third crew member but as far as we know this is rarely done as we're just coming to some of the missions that the b2s have taken part in have pushed the 40-hour mark and with this in mind the b-2 is highly automated and has a toilet and even cooking facilities on board the b2 is 21 meters in length and has an empty takeoff weight of 71 700 kilograms which is almost exactly the same weight as the space shuttle endeavour now you might be surprised to hear that it's not a particularly fast aircraft if you remember there are no afterburners in the engines and it has a top speed of just 1010 kilometers an hour at 630 miles per hour making it roughly seven times slower than the absolute rocket that is the u.s x-15 fighter jet [Music] so we know that it's difficult to spot but what exactly can it rain down on the unsuspecting targets below firstly the aircraft comes with absolutely no defensive firepower but can carry 18 000 kilograms of ordnance spread over two bomb bays during its development it was thought that b-2 would carry nuclear weapons but that has been expanded to include precision strikes and along with the b-61 and b-83 nuclear bombs it can carry agm-129 acm cruise missiles cbu-87 combined effects munitions gator mines anti-tank weapons and the cbu-97 sensor fused weapon cluster bombs among many others in short it's pretty versatile to give you some numbers of exactly how many bombs it can carry the b2 can support 16 nuclear bombs 36 340 kilograms cbu class bombs or a massive 80 226 kilogram class bombs such as the mark 82 or gbu-38 the b-2 made its debut on the world stage during the kosovo war in 1999 in which the u.s claimed it had been responsible for destroying 33 percent of serbian targets over two months in total nato flew 34 000 missions during the war with the b2s only taking part in 50 of them however and to give you a good idea of just how much they can carry they were responsible for 11 of the ordinance that fell the balkan conflict also saw the first of some truly marathon fights with six aircraft making their way from their base in missouri to yugoslavia a trip of a truly ass-numbing 30 hours but that was nothing compared to one mission in afghanistan during operation enduring freedom when a b-2 completed a 44-hour journey from the u.s to afghanistan and back they have also seen combat in both iraq and most recently in libya first during the last days of muammar gaddafi and then in 2018 when two b-2s attacked an isis training camp dropping a whopping 108 226 kilogram precision guided joint direct attack munition bombs killing 85 militants during combat operations no b2 has ever been lost to enemy fire but one did crash in 2008 shortly after takeoff both the pilot and commander were able to eject safely and the cause of the accident was later found to have been a buildup of moisture in the aircraft's port transducer units which measure air temperature before feeding the information to the fly computer as i mentioned right at the start of this video these aircraft have now reached the ripe old age of 31 and while in human terms that might not be particularly ancient in military terms it's getting on a bit it's often not that aircraft or indeed any piece of military equipment is suddenly of no use but the speed at which technology develops is well extraordinary that being said don't expect to be saying goodbye to the b-2 any time soon to give you an idea of the projected longevity the u.s air force originally stated the b-2s would have lasted until 2058 which would have had them pushing 70 years old but a recent budget has stated that they will be retired no later than 2032 and that just might be because there is a new aircraft on the block or at least on the road to the block we don't know a whole lot about the b1 raider no pictures exist and very less information has been released except we should expect it to enter service around 2025. the only artist rendering that has been released shows a similar design to the b2 but with a certain 21st century dash of cool so watch this space maybe we'll be covering that in a few years the b-2 is unquestionably both one of the most technologically advanced aircraft on the planet and one of the most iconic it has come to symbolize american might and prestige and often appears at aircraft shows or performing a flyby at major events had the cold war ended a little earlier this aircraft may have never been built the mammoth costs associated with it were high but at least worthy to counter the threat of the soviet union with their biggest rival out of the way it didn't take long for the numbers of the anticipated b-2 fleet to be slashed it's an astonishing aircraft with the program costing an eye-watering 72 billion dollars adjusted for inflation it's not difficult to see how a series of administrations have veered away from it but forget the money this is an aircraft along with its cousin the f-117 that has completely transformed the world of strategic bombing and what's more there is so much of its technology that remains classified it is a true wonder of disguise a futuristic dark grey ghost so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe don't forget to check out our fantastic sponsors surf shark linked to below and thank you for [Music] [Music] watching you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 631,522

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Id: NwWrTEBxM-A

Length: 16min 37sec (997 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020