Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit

Scott Kenny said:
Can't start the engines in hangar, gotta get towed out.

That is not conducive to getting your plane off the ground in a hurry in case of "launch detected"
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everybody but the folks on pad alert is ngmi. bombers are only remotely close to survivable once in the air or heavily dispersed.

outside of people on runway alert, nobody is getting off the ground in a hurry with any weapons in those situations, and you'll run out of fuel before they can clear the runway.

a b-52 pilot told me it took them hours to get one loaded for a run over iraq, and they had no limit to contractor support for doodads to make things go faster
 
zevets said:
everybody but the folks on pad alert is ngmi. bombers are only remotely close to survivable once in the air or heavily dispersed.

outside of people on runway alert, nobody is getting off the ground in a hurry with any weapons in those situations, and you'll run out of fuel before they can clear the runway.

a b-52 pilot told me it took them hours to get one loaded for a run over iraq, and they had no limit to contractor support for doodads to make things go faster
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The advantage on nuclear alert is that you're fully loaded once before the plane is placed on alert and then it just sits for however long.

Plenty of pictures of pre-loaded rotary launchers out there, but there's no emergency loading an alert plane with bombs.
 
I did not realise that you could see the B-2 engine fan blades from certain angles before, but just as well they are buried into the fuselage to maintain stealth qualities.
 
FighterJock said:
I did not realise that you could see the B-2 engine fan blades from certain angles before, but just as well they are buried into the fuselage to maintain stealth qualities.
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Even though you can, it must be a very specific angle, both at how you must be above it, and facing it head-on (otherwise the splitter in the middle blocks them further).

it's really a non-issue for the modern high-flying mission of the B-2 (and the 21), there really shouldn't be any situations where these planes are being monitored by another aircraft at an angle where the blades are visible...

whoever got this shot was really lucky to get the light hitting just right.
 
4decaa said:
it's really a non-issue for the modern high-flying mission of the B-2 (and the 21), there really shouldn't be any situations where these planes are being monitored by another aircraft at an angle where the blades are visible...
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There seems to be this common idea that making the engine face not visible is a goal for stealth aircraft. That is not really accurate.

Cavities are a major source of scattering on aircraft. Cockpits, inlets, exhausts and all of the little openings in aircraft contribute disproportionally to the RCS of aircraft. Most cavities though are good candidates for the use of absorbers.

A typical aircraft inlet is straight or nearly straight. Lining that inlet with an absorber has limited effectiveness. If the inlet is curved, "serpentine", etc. an incoming radar signal will hit the inside of the inlet and bounce around. With an absorber each hit/bounce reduces the energy. The more bounces, the better.

inlet.png

And the engine face not being visible is a side effect of that.
 
FighterJock said:
I did not realise that you could see the B-2 engine fan blades from certain angles before, but just as well they are buried into the fuselage to maintain stealth qualities.
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Pretty sure those are inlet guide vanes. The F110 has them so I'm assuming the F118 has them aswell.
 
quellish said:
There seems to be this common idea that making the engine face not visible is a goal for stealth aircraft. That is not really accurate.

Cavities are a major source of scattering on aircraft. Cockpits, inlets, exhausts and all of the little openings in aircraft contribute disproportionally to the RCS of aircraft. Most cavities though are good candidates for the use of absorbers.

A typical aircraft inlet is straight or nearly straight. Lining that inlet with an absorber has limited effectiveness. If the inlet is curved, "serpentine", etc. an incoming radar signal will hit the inside of the inlet and bounce around. With an absorber each hit/bounce reduces the energy. The more bounces, the better.

View attachment 728215

And the engine face not being visible is a side effect of that.
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Thanks for the reply. So it makes inlets act more as a trap rather than a reflector. Where is the picture from?
 
quellish said:
"Stealth Design of the F-117A", by Alan Brown. Was an AIAA paper but AIAA does not seem to have it anymore. Available here:
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You have the original AIAA publication quotation with a proper paper or journal number? Because your link is for a "Society of Vacuum Coaters 36th Annual Technical Conference Proceedings (1993)". The AIAA typically doesn't "lose" any of their official publications. But I honestly won't be surprised if you don't/won't respond to that specific question...
 
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flateric said:
Oh, they DO IRL
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I would have to assume then that you actually have *any* iron clad documented examples that you are able to provide openly on this forum to back up your so far wholly unsubstantiated claim? And please, for the love of any god you might pray to, don't tell me that you would have to kill me if you told me... You know, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - otherwise this forum is toast, thanks to people like you...
 
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martinbayer said:
You have the original AIAA publication quotation with a proper paper or journal number? Because your link is for a "Society of Vacuum Coaters 36th Annual Technical Conference Proceedings (1993)". The AIAA typically doesn't "lose" any of their official publications. But I honestly won't be surprised if you don't/won't respond to that specific question...
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As a general observation, if this forum degenerates to a warped "information market place" where anonymous entities that don't even bother to identify themselves by their real name, let alone their documented sources, can manipulate the discussion by carefully dropping bits of selective (mis?)information, I would urge the owners/admins of this site to *very* carefully reevaluate how to handle it. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
 
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You asked for an Brown AIAA paper reference. It's easy to see that JoA paper online is just two page synopsis and full paper only [was] accessible via err written request to AIAA back then. It's not accessible via ARC. That's of Brown paper.
 
flateric said:
You asked for an Brown AIAA paper reference. It's easy to see that JoA paper online is just two page synopsis and full paper only [was] accessible via err written request to AIAA back then. It's not accessible via ARC. That's of Brown paper.
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Thank you so much for your response without providing any actually useful concrete additional information!
 
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I really don't understand why you are so fcuking self-defensive and why my posts brought you to rage. Is that reaction to my
statement that AIAA have papers, listed in some sources, unaccessible?
 
quellish said:
There seems to be this common idea that making the engine face not visible is a goal for stealth aircraft. That is not really accurate.

Cavities are a major source of scattering on aircraft. Cockpits, inlets, exhausts and all of the little openings in aircraft contribute disproportionally to the RCS of aircraft. Most cavities though are good candidates for the use of absorbers.

A typical aircraft inlet is straight or nearly straight. Lining that inlet with an absorber has limited effectiveness. If the inlet is curved, "serpentine", etc. an incoming radar signal will hit the inside of the inlet and bounce around. With an absorber each hit/bounce reduces the energy. The more bounces, the better.

View attachment 728215

And the engine face not being visible is a side effect of that.
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Disagree somewhat.

If you can see the engine face at a specific angle, radio waves can in theory bounce off the blades directly back to you without hitting the duct walls from that angle. Now, whether that is significant or not depends on whether the fan blades are RAM treated, and the likelihood of the illuminating radar staying in the exact correct relative alignment that allows this radar path for long enough to be significant.

Therefore fans visible directly from the front and below would be worse that a fan visible from a kinda random to one side and above direction like this, especially for a high flying bomber.
 
That was what I was thinking last night overscan, it would not matter if it had a fan visible at certain angles due to the fact that the B-2 would be flying at high altitude and the engine would hidden in the air intakes.
 
martinbayer said:
Thank you so much for your response without providing any actually useful concrete additional information!
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Your conduct in this topic is far from acceptable. You have completely missed the point of everyone's posts. This is primarily your failing, not theirs.

Just to clarify:

The article available online at AIAA ARC is one printed in the AIAA Journal of Aircraft. It is a edited/sanitised version of the paper presented at a conference. This original paper is not available online from the AIAA and was not printed in full in the Journal of Aircraft, but at the time of publication (1993) AIAA members could ask for the full article by writing to them. This would limit access from the general public and / or foreign subscribers of the Journal of Aircraft. Apparently they will no longer supply the original longer paper on request.

It isn't at all unusual for there to be a slightly different version of an article printed in the Journal of Aircraft from the version presented at a conference, sometimes they are reformatted, have different or fewer illustrations, occasionally they are refined and longer. Sometimes the written papers excludes things that were shown or said at the actual conference.

It also isn't unknown for specific articles to be withdrawn from being available, if an objection was made to its content on, say, national security or ITAR violation grounds. I've found AIAA articles referenced which aren't available online, but other articles from the same conference are. Often the most interesting sounding ones.

It appears thar Mr Brown presented a version of his original, longer, paper to the Society of Vacuum Coaters 36th Annual Technical Conference Proceedings in 1993, and this is available to download. It likely escaped the attention of whomever objected to the full AIAA article being publicly available.

I don't know for sure if this is the exact version Mr Brown presented at the AIAA conference - sometimes you find slightly different versions of the same basic presentatation done for different audiences - but its certainly a lot more detailed.
 
FighterJock said:
That was what I was thinking last night overscan, it would not matter if it had a fan visible at certain angles due to the fact that the B-2 would be flying at high altitude and the engine would hidden in the air intakes.
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If its only visible over a small range of degrees in directions you aren't likely to be observed/approached from, it isn't likely to be important tactically.
 
overscan (PaulMM) said:
If its only visible over a small range of degrees in directions you aren't likely to be observed/approached from, it isn't likely to be important tactically.
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Any chance we could be seeing a radar blocker? They often resemble a turbine fan.

images.jpg
 
Unlikely that the B-2 uses a radar blocker, after reading Bill Sweetmans Inside the Stealth Bomber book that I got back in 1999 he does's not say anything about radar blockers being present in the air intakes unfortunately.
 
flateric said:
I really don't understand why you are so fcuking self-defensive and why my posts brought you to rage. Is that reaction to my
statement that AIAA have papers, listed in some sources, unaccessible?
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I am inquisitive, not self-defensive, but this may be a case of projective psychology on your part. No need to resort to (misspelled) swearwords though...
 
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overscan (PaulMM) said:
Your conduct in this topic is far from acceptable. You have completely missed the point of everyone's posts. This is primarily your failing, not theirs.

Just to clarify:

The article available online at AIAA ARC is one printed in the AIAA Journal of Aircraft. It is a edited/sanitised version of the paper presented at a conference. This original paper is not available online from the AIAA and was not printed in full in the Journal of Aircraft, but at the time of publication (1993) AIAA members could ask for the full article by writing to them. This would limit access from the general public and / or foreign subscribers of the Journal of Aircraft. Apparently they will no longer supply the original longer paper on request.

It isn't at all unusual for there to be a slightly different version of an article printed in the Journal of Aircraft from the version presented at a conference, sometimes they are reformatted, have different or fewer illustrations, occasionally they are refined and longer. Sometimes the written papers excludes things that were shown or said at the actual conference.

It also isn't unknown for specific articles to be withdrawn from being available, if an objection was made to its content on, say, national security or ITAR violation grounds. I've found AIAA articles referenced which aren't available online, but other articles from the same conference are. Often the most interesting sounding ones.

It appears thar Mr Brown presented a version of his original, longer, paper to the Society of Vacuum Coaters 36th Annual Technical Conference Proceedings in 1993, and this is available to download. It likely escaped the attention of whomever objected to the full AIAA article being publicly available.

I don't know for sure if this is the exact version Mr Brown presented at the AIAA conference - sometimes you find slightly different versions of the same basic presentatation done for different audiences - but its certainly a lot more detailed.
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Hello Paul, I take absolutely no umbrage whatsoever with your analysis that I may have completely missed the point of everyone's posts, but if asking (and answering) honest questions to further my or anybody else's understanding in polite language, however ill informed/ignorant they may seem to the actual subject matter experts, is considered bad conduct in this forum, I strongly advise you to revisit/reframe the founding principles of this venue, kind sir. If anyone thinks that they cannot answer truthfully to certain topics because of any sort of allegiances, restrictions, restraints, NDAs, more or less veiled death threats, blood oaths, or secret handshakes they perceive to be bound to, yet feel compelled to chime in on the discussion anyway, the very least I expect from them is to explicitly make that clear in their response, rather than just squirt evasive squid ink or even completely ignore specific pointed questions. As an example, I truly appreciate your response above, but I feel the information you provided should actually have come from flateric (and did I mention that I have an instinctual distrust/dislike of people who don't even use their real name online?) - I consider ghosting immature/insecure, rude and offensive. In my posts, I provide any links or background information that I feel are helpful up front - I just wish everyone on this forum would follow that simple rule, including moderators...
 
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martinbayer said:
As an example, I truly appreciate your response above, but I feel the information you provided should actually have come from flateric (and did I mention that I have an instinctual distrust/dislike of people who don't even use their real name online?) - I consider ghosting rude and offensive. In my posts, I provide any links or background information that I feel are helpful up front - I just wish everyone on this forum would follow that simple rule, including moderators...
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None of the above justifies the uncalled for personal attacks you have conducted in this and other threads.

If you dislike people who use usernames or who do not answer your questions / satisfy your requests the internet may not be the place for you. To conduct personal attacks against persons you “dislike” for those reasons is not generally acceptable behavior on most websites
 
Hardly surprising that the damaged B-2 won't be repaired considering that the B-21 has just entered prototyping and the USAF will want to concentrate on the B-21 instead.
 
B-21 is technically already in LRIP. But yes, saving a heavily damaged example is probably less pressing now that IOC for an equivalent capability is several years away.
 
flateric said:
...
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That's an interesting patch. Is this something recent, maybe related to all the ongoing upgrades?

www.flightglobal.com

Northrop plans wide-ranging B-2 upgrades, including new anti-radar coating by year-end

The manufacturer of the iconic flying wing stealth bomber is undertaking a series of modernisations that will make the notoriously difficult-to-maintain B-2 easier to keep flightworthy, more lethal and compatible with the next-generation B-21 Raider stealth bomber.
www.flightglobal.com www.flightglobal.com
 
TomS said:
That's an interesting patch. Is this something recent, maybe related to all the ongoing upgrades?

www.flightglobal.com

Northrop plans wide-ranging B-2 upgrades, including new anti-radar coating by year-end

The manufacturer of the iconic flying wing stealth bomber is undertaking a series of modernisations that will make the notoriously difficult-to-maintain B-2 easier to keep flightworthy, more lethal and compatible with the next-generation B-21 Raider stealth bomber.
www.flightglobal.com www.flightglobal.com
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Related to this:

www.defensedaily.com

Canceled Defensive System For B-2 Suffered From Coding Challenges, Roper Says - Defense Daily

The Air Force decided to cancel a major defensive upgrade to its B-2 stealth bomber in the fiscal year 2021 budget request after realizing that new
www.defensedaily.com www.defensedaily.com
 
This is at least the second time it's had signature reduction upgrades. It talked about some having already been done in AFM's 'Stealth' publication back in 2014.

From the link:
Defence manufacturer Northrop Grumman is preparing a series of modernisations for the company’s iconic B-2 Spirit flying wing bomber, including changes to aircraft’s exterior radar absorbent coating.
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The change involves phasing out the use of radar-absorbing tape, in favour of a coating material known as magnetic radar absorbing material, or MagRAM.
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The specialised tape must be regularly applied to certain B-2 surfaces in order to maintain the aircraft’s LO profile. Kodama says after analysing B-2 maintenance records, Northrop found the tape to be a “high driver” of time needed to preserve mission readiness.
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“Using MagRAM, instead of tape, we are driving down maintenance and man hours to maintain that LO,” she notes. “It’s keeping LO health on the aircraft and making it a more maintainable platform.”
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Kodama reveals Northrop is in the process modifying the first B-2 with the new MagRAM tape replacement. The company expects to complete the physical modifications before year’s end.
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Kodama says the change could reduce the annual maintenance requirement for the B-2 fleet by “tens of thousands” of hours.
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An early example of that technology sharing involves mission planning software Northrop developed for the B-21 that will also be compatible with the B-2 – allowing the two bomber types to integrate more easily.

“We can actually share applications that were developed for the B-21 on to the B-2,” Kodama notes.
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Kodama says Northrop will continue to work with the USAF on increasing the type’s lethality and capability, including the possibility of teaming the B-2 with autonomous combat jets being developed under the Pentagon’s recently announced Replicator initiative.
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