You can’t kill what you can’t see and that is the basic concept behind what has to be the ultimate worse nightmare for the bad guys, the B-2 “Spirit” bomber.

The B-2 is a 336,000 pound black widow that materializes out of the dark and, as was proven recently in Bagdad, leaves behind a smoking trail that was once a regime’s most prized installations. They didn’t even know what hit them.

The B-2 first took to the air nearly 15 years ago but it is as modern as modern gets and brings new meaning to the word “lethal.”   Essentially a flying, well-armed computer, the B-2’s two-man crew commands their machine through nine color computer screens that let them not only fly the airplane but select their targets with deadly accuracy while flying missions at 50,000 feet or while setting off UFO sightings during “nape of the Earth” tree-top runs. More over, every second it is in the air real-time telemetry is connecting every one of its many systems to its homebase so, besides the crew in the airplane, those on the ground are keeping an eye out for any glitches.

Northrup-Grumman started the design work in 1978 and sought to include the ultimate in weapons versatility. Its weapons bay can hold 40,000 pounds of ordnance racked up in both high-speed rotary dispensers and conventional bomb racks. In keeping with it’s modern approach to warfare, the airplane (and we use the term loosely) can carry all of the smart weapons in the US arsenal. This includes as many as 16 JDAM’s, the AGM-129 cruise missile and a scary collection of hyper-intelligent bombs that can seek-out a given window and put the lights out. 

Originally, the airplane had to launch all of its missions, some as long as forty-four hours, regardless of the target, from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri because of the intense nature of its ground support equipment. Now, however, the Air Force has designed a transportable “hangar” capability and has set it up in at least one other location, Diego Garcia, which puts it closer to the scene of the action.

Bad guys only have to take one look at the airplane to know it’s not smart to mess with a nation that has Darth Vader on its side.

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