Its four turbofan engines were buried within V-shaped wings, which eliminated telltale heat emissions, and engine components were cooled with jet fuel itself to further reduce heat emissions. Its state-of-the-art navigation systems, attack radars, and sensors were so advanced that the B-2 could strike targets several miles before the bomber could be detected by enemy acquisition radars.
The cost of the Black Knight bomber program was staggering — a half billion dollars per plane and nearly eighty billion dollars for an entire fleet, including research, development, and basing. A planned total purchase of one hundred and thirty-two B-2s in five years quickly went away, replaced with an extended procurement deal that would bring only seventy-five bombers on-line over ten years. Even that reduced production rate had been compromised — by April of 1992 there were only twelve fully operational B-2s in the inventory, including the initial three airframes used for testing and evaluation and nine more that had been purchased in 1991. The 1992 and 1993 budgets had carried only “life- support” funding for the B-2 — just enough money to keep the program alive while retaining the ability to quickly gear up production if the need arose. Because there would only be seventy-five B-2s active by the turn of the century, the B-52 — slated for replacement by the Black Knight — would still be in the active strategic nuclear penetrator arsenal well into the twenty-first century.
But the B-2, despite charges of being a “billion-dollar boondoggle” and obsolete before becoming operational, was now a reality and had proven itself ready to go to war in extensive flight testing. The first Black Knight bomber squadron — the 393rd Bomb Squadron “Tigers” — the same unit that had dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima during World War II — had been activated at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri a few months earlier, and when that happened, it had rendered billions of dollars’ worth of the enemy’s military air-defense hardware instantly obsolete.
“Got time for a walkaround, sir?” McLanahan asked.
“You bet,” the young Air Force General replied. Ormack let Patrick drink in the sight of the magnificent black bomber before him as Patrick stepped toward it for a walkaround “get-acquainted” inspection.
The B-2 had no fuselage as on more conventional airplanes; it was as if someone had sawed off the wings of a B-52, stuck them together, and put wheels on it. For someone like McLanahan, who was accustomed to seeing the huge, drooping wings of the mighty B-52, it was amazing to notice that the B-2s, which were just as long and easily twice as wide, did not droop one inch — the composite structures were pound-for-pound stronger than steel. The skin was perfectly smooth, with none of the stress wrinkles of the B-52, and it had no antennae attached to the hull that might act as a radar reflector. The plane’s “flying wing” design had no vertical flight control surfaces that would create a radar reflector; instead, it achieved stability by a series of split flaps/ailerons on the wing’s trailing edges, called “flaper- ons,” which would deflect in pairs or singularly in response to a triple-redundant laser optic flight computer’s commands. The unique flaperon flight-control system, plus a thrust ejector system that directed engine exhaust across the flaperons to increase responsiveness, gave the huge bomber the roll response of a small fighter. To prevent any radar image “blooming” when the flaperons were deflected in flight — even the small flaperon deflection caused by a 5-degree turn would increase the radar image size several times — the trailing edge of the B-2’s wings were staggered in a zigzag pattern, which prevented any reflected energy from returning directly back to the enemy’s radar receiver.
Patrick ducked under the pointed nose on his way back to the double side-by-side bomb bays, the natural part of such an aircraft that would attract any SAC bombardier. The lower part of the nose section on either side of the nose gear had large rectangular windows protected by thick pads. “Are these the laser and IR windows?” Patrick asked Ormack.
“You got it, Patrick,” Ormack replied. “Miniature laser spotters/target designators and infrared detectors, slaved to the navigation system. The emitter windows and the cockpit windows are coated with an ultrathin material that allows radar energy to pass through the windows but not reflect back outwards, much like a one-way mirror. This reduces the radar reflectivity caused by energy bouncing off the crew members or equipment inside the plane itself. If allowed to reflect back, the radar return from the pilots’ helmets alone can effectively double the B-2’s radar signature.”
“Where’s the navigation radar? Is there one on the B-2?”
