B-2 Spirit

The B-2 Spirit is a four-engined flying-wing stealth bomber built by Northrop Grumman for the United States Air Force. Developed under the Advanced Technology Bomber programme that ran through the 1980s, the aircraft entered front-line service in 1997 and remains the only operational nuclear-capable stealth bomber in the US arsenal. Twenty airframes are in service, flown by a crew of two from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, where every B-2 in existence is housed. The type is the only US bomber cleared to deliver both B61 and B83 free-fall nuclear weapons and the full suite of modern conventional stand-off munitions, and sits alongside the B-52 and B-1B as one leg of the Air Force’s heavy-bomber force.

The airframe is a tailless lambda-wing design with no vertical surfaces, the shape that gives it its very-low-observable radar signature. Four General Electric F118 non-afterburning turbofans are buried deep inside the wing structure, their intakes and exhausts shaped to hide the engine faces from radar and to cool the exhaust plume against infrared detection. Radar-absorbent materials coat the leading edges and skin, and sustaining those coatings is itself a continual maintenance workload — Northrop Grumman now runs a dedicated restoration hangar for the follow-on B-21. Internally the aircraft carries up to 18,000 kg of ordnance across two bomb bays, including GBU-31 JDAM and AGM-158 JASSM precision-guided munitions, the GBU-28 bunker-buster, and the 13,000-kg GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator developed for strikes against hardened underground targets. Modernisation work has focused on digital communications, open-architecture mission systems and the ability to receive updated target information in flight.

The B-2 has been used in every major US air campaign since Kosovo in 1999, operating out of Whiteman and from forward operating bases on Diego Garcia and Guam, with range extended by air-to-air refuelling. Northrop Grumman has publicised the type’s deployments to the Indo-Pacific as part of what it describes as deterrence signalling in the region.

Replacement is already under way. The B-21 Raider, also built by Northrop Grumman, is in flight testing, with the first operational aircraft expected to arrive at Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota in 2027. Open reporting puts the current USAF requirement at a minimum of 100 Raiders, with US Strategic Command reportedly pressing for a fleet closer to 145 — a scale that will see the B-2 retire gradually through the 2030s, closing out a service life approaching half a century for an aircraft whose design predates the end of the Cold War.