[MilCom] B-2 Bomber Crashes on Guam; Pilots Safe

[Duane Mantick]

First off, I too am glad that we had no casualties. It
will be interesting to see what the inquiry will
reveal about the cause of the loss.

The flip side is that for high value targets that
require a stealthy attack, the F15's that you
mentioned look like Mount Everest on an enemy radar
screen.  It's not impossible to envision losing 25
F15's if they were going after a well-defended high
value target.  So what is more important, getting the
job done or the price of the airplane?

Oh, and what would be the cost of 25 F-15's?  Last I
heard, that wasn't exactly an inexpensive aircraft and
25 of them might well add up.  Let's add crew losses
to the figure - total crew loss on a B2A, 2 to 4 (?)
depending on the mission and 25 single seat F-15's =
25 crew; if they were 2-seaters as many as 50.

I might add, had production not been so limited, costs
could have been spread out over a larger number of
airframes and thus the price of each one would have
been less.  I frequently wonder how many times
congress and their pentagon counterparts will have to
learn that lesson over and over again before they
finally get it right......and either authorize
production of aircraft that are actually useful and in
a sufficient quantity to make them useful, OR, simply
not start in the first place.

It may indeed be true that there is a fair amount of
downtime per airframe.  Consider that the B2A
represents a new approach to the large, strategic
manned bomber.  That means everything from materials
to tactics are all new, and history shows us that in
such a "transitional" aircraft it's nearly impossible
to take ALL factors into consideration.  Hence, the
lessons learned in early production models should be
applied to *later* production models....except in this
case, where there may not ever be any *later* models,
there's no path to improve the product to the extent
that you normally would by incorporation.  So the
existing airframes can receive a certain level of
upgrade/update but many aspects of the airframe cannot
be changed post-production.  Once again, lack of
foresight has painted the B2 program into a corner.

And everytime ANYthing happens, the $$$$ signs will
come out of the woodwork.  Ignore good, well-executed
missions and crucify everyone for a buck.

Duane

--- "Jack L. Metcalfe" <jlmetcalfe at hughes.net> wrote:

> At 01:21 AM 2/23/2008, you wrote:
> >http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,332038,00.html
> ---
> I'm glad the pilots are safe, but I hope this opens
> debate again 
> about the wisdom of putting an incredible amount of
> money into 
> relatively few airframes.  We've just lost almost 5
> percent of the 
> total B-2 force & the loss didn't occur during
> combat.  Also, if the 
> article I recently read was correct, only 5 - 7 B-2s
> are available at 
> any one time for combat operations, so the loss
> could very well be 
> called as high as 14-20%!  In comparison, the total
> number of F-15 
> A-E models in the USAF inventory is listed as 522
> (or 665 if you look 
> at another reference).  Taking the lower number,
> today's B-2 loss 
> would be equivalent to the loss of 25 F-15s in a
> single day.
> -------------------
> Jack L. Metcalfe
> Stanford, KY
> jlmetcalfe at hughes.net
> -------------------
> 
> 
>
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