Pentagon's new stealth bomber, The B-2 was also envisioned to be a fleet of more than 100 aircraft, but the Air Force ultimately built only 21 of them, due to cost overruns and a changed Take a look at the stealthy B-2 bomber on it’s 30th anniversary. Slicing through the sky with bat-like wings, eluding enemy radar with stealth technology, quietly destroying enemy air defenses The B-2 Stealth Bomber made its combat debut on March 24, 1999, bombing targets in Yugoslavia. USAF/Hulton Archive/Getty Images The B-2 is the most expensive military aircraft, at $2 billion per unit. You can see a previous photo story of the bombers above. Background. The first B-2 was publicly displayed on Nov. 22, 1988, when it was rolled out of its hangar at Air Force Plant 42, Palmdale “Reimar argued that he understood the chemistry of stealth coatings and was going to, or had, added this material into the Ho 229 V3,” Lee says. “So this whole mythology developed about it The U.S. Air Force bought 21 B-2 stealth bombers from Northrop Grumman in the 1980s and 1990s at a price of more than $2 billion apiece, if you count development costs. One crashed on Guam in B-2 Spirit. Mission. The B-2 Spirit is a multi-role bomber capable of delivering both conventional and nuclear munitions. A dramatic leap forward in technology, the bomber represents a major milestone in the U.S. bomber modernization program. It’s not for no reason that, in 2018, the Air Force announced it would retire its 62 ’80s-vintage B-1Bs bombers and 20 newer B-2 stealth bombers by the 2030s, while retaining the the updated B Three U.S. Air Force B-2 bombers landed in Iceland in late August as part of a quarterly rotation of heavy bombers throughout the European theater. But unlike other rotations, which saw bombers B-2 ‘Spirit’ is a subsonic, two-crew, heavy strategic bomber, featuring low-observable stealth technology and is designed to penetrate dense anti-aircraft defences. It entered service in 1997. B-2 has an unrefuelled range of around 11,000 km, and increases to 19,000 km with one mid-air refuelling. PO9Sl.