Britain's new bomber command: The $2bn aircraft aiming for world peace



The world's most expensive aircraft has a devastating new bomb that may yet end North Korea's nuclear pretensions. More to the point, they've just tossed the keys to an RAF pilot. LIVE reports from a top secret USAF base in Missouri on a very British coup



The Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. The B-2 flies combat missions across the planet from here

There are two ways for a Briton to get close to the world's most expensive bomber. One involves a year of emails, faxes and phone calls involving the Pentagon and the U.S. State Department to obtain permission to visit Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, where the B-2 Spirit stealth bombers are based.

The other is to join the RAF. There, you must spend years flying fighter jets and apply for the one spot that opens up every three years on the world's most exclusive exchange programme. The advantage to this approach is that you could eventually pilot a $2 billion aircraft that gets more technically advanced each month - and is soon to carry one of the biggest bombs ever built. It is also this avenue that means a Brit may be in charge of the first strike of the next war.

Whiteman is just off U.S. Route 50, among the rolling green fields of Missouri, and dwarfs its nearest neighbour, the tiny town of Knob Noster. A country road through forest leads past a trailer park to the base's main gate. Once inside, Whiteman is like a quiet, ordered new town - complete with supermarket, coffee shop, bar and restaurant, and even a swimming pool and a baseball diamond - but you can't just drive through.



A B-2 takes off at Whiteman. Its' advocates believe it retains strategic value in an uncertain world

As instructed, I wait in the car park of a nearby golf course where I'm met by members of base staff, who check my papers and remain within a few feet of me at all times. I'm transferred to another car and driven onto the base, which is home to nearly 4,000 active-service personnel along with their families and reservists.

We're in the heart of the U.S., thousands of miles from any border, but the B-2 flies combat missions across the planet from here, so Whiteman is classed as a front-line base. Consequently, much of the detail of how the B-2 gets to and from its targets, undetected by radar, remains secret.



One B-2 carries 40 tornados-worth of munitions. It's a huge deal to be involved



Some critics believe that the B-2 is a Cold War relic that was rendered obsolete when the Berlin Wall came down months after its first flight in 1989. They say there's no point having an aircraft that's invisible to radar when the US and its allies are fighting insurgents armed with Fifties rifles and home-made bombs.



However, the B-2's advocates believe it retains strategic value in an uncertain, ever-changing world. The ageing aircraft is currently undergoing upgrades to ensure it remains the most capable weapons platform on Earth.



B-2 Spirit Of Mississippi in its dock

'The objective is never to use the B-2 in war,' says Brigadier General Robert Wheeler, commanding officer of the 509th Bomb Wing - the man in charge of the B-2 fleet - when I meet him in Whiteman's HQ.



'When I train my folks, I say: "When we use this, we've already failed." But there's virtually no target in the world that we cannot hit, and if the National Command Authority (the U.S. President and Secretary of Defence), in conjunction with our allies, decide that we have to take something out, it's gonna happen - and nobody can stop that. The B-2's objective is to deter other nations from doing things the wrong way.'

RAF Sqn Ldr Jon Killerby, who is qualified as a B-2 instructor

The latest stage of the B-2's evolution will see it carry the new Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). The 30,000lb precision-guided 'bunker-buster' bomb, 20ft long, is designed to blast through 200m of reinforced concrete and destroy buried targets. Many experts assume it is being readied for possible use on nuclear weapons factories in Iran or North Korea.

My paperwork is scrutinised again at a second checkpoint. The car is checked to make sure stones or other debris aren't going to be brought near to the aircraft. Ahead are the 'docks' - a row of 14 purpose-built air-conditioned hangars housing the B-2s. I'm driven across the taxi-way to one of the docks, the door slides open and there it is: aircraft serial number 82-1071, the Spirit Of Mississippi, a vast, dark grey set of sweeping curves etched in titanium and secret materials.

Apart from the three sets of wheels beneath the middle of the aircraft, and the massive bomb-bay doors that hang open underneath its swollen belly, there are no vertical surfaces: just one huge, rippling wing.

The B-2's unearthly looks reflect its unique role - to kick down the door at the beginning of a war, clandestinely taking out radar installations and air-defence batteries and ensuring control of enemy airspace. Unlike other American bombers, the B-2 would do this without being seen by radar.

With its conventional shape, huge tail and eight wing-mounted engines, the famous B-52's radar cross section (RCS) is huge: to a trained radar operator, it's no challenge to track an object that appears to be the size of a warehouse. The B-2 is said to appear on radar no bigger than a moth.

Only 21 B-2s were built. That number became even smaller in February 2008 when the unthinkable happened, and aircraft 89-0127, the Spirit Of Kansas, crashed during take-off at Andersen Air Force Base on the Pacific island of Guam. The first paragraph of the summary of the investigation into that accident reads: 'The Mishap Aircraft was destroyed at a total loss of $1,407,006,920.'



Maintenance crew wash the wheels of a B-2

The tiny B-2 fleet has fought in three wars so far: in Serbia in 1999; in Afghanistan in October 2001; and in the air war against Saddam Hussein in 2003. Wheeler's team at Whiteman have to be ready for whatever America's political leaders want them to do.



The continual improvements to the aircraft and its armaments give military planners ever more sophisticated options: later this year, a B-2 could take to the air with an MOP in one bomb bay and as many as 100 smaller GPS-guided missiles in the other, and use each bomb against a different target on a single flight - all from 50,000ft, and without an enemy even knowing it was there.

But it's not only the aircraft that are being prepared at Whiteman: just as vital are the pilots. Since 2004, of the 80 or so people qualified to fly the B-2 at any one time, one has always been British, thanks to a special extension to the Royal Air Force/ USAF Personnel Exchange Program.



As I arrive at Whiteman, Flight Lieutenant Adam Curd, a Tornado GR4 pilot from RAF's 14 Squadron, is training to fly the B-2, while his fellow Tornado pilot, Squadron Leader Jon Killerby, is now coming to the end of his three years in Missouri, during which time he has qualified as a B-2 instructor. 'Fewer people have flown this aircraft than have flown in the Space Shuttle,' says Squadron Leader Killerby, who is only the second Briton to fly the B-2.



A dummy 30,000lb 'bunker-buster' Massive Ordinance Penetrator bomb in the bomb bay

'You may not be flying a fast jet and pulling Gs, but one B-2 carries 40 Tornados-worth of munitions. It's a huge deal to be involved.'

Killerby was the mission commander when two B-2s flew in to RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire in 2007: a B-2 dock has been built there, so it can be used as a forward operating location. The exchange also gives British pilots insights into how to use stealth aircraft ahead of the arrival of the RAF's first stealth jet, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which should enter service around 2016.

Some of the differences from conventional aircraft are inescapable.



'The first thing that struck me when I came out here was the aeroplane's size,' says Killerby. 'But it handles much like a smaller aeroplane would. Also, we do a lot of low-level flying in the UK, but most of the stuff we do here is at airliner altitudes.'

The longest flight Killerby has made in a Tornado was eight hours: a B-2 training flight from Whiteman to Alaska and back took him almost 25 hours.

'It's interesting to find yourself at the end of a 24-hour sortie having to fly a $2 billion aeroplane on approach, sometimes in bad weather. I'd say up to 16 hours is easy, but on the 24-hour sorties I've done, I've felt great, then I've got down on the ground and I've felt wiped out.'



Whiteman employs a physiologist who examines rest, sleep and nutrition, tailoring special timetables for each pilot so that the main pressure points - take-off, landing, refuelling, weapons drop - happen at the peaks of their circadian rhythms.

Sleeping time is tightly controlled (there is a small space in the cockpit where crew members can have a nap) and pilots are also prescribed 'go-pills' - amphetamines and similar medicines often used to treat sleep disorders - to ensure they remain alert.

13th Bomb Squadron changing room

It's a flying experience that demands high levels of concentration and patience, so those who are selected for the programme are usually very experienced airmen. Many come from an engineering or mathematical background: among the current B-2 pilot cadre, six have maths degrees from the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Before getting airborne in a B-2, a new recruit has to master the smaller Northrop T-38 jet. The small number of aircraft means that an active B-2 pilot may only fly the bomber twice per month, mostly to bombing ranges in the U.S., or electronically simulating attacks on buildings, bridges and other targets within a couple of hours' flying time of Whiteman.

'When you've got the basics, they put you into the simulators, then they start introducing weapons and tactics,' says Flight Lieutenant Curd.

Once the simulator work is complete - including a 24-hour virtual mission - a trainee must make 11 flights in the pilot seat of the B-2, with an instructor alongside. A further, 12th 'check flight' is in effect a B-2 driving test.

As it passes its 21st birthday, parts of the B-2 are showing their age. It was designed and built with Seventies and Eighties technology. One of the companies that makes components for the B-2 was forced to scour eBay for spare test equipment when it discovered that a mains unit that needed replacing was no longer in production.

Back in 1995, the B-2's manufacturer, Northrop Grumman, had offered to build a further 20 B-2s at a 'flyaway price' of $566 million each. The U.S. government did not take Northrop up on their offer, and the production lines were closed down.

Yet the current upgrades show that the B-2 is only perhaps now coming of age. Halting production may come to be seen as one of the shortest-sighted decisions in the history of military aviation.

'I think one of the biggest mistakes we made with this aircraft was to call the damn thing a bomber - we should've called it a weapons platform,' says Ken Gallagher, site manager for Northrop at Whiteman.



'If only we'd known what was coming in the future.'









Behind the seats, once the cockpit door is closed, the ladder pulled up and the floor panel replaced, there is just enough room for one pilot to put down a sleeping bag and take a short nap while the other crew member flies the aircraft. Some B-2s have also been fitted with a microwave oven so crews can prepare hot meals. The one part of the aircraft the crews aren't happy with? Apparently, the cup holders (out of shot) are too small...



Engines are started while the aircraft is in the dock - the rear door of the dock is opened so that the exhaust blast doesn't blow a hole in the wall. The aircraft is towed in and out of the dock, much like a passenger jet, but it taxis under its own power once outside.



The pilot sits on the left, with the mission controller, who ensures the weapons are correctly deployed, on the right. The aircraft's shape makes it difficult to operate manually, so, in common with many advanced modern aircraft, it uses a 'fly-by-wire' system, which means its computers are in control of the minute-by-minute basics.



Today's smart bombs are guided to targets by GPS and laser targeting, so the mission commander will 'fly' the B-2 by punching target information into the computers, which will then steer the aircraft to the right place from which to launch its weapons at the target.



Here, we've highlighted some of the essential controls in the cockpit - the location of the switch that fires the missiles is, of course, classified...





