nice Jeff, Happy New Year Brother!
Happy New Year to you too my friend!
Heck of a National College Championship game going!
There's more (prior two posts) from my B-2 you'll like.
I gotta tell you...the way the B-2 is engineered is UNBELIEVABLE!
The way they enginerred the airflow down into the center of the Fuselage to hide the IR, and the exhaust then vack up out of the internal is phenominal.
Then, all of the doors (gear, bombays, evey small door for maintenance, even the opening on top for the refueling is positive pressurized, and then electronically (electrically) charged to make it like the aircraft has none of those openings/doors while in flight. From an IR. Radar, EM, etc. standpoint, it is as if though there were no doors or openings into the aircraft.
Simply amazing what we did over 20 years ago.
Now we are going to do over 100 of a new one.
We should have had 100 B-2s but the so-called progressives and left got it down to 20 units...then of course complained about the cost when the R&D and build was programmed for over 100 which would have cut the cost in half.
If we go ahead and build 100-120 of the new Long Range Strike Bombers (B-21) (which are going to be very much like e a newer, modern version of the B-2), aircraft...we will get them for the same cost as the 20 B-2s. We would have gotten 100 B-2s for that same cost back then.
Anyhow...an amazing aircraft. I am sure that the LR-SB, B-21,will be equally impressive for today's time and tech.