B-2 Spirit Northrop Grumman's Silver Bullet

摘要

A lot of water has flown under quite a few bridges since 1993, when AIR International last examined the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit. At that time, a total of six aircraft was allocated to development testing at Edwards Air Force Base, California, and production was moving ahead rapidly. However, it was evident that the USAF would eventually receive nothing like the 75 examples (originally 132) it wanted. In the post Cold War era, budget cuts were an inevitable fact of military life, and these ultimately made huge inroads into the eventual total and were undoubtedly a contributory factor in making the B-2 arguably the most expensive aircraft ever produced.