B-2 Bombed A Smiley Face Of Craters Into The Ground Because It Ran Out Of Targets

A B-2 bomber left a smiley face made out of bomb craters on the ‘runway’ of a mock airfield during a take a look at some twenty years in the past. This occurred after personnel at the sprawling Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) had run out of transport containers to flip into targets that a B-2 would hit during a single attack run. It’s a reminder of just how much precision destruction America’s upgraded stealth bombers can dole out in one cross.

Air Force Maj. Gen. Jason Armagost, who was half of the crew that flew the take a look at mission, talked about the smiley face during an online discuss that the Air & Space Forces Association’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies hosted yesterday. Armagost, who is now commander of the Eighth Air Force, to which the Air Force’s present B-2s, B-1s, and B-52s are all assigned, used the anecdote to spotlight the distinctive capabilities provided by heavy bombers.

“I happened to fly an operational test mission where we tested the carriage of 80 500-pound JDAM [Joint Direct Attack Munition precision guided bombs] and released them all in a span of a little over 20 seconds on an airfield in the UTTR,” Armagost said. “I mean, that’s an amazing sight to behold, such that we even ran out of CONEX boxes to strike, and so [we] drew a smiley face across the runway with JDAMs.”

Armagost said that this flight occurred in 2004, but this seems to be in error. The relaxation of his description aligns fully with a extensively publicized take a look at that occurred on Sept. 10, 2003. The specifics of the occasion are detailed in the video below, which makes no point out of drawing the smiley face.

The fake airfield constructed on the UTTR for the September 2003 take a look at was just under a mile long. In addition to two mock runways, one graded and one just a desert strip, it included 9 distinct simulated goal areas. These were designed to characterize an plane revetment, a helicopter touchdown pad, a control tower, a vehicle park, a generic construction, a hangar, an SA-6 surface-to-air missile system website, a fuel storage website, and a Scud ballistic missile launch website. The mock revetment, control tower, generic construction, and hangar were all made utilizing arrays of transport containers.

The B-2 bomber, flying at an altitude of some 40,000 ft, launched all 80 JDAMs in a single cross. The GPS-assisted steerage packages in the tail fin sections in each of the bombs were programmed to hit a separate goal level, and all of the impacts occurred within a span of roughly 22 seconds.

The JDAM was still a comparatively new weapon at the time, and the B-2 used in the take a look at had to be specifically modified with new “smart” bomb racks to be ready to drop the bombs. There were also security considerations about dropping that many bombs from a B-2 in such speedy succession, and 11 other take a look at flights were carried out to collect key information before the last 80-bomb cross on the mock airfield.

Today, JDAMs, which consist of one of a quantity of low-drag bomb our bodies mixed with a new tail part that accommodates the steerage system, as properly as clamp-on aerodynamic strakes, are among the most extensively used air-to-ground munitions in the U.S. navy. In addition to 500-pound-class varieties, there are also 1,000 and 2,000-pound-class variations.

The Air Force had actually demonstrated the B-2’s potential to drop massive numbers of bombs, in normal, before the September 2003 take a look at. The service has continued to show off the B-2’s capabilities in this regard in coaching and testing, as properly as real-world operations, since 2003, as properly.

As talked about, during yesterday’s discuss, Armagost used the 80 JDAM take a look at to spotlight the immense and distinctive capabilities that heavy bombers offer. The B-2, with its most payload capability of around 60,000 kilos, has particularly cavernous bomb bays. It is notably the only plane at the moment licensed to operationally make use of the 30,000-pound GBU-57/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bunker buster bomb, the heaviest standard munition in U.S. service at this time. It can carry two MOPs in its inner weapons bays. The MOP has now become a family identify after the bombs were dropped on actual targets for the first time during the Operation Midnight Hammer strikes on Iranian nuclear amenities in June.

Armagost’s remarks yesterday about the 80 JDAM take a look at came in response to a query about what he would need fellow airmen to higher perceive about the variations between what fighters and bombers deliver to the battle.

“Bombers are an order of magnitude difference [from fighters] in what you can do with them,” he also said. “Now, they nest incredibly well together, right? We see that with our partners and allies, who … fly fighters as their power projection capability. But when we nest them together with bombers, it is a completely different animal.”

The United States is at the moment alone in the West as an operator of bombers. It is a small membership total, with Russia and China being the only other nations that do so anywhere else globally.

“I’ll reflect back to that, that B-2 example of 80 500-pound JDAMs in a matter of a little over 20 seconds, and that was one aircraft,” Armagost said later on in yesterday’s discuss. “It’s like the example we used to give of World War II attacks requiring massive formations with high numbers of people at risk to get a single target. And then, as we transition through the precision capability, kind of revolution, and then evolution, you get down to single aircraft with single targets. And then the B-2 with multiple targets per aircraft. And, so, most simply, the cost, the strike efficiency, and the cost per kill comes down to: it matters how big your weapons bay is.”

Now it also “matters what access you have bought with the platform or with the weapons, in the case of hypersonics from range, or a penetrating force bringing large numbers inside of denied airspace,” the Eighth Air Force commander added.

The potential of a single B-2 to destroy, or at least inflict extreme harm, on a massive facility like an airfield with pinpoint accuracy on a single cross, even when flying miles from the goal, stays a vital functionality, although one that is waning with the introduction of ever more superior built-in air protection systems. Regardless, this unprecedented potential is something TWZ has highlighted in the previous when speaking about the B-2.

In line with all of this, Armagost spent much of his time yesterday speaking about the important worth he sees coming not just from the measurement of the deliberate fleet for forthcoming B-21 Raider bombers, as you can learn more about here. The Air Force plans to buy at least 100 B-21s, if not many more. The service at the moment has just 19 B-2 bombers out of a complete of 21 that were ever produced, which imposes vital limits on their operational capability despite the extremely helpful ‘silver bullet’ capabilities they offer, as was demonstrated during the Midnight Hammer strikes.

The B-21 is smaller than the B-2, and won’t be ready to carry as much gross tonnage of ordnance per sortie. Still, the Raider could have an even more spectacular ‘single pass’ strike functionality, all while offering enhanced survivability. While 80 JDAMs may not be on the weapons menu, with new smaller standoff munition choices like the GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) or its successor, the GBU-53/B StormBreaker, the B-21 could exceed the amount of the B-2’s bomb load. And it could release those weapons at standoff ranges, eclipsing the B-2’s spectacular direct attack capabilities. The B-2 is not at the moment succesful of using the SDB or Stormbreaker. The potential to launch even small but just as correct drones that can community collectively to swarm targets with lethal precision could take this functionality even another step ahead.

Regardless of what the future holds, the smiley face anecdote that Armagost shared underscores why the Air Force’s B-2s will proceed to be prized for their distinctive potential to deliver heavy ordnance masses deep into defended areas and deal huge, highly-efficient destruction in minimal time.

Contact the writer: joe@twz.com