Stealth Aircraft Scheduled for Mid-November Debut
The unveiling of the B-2 bomber, the top-secret, radar-evading stealth aircraft, is scheduled for mid-November with a first flight sometime soon after, the Pentagon announced Thursday. It would be a delay of several months from projections by the aircraft’s contractor.
The aircraft, shaped like a flying wing, will be unveiled at an Air Force-owned factory in Palmdale, Calif. The exact date was not given. Maj. Pat Mullaney, an Air Force spokesman, said the stealth won’t fly on the day of its public unveiling, but preparations for flight will be very close to completion by then. New planes often don’t fly until several months after they are first presented to the public.
Northrop Corp., the prime contractor, early this year had projected a first flight in August.
During a Pentagon briefing, the military also revealed some details of the bomber’s dimensions that had never before been publicly disclosed.
The Air Force said the B-2 is approximately 17 feet high and 62 feet long with a wingspan of about 172 feet. The “flying wing” is only slightly longer than an F-15 fighter but has a wingspan almost as wide as a huge B-52, the Air Force revealed.
The bomber, which has been in development for more than a decade, has been so secret that Thursday’s announcement marked only the second time the Air Force has officially acknowledged its existence. In April, the service released a purposefully vague artist’s rendering of the aircraft.
The stealth is an intercontinental nuclear bomber constructed of non-metallic materials designed to make it virtually invisible to enemy air defenses. It will be flown by two pilots, rather than four.
The Air Force said the plane will be powered by four General Electric Co. jet engines. The engine, dubbed the F-118, will be a derivative of an existing GE power plant.
The B-2 has been under development since the mid-1970s but its existence did not become public until it was first disclosed during the 1980 presidential campaign, when President Jimmy Carter came under fire from Ronald Reagan for allegedly neglecting the country’s defenses.
