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Profile: Air Force's Plan To Deploy The B-2 Bomber Overseas For The First Time
All Things Considered: November 4, 2002
 U.S. to Deploy B-2 Bombers Overseas
JOHN YDSTIE, host:
For the first time, the US is preparing to deploy the B-2 stealth bomber to bases overseas. Since its inception in 1993, the B-2 has flown all missions from its home base in Missouri. The forward deployment could prove useful if there is a war in Iraq, especially given Saudi Arabia's statement yesterday that even with UN approval, American planes may not attack Iraq from Saudi soil. NPR's Eric Westervelt reports from Missouri.
ERIC WESTERVELT reporting:
The bat wing-shaped B-2 was long derided by critics as a $2 billion boondoggle; better suited to Air Force recruiting drives and air shows, not combat. But in its battle debut in Kosovo, the B-2 slipped undetected by radar into enemy territory and delivered deadly accuracy; destroying 80 percent of its assigned targets on the first run. As pilots like to say, the B-2 `knocks the door down.' Airman Pita(ph), like all B-2 pilots here, asked to be identified only by his call sign.
Airman PITA (Air Force Pilot): We get to help take down your command-and-control nodes, your integrated air defense systems. All those assets of the enemy's infrastructure that's going to make it hard for us to go in and kill our targets, if you will.
WESTERVELT: Some of the Air Force's 21 stealth bombers will certainly be used in a similar way if the US attacks Iraq. But the B-2's combat record is still pretty thin, even as the Air Force readies the bomber for their first ever deployment outside of Missouri. The likely move will allow the Air Force to blow up more targets more efficiently, whether in Iraq or elsewhere in the war on terrorism. Colonel Doug Raaberg is commander of Whiteman Air Force Base.
Colonel DOUG RAABERG (Whiteman Air Force Base Commander): We want to step into the forward deployed era for the B-2. We're going to mature this weapons system. So this is going to be good.
WESTERVELT: And the overseas deployment will allow the bombers to drop more quicker with less wear and tear on the aircraft and the pilots. During the Afghan war, the B-2 recorded the longest combat mission in aviation history: 44 hours. On those long missions, the two pilots in each B-2 carefully managed sleep cycles, nutrition and nap time. And for all long combat air missions, there is the pilot's little helper: Air Force-prescribed amphetamines. What fliers call go pills, the civilian world calls speed. Pilot Zulu(ph) calls it a last resort.
Airman ZULU (Air Force Pilot): There are Air Force-approved medicines that could be used in flight, that can help with alertness, mental alertness. But I'll say that most guys on the base, that's pretty much not your first, second or even third option.
WESTERVELT: But good to have the option if a catnap doesn't do it.
Airman ZULU: Absolutely. I would say it is a good option to have.
Unidentified Man #1: It's packed too tight!
WESTERVELT: Inside a training hangar, two munitions experts on ladders practice quickly moving a 5,000-pound dummy bomb into the mock belly of a B-2.
Unidentified Man #1: Put your shoulder into it.
Unidentified Man #2: Ready? Go!
WESTERVELT: The ability to drop more real bombs with satellite global positioning systems, or GPS, has revolutionized US air combat. In the first Persian Gulf War, only 10 percent of the bombs were precision guided. Over Afghanistan, 90 percent were precision. But even precision weapons sometimes miss their targets with tragic consequences. Still, the Air Force believes it's only begun to tap the precision power, especially with the B-2. Now one stealth can deliver 16 2,000-pound satellite-guided bombs to 16 different targets. In coming months, Pilot Zulu says the Air Force plans to outfit the stealth bomber with 80 500-pound bombs.
Airman ZULU: Eight-zero 500-pound weapons, each with GPS guidance looking for individual targets programmed by the pilots. And so if you just think about that and how that transforms from World War II or even Vietnam or Persian Gulf, you're thinking: `How many jets do we fly over a target?' Now we're talking one jet and 80 targets.
WESTERVELT: On a wet Missouri morning, a B-2 lifts off into the gray sky on its way to practice bombing runs in Alaska's remote Yukon range.
SOUNDBITE OF B-2 FLYING
WESTERVELT: The steady drizzle disproves a B-2 myth: that the plane can't fly well in the rain. But maintenance is the B-2's Achilles' heel. Foul weather can certainly exacerbate tears in the plane's radar-evading stealth coding. Repairs to the high-tech skin using graphite epoxy and other classified coverings need careful temperature and humidity controls. Master Sergeant Wayne Cox(ph), a B-2 mechanic, admits winged creatures of all sizes can wreck havoc.
Master Sergeant WAYNE COX (Mechanic): If the aircraft's banking and it happens to run into some bugs there, it'll tear the materials that's there. If I've got a tear in it and I run into some weather, it could propagate the tear itself. And, again, like I said, a bird strike.
WESTERVELT: To forward deploy the bombers, the Air Force has built five climate-controlled mobile shelters which are now ready for use on Diego Garcia, a British island in the Indian Ocean. But Pentagon planners aren't as confident as the Whiteman personnel, that the shelters will solve all the B-2's serious maintenance challenges. General John Jumper is Air Force chief of staff.
General JOHN JUMPER (Air Force Chief of Staff): I will tell you, I don't plan to deploy the airplane forward until we're sure that we can do that stealth maintenance as good in a forward location as we can at home.
WESTERVELT: Even if the Air Force does solve that maintenance puzzle, some critics say the Afghanistan campaign has made some Air Force planners overconfident. Robert Pape taught bombing strategy to pilots at the Air Force's School of Advanced Air Power. Some Pentagon strategists, he says, seem to be pushing for using heavy air power alone against Iraq. Pape argues that precision air power must work in concert with ground forces or you get situations like what happened last March in Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains.
Mr. ROBERT PAPE (Flying Instructor): Although we used lots of air power to try to smash the al-Qaeda leaders at Tora Bora, we really didn't have much effect, and the al-Qaeda leaders simply slipped away. And the danger today in Iraq is that we may face another Tora Bora.
WESTERVELT: And this time, he says, the risk isn't that Saddam Hussein will slip away, but that his chemical or biological weapons might. Eric Westervelt, NPR News, Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri.
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