B-2 Stealth Bomber Crashes on Guam

HAGATNA, Guam — A B-2 stealth bomber crashed at an air base on Guam but both pilots ejected safely and were in good condition, the Air Force said.

Thick black smoke could be seen billowing from the wreckage at Andersen Air Force Base, said Geanne Ward, a resident in the northern village of Yigo who was on the base visiting her husband.

Ward said she didn't witness the crash but noticed a rising plume of smoke behind the base's air control tower.

She said crowds began to gather as emergency vehicles arrived Saturday morning local time.

"Everybody was on their cell phones, and the first thing everyone wanted to know was did the pilots make it out in time," she said.

A board of officers will investigate the accident.

Each B-2 bomber costs about $1.2 billion to build. All 21 stealth bombers are based at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri but the Air Force has been rotating several of them through Guam since 2004, along with B-1 and B-52 bombers.

The rotations are designed to boost the U.S. security presence in the Asia-Pacific region while other U.S. forces diverted to fight in the Middle East.

The accident occurred 11 days after a Navy plane crashed into the ocean about 20 miles northeast of Guam's Ritidian Point. Four aircrew members ejected from the EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare aircraft and were rescued by helicopter.

Guam is a U.S. territory 3,700 miles southwest of Hawaii.

Comments

[JerseyBob]

12:55 PM on 02/24/2008

An expensive test? Much can be learned from the destructive test (crash) of such a machine and its payload. In an ideal world all weapons/weapons systems would be subject to this kind of test. Some are. All machines are the sums of parts. Parts can be tested. Some whole machines and systems can be tested. The sum of a number of tests of parts of a larger system Could imply system success. Absent the destructive test required for less expensive weapons/systems, crashes such as the one discussed here might provide data otherwise unobtainable. That famous Rumsfeld comment, something about… when we don’t know what we don’t know…comes to mind. A good place for such a controlled test could be an out of the way military base.
Industry tells us the B2 is old. With modifications of the existing B2 and successor aircraft at some phase of birth, the sacrifice of a B2 could be rationalized by researchers in the private and government sectors and the high cost easily could be absorbed/hidden by the self insured government in an R&D or black budget.
It’s good to know the crew is safe and was not injured. The possibility of an unmanned flight is of course unthinkable.

[bogtrotters]

08:33 PM on 02/23/2008

I wonder how many high schools a B-2 bomber could buy?

[abbiehoffmansghost]

08:25 PM on 02/23/2008

The bigger they are the harder they.....

[GeoLee]

07:53 PM on 02/23/2008

Well, I hope the pilots and ground crew enjoyed their military career while it lasted... getting passed over twice looms ahead.

[BigBagel]

07:35 PM on 02/23/2008

Its a lot of money but we can just print some more. We can print money to bail out homeowners with falling home price,money for wars,money for more social problems and the ones we already have, money for oil, money for stuff from China. What can go wrong?

[crablover]

05:18 PM on 02/23/2008

I heard excerpts of President Eisenhower's farewell speech yesterday on Air America. Ike's warning about the growing dangers of "the military-industrial complex" (you can include the media in there today) has proved to be incredibly accurate.

We no longer manufacture anything in America, with the exception of weapons of war. And we need to use those weapons to create the demand for even more expensive, high-tech weaponry.

We've mortgaged our children's futures to foreign powers that are just waiting for the opportunity to call in their loans.

As much as I'd like to be hopeful and optimistic about our country's future, I'm afraid we're going the way of all the other imperial powers that once tried to rule the world -- down the drain.

The 2008 Depression will make the Great Depression of the 1930s look like a picnic. Now is the time to stock up on food, water and ammo, because you'll be fighting your neighbors just to survive once the economy collapses.

Thanks again, W.

May you and your neo-con cronies burn in hell!

[Issak]

05:37 PM on 02/23/2008

"The 2008 Depression will make the Great Depression of the 1930s look like a picnic. Now is the time to stock up on food, water and ammo, because you'll be fighting your neighbors just to survive once the economy collapses"

Yours is the kind of madness that in end only helps those in the business of hoarding, manipulation, exploitation and greed- in short, an utterly ignorant and stupid statement. Get some help, start by seeing a competent mental health worker- then try and study some basic history and know the difference between 1930 and today.

Lastly, so long as you don't have a clue about the progression of technology you cannot comment as to why or how things get manufactured in different countries. And if you want to use of some of that left over ammo from the Y2K days - well, join a right wing militia.

[BigBagel]

07:36 PM on 02/23/2008

I agree. he's off the beam. He forgot to stock up on rosary beads and condoms.

[AnotherDayInParadise]

04:29 PM on 02/23/2008

What was the payload, mission, and destination ? As American taxpayers who willingly or not, support this military industrial complex, we have a right to know.

[chinohillster]

04:27 PM on 02/23/2008

I worked as a DBA for Northrop Grumman for almost 10 years on the B2.

We had one of every computer then known to mankind in support of this aircraft: Cray, Silicon Graphics, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, DEC - you name it, we had it.

We had all kinds of operating systems: Windows, Solaris, IRIX, HP-UX, AIX, MVS, etc, etc, etc.

A lot of peoples' jobs were dependent upon the B2, which is why people like Maxine Waters and Dianne Feinstein constantly voted funds each year for it.

Mr. Scott once said in "Star Trek V": 'The right tool for the right job' - stealth bombers, stealth aircraft, etc do little good against guerrilla forces motivated by religion, nationalism and deep anger - these folks can, do and will find a way to beat the mightiest, most technologically advanced militaries of the world (can you say, 'Soviets in Afganistan', 'US in Vietnam', etc, etc, etc?)

The US would do much better to consider its policies in the Middle East and elsewhere, to examine its realpolitik, and to focus on strengthening its Army, Marines and National Guard. F-15's, F/A 18's, carriers and much conventional weaponry can go very far in delivering force; Tridents, B-2's, B-1B's, F-117A's are highly advanced, yet each have their own particular Achilles' heel...

[PaulUK]

03:31 PM on 02/23/2008

Price of Gold per Troy Ounce= $945.21
Cost of B2 $1.2 Billion
That would work out that the cost of a B2 in gold would be 1,269,559 Troy ounces of gold or 39.45 metric tonnes. As for being needed in case of a war with China or Russia, they would not fight a war, all they would do is dump their Dollar Bonds on the market and America would collapse.

[blooddoc]

06:54 PM on 02/23/2008

One B2 bomber = 30+ FA-18 SuperHornets. Fair trade? The military would have us believe it is, but I wonder.

[kellygrrrl]

03:30 PM on 02/23/2008

it's only money, geez!

just put it on our tab. Our grandkids are gonna take care of that.

[wadenelson1]

02:53 PM on 02/23/2008

The only airplane EVER built that cost more than its own weight in pure gold.

[MajorKong]

03:10 PM on 02/23/2008

The Air Force always wanted a plane that cost as much as a Navy ship.

[Earl]

02:37 PM on 02/23/2008

There went 5% of our B-2s.

[desmirl]

04:05 PM on 02/23/2008

Actually, 4.7619% of our B-2 fleet -- but who's counting? It's only money... Right?

[desmirl]

01:24 PM on 02/23/2008

Do you suppose Northrup has a 'return if not satisfied offer'? I mean, if it's not pilot error--but instead something wrong with that overpriced pile of junk--couldn't the taxpayers ask for a refund OF $1.2 BILLION? It wouldn't be a drop in the bucket toward the national debt, but EVERY LITTLE BIT HELPS!

[john44]

02:30 PM on 02/23/2008

It's only money. We're the U.S., we can't go broke. Right, Gorby?

[argent1]

12:35 PM on 02/23/2008

No mention of the annual maintenance costs for these bombers, or the amount of jobs that are created to create a destroyer. No regard by patriots for American wealth to be used to recreate creation. Destroying creation is more apt for the Military-Industrialist Pariots who see no advantage for them in peaceful co-existence. The idea of what anything costs per item or fleet betrays the truth that a warplane is inanimate and has no use for money- of which is only another method humans use to dominate each other.
We are perpetuating the 1949 revolution in China by supporting the loser, at huge costs. Our banker is now the winner of that revolution. I can't comprehend the machinery in place that keeps this continuity of insanity, only to conclude that nuclear options are the final solution for these destroyers.

[LeftVetPatriot]

12:45 PM on 02/23/2008

Rarrin'!

[Issak]

01:41 PM on 02/23/2008

"Our banker is now the winner of that revolution"

Yours is a strange rant -when have the bankers not been calling the shots? answer: never.

Usury and centralized robbery have been in place for a very long time,and underneath it all,- when it comes down to it -military forces tend to defend the interests of the moneyed classes against their competing interests.

Is this insanity? certainly, and theirs is a world where peaceful coexistence would spell the end to their backward schemes.

What better way to keep the unwashed masses in check: fear, ignorance, pessimism.

And oh yeah, the B2 is that expensive in part because it seems to be outfitted with some exotic properties- which includes electrostatic field- generating techniques used to reduce this large plane's radar section.

This plane was at one point black, the fact the we openly hear about this accident now, suggests we have who-knows-what in the superblack realms - as always unsuspected by most.

[LeftVetPatriot]

02:16 PM on 02/23/2008

Yours, stranger.

[jjimmyboy21]

12:34 PM on 02/23/2008

Bush $196 Billion Includes B-2 Stealth Bomber Modification
Posted on October 25th, 2007 by nytexan
I hope Congress reads every word in Bush’s $196 billion emergency funding bill before they cave in and give the decider what he wants. Apparently there are funds requested to modify the B-2 stealth bomber to carry a 30,000 pound bomb also know as a bunker buster. Iran is on Cheney’s hit list and Bush has an itchy trigger finger for war so Iran seem to be the most likely target for the revamping of the bomber.

Tucked inside the White House’s $196 billion emergency funding request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is an item that has some people wondering whether the administration is preparing for military action against Iran.

The item: $88 million to modify B-2 stealth bombers so they can carry a newly developed 30,000-pound bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator, or, in military-speak, the MOP.

The MOP is the the military’s largest conventional bomb, a super “bunker-buster” capable of destroying hardened targets deep underground. The one-line explanation for the request said it is in response to “an urgent operational need from theater commanders.”

There doesn’t appear to be any potential targets for a bomb like that in Iraq. It could potentially be used on Taliban or al Qaeda hideouts in the caves along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but there would be no need to use a stealth bomber there.So where would the military use a stealth bomber armed with a 30,000-pound bomb like this? Defense analysts say the most likely target for this bomb would be Iran’s flagship nuclear facility in Natanz, which is both heavily fortified and deeply buried.

“You’d use it on Natanz,” said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. “And you’d use it on a stealth bomber because you want it to be a surprise. And you put in an emergency funding request because you want to bomb quickly.”