Let's look at pictures first, before getting into the nitty gritty of U.S. Air Force project management.
Putting a B-2 through its paces at 90° North
This is a beautiful photo of a beautiful B-2 Spirit approaching the North Pole.
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| Testing B-2 performance at a geomagnetic extreme point |
The US Air Force provides some details about this test flight:
A B-2 Spirit flies to the North Pole on October 27, 2011, on a test mission from Edwards Air Force Base, California. The polar flight helped ensure that the B-2 maintains its combat capability in all environments...
The North Pole's coordinates are 90° North latitude and 0° East or 0° West longitude, take your pick. (For the sake of notational accuracy, it is usually expressed as 90° North but disregard that for the moment.) Patience, please, as I am going somewhere with this.
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| Comfortable expedition to the North Pole thanks to Russian icebreaker (2013) |
So, 90°N 0°E is merely a "quarter" rotation of the Earth away from coordinates of 0°N 0°E according to the map projection of the World Geodetic System 1984. WGS84 is an oft-used global reference system for modeling the Earth. The U.S. Department of Defense and even more importantly, GPS (Global Positioning System) both use WGS84. By the way, the DoD developed GPS and made it publically and freely available to all in the early 1980s.
Null Island is L0L0
If one is doing geocoding with GPS and WGS84, the Library of Congress describes 0°N 0°E as
"a curious blend of real and imaginary geography, of mathematical certainty and pure fantasy"
The more ephemeral aspect of the location, referred to by some as Null Island, is uhh mapped in the Library of Congress link above. Please click? It is a great image!
Further details, for the VERY curious, are available elsewhere:
"Null Island is an ephemeral geography, a foggy ship of state sailing thru autumn mists, surrounded by sirens and map cherubs. Null geocodes, welcome home."
Latitude 0, longitude 0 is also the Land of L0L0! In another, Second Life, 0, 0 was the Land of LOL for me.
F-16 with bomb at Bagram
A GBU-54 is a really heavy precision-guided bomb. It uses both GPS and laser to find its target. Moving targets are challenging, and the GBU-54's "dual" guidance system improves accuracy.
In the photo below, a GBU-54 is mounted under the wing of an F-16 at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. I hope Joe Biden didn't leave it behind for the Taliban following our disastrous departure from Kabul in September 2021.
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| Courtesy U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Christopher Boitz |
I am curious whether those are two GBU-54s or one. If just one, does the smaller, oval-shaped thing next to it help launch it, or provide fuel for travel to its target?
I think it is just one bomb, not two, because both objects have visible part numbers that start with "BJ21". I would really like to see more of the mechanism to secure the bomb under the wing, and how it releases!
Thank you for your attention...
A few days ago, I saw a great meme thing on the Twitter X. It was a GBU-54 just like this one, hanging on the wing of an F-16. On the side was written, "Thank you for your attention to this matter". I can't find it now. This is the best I could do.
Peace through strength works.
— Dustin Grage (@GrageDustin) July 3, 2025
Thank you for your attention to this matter. https://t.co/OkjMKOvsIS pic.twitter.com/QrCbYvlJQs
That seems to be Donald Trump's new favorite phrase. I have read it frequently during the past few weeks, as part of his Truth Social and other communiques, especially with Iran and Israel, and the bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities in June 2025.
