Beautiful B-2 Spirit and not-so-beautiful DoD testimony

Let's look at pictures first, before getting into the nitty gritty of U.S. Air Force plane contracts and costs.

Putting a B-2 through its paces at 90 degrees latitude

This is a beautiful photo of a beautiful B-2 Spirit near the North Pole.

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 capability in all environments...

The North Pole coordinates of L0, L90 are one rotation away from the Land of LOLs, or rather L0L0.... 

F-16 with bomb at Bagram

A GBU-54 is a 500-pound 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.

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 maybe provide fuel for it to 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 how the mechanism to secure the bomb under the wing works! 

*I saw a great meme thing a few days ago, with a BJ21 that had "Thank you for your attention to this matter" in acknowledgement of Donald Trump's new favorite phrase during communiques with Iran and Israel, regarding the bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities in June 2025.

B-2s can deliver both conventional and nuclear missiles.

A very big flying wing!

The B-2 has a two-man crew, yet the aircraft is so large! It is much bigger than the two F-16s on the right and an F-18 on the left, in the image below.

Landing field at Anderson AFB in Guam

I like this next photo too. It really gives a sense of the size of a B-2, as an adult man walks the wing as part of routine maintenance.

Time to switch to the more serious part of this post.

Fear and loathing at the Department of Defense

In May 2024, Congressman Matt Gaetz and one of his colleagues questioned former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austen about serious cost and reliability problems with the F-35.

Two of the most salient issues were cost control and conflict of interest. Let's start with a video excerpt.

Budget overruns and moral hazard

Only the grossest sort of corruption or lack of understanding would result in a manufacturer being responsible for performance testing of its own products. This is especially true when the product is an F-35. Each one costs about $100 million. Only 29% of the current fleet of F-35s are "mission capable", i.e. usable. Lockheed-Martin makes the planes. Lockheed-Martin also is responsible for reliability testing them. One would think it was time to find a different, more independent performance tester. 

Given the combination of massive cost ($1 trillion) and massive budget overruns (an additional $700 billion) for the F-35 (and that over 70% of the planes are so unreliable that they cannot be used), is there any way of salvaging this disaster? The sunk cost fallacy always applies, but some sort of lesson should be learned from the debacle. Given Lloyd Austen's demeanor during questioning, I'm not sure that anything was learned! Too bad that representatives from the contractor weren't present. 

Matt Gaetz wasn't my first choice for attorney general, but he did seem to be a good Congressman, and did his job well here. The Dept of Defense should have better internal controls, including a better utilized OIG (Inspector General) to act as deterrence for mismanagement.

*Not sure why the still shot for the above video is so awful. Matt's teeth look normal once it starts playing!