America's super bomber squadron

The stealth bombers require special hangars

By Nick Childs BBC Pentagon correspondent

It looks out of this world - and its price tag certainly is.

The critics of the darkly sinister, bat-wing B-2 stealth bomber said that, at $2bn per plane, it was too expensive to use.

Worth its weight in gold

Captain 'Zulu'

But, with its radar-cheating shape, it has evaded them - and its enemies on the battlefield - through its ability virtually to disappear.

It led the bombing campaigns in Kosovo and Afghanistan and, if there is to be a military showdown with Iraq, it will lead the charge again.

The BBC had a rare opportunity to visit the beast in its lair, at the vast, secretive Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.

The US Air Force has just 21 of the planes, but the pilots who fly them believe they have transformed the air force's bombing capability.

The B-2 is operated by the 509th Bomb Wing, a unit created in World War II to fly the missions to drop the atomic bombs on Japan.

The B-2 itself was designed for a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union but it has found a new role in the post-Cold War world.

The mantra of the 509th is PPRS: Precision, Payload, Range and Stealth. Only the B-2, its flyers say, has all these attributes combined.

Kicking the door down

As we arrived at the base, the air crews were preparing for an intensive programme to simulate flying 50 missions in a week. That is almost as many missions as the bombers flew in Kosovo and Afghanistan combined.

The B-2 is the big brother of the F-117 stealth fighter, which was one of the stars of the 1991 Gulf War, but whereas that is stealthy and carries two laser-guided 2,000lb bombs, the B-2

• is built with stealth technology
• can carry 16 satellite-guided bombs known as Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), each of which can be aimed at a separate target
• can reach anywhere in the world from its base in Missouri.

For security reasons, we were asked to identify the pilots only by their call signs. Captain "Zulu" explained that destroying a target in the old days meant risking large numbers of aircrew.

"Now we're thinking in terms of how many targets can this one plane handle, and that shift right there is worth its weight in gold," he said.

Major "Pita", another pilot, explains that the B-2's job, because of its stealth, is to go in first against the heaviest enemy defences:

"We kick the door down. We'll target the integrated air defences, the command structures, early warning systems, everything that'll make it easier for the rest of the planes to come in afterwards and do their job."

So far, the B-2 has flown combat missions only from Missouri. Its main drawback is that it is slow. One round trip to Afghanistan took a record-breaking 44 hours and stretched the crew to its limit.

That may be about to change.

Ready to fight

The 509th is looking to deploy B-2s forward, to three locations - RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, the British Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia and Guam, and it is preparing special temporary shelters needed to protect the B-2's delicate radar-absorbing skin.

Diego Garcia is tipped as a base for an Iraq campaign

That would bring the plane closer to potential targets, allowing it to deliver more firepower much more often - a capability that could come in to play over Iraq.

Given that the B-2 would be in the first wave of any attack on Iraq, what do the air crews think of all the speculation about a possible confrontation?

"We haven't buried our head in the ground," says Captain Zulu.

"As part of the military, I'm certainly aware of current events. I explain to my family and friends that, to me, no professional soldier wants to go to war. But if his country asks him to, or he's tasked to do so, no warrior wants to be left behind. And I think that's how most of us feel here."

In the meantime, the exercising goes on, with ground crews practising loading not only JDAMs, but 5,000lb "bunker-busters", also described by the crews as the "crowd-pleaser".

And the B-2 can carry eight of those.