B-2 stealth bomber. (Photo : USAF)
New and upgraded nuclear weapons will soon arm the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit strategic stealth bomber, extending the bomber's usefulness until the 2060s at least.
Introduced in service with the U.S. Air Force in 1997, the B-2 will also receive the most modern and smartest conventional missiles in the Air Force inventory. The effective delivery of these weapons will be the task of the new Defensive Management System (DMS) that informs the two-man flight crew of the location of enemy air defenses. DMS is capable of automatically assessing the detection capabilities of identified threats and indicated targets.
The upgraded nuclear weapons, however, will ensure the viability of the B-2 as a lethal strategic deterrent.
One of these nukes is the B61 intermediate-yield strategic and tactical nuclear weapon. It's a "variable yield bomb" with a yield ranging from 0.3 to 340 kilotons. The bomb is 3.56 meters long and weighs some 320 kilograms. It can be dropped at a speed of Mach 2 or 2,500 km/h.
The little known B61 is an air dropped gravity bomb, and one of only a few in the U.S. arsenal. The U.S. has produced 3,155 of these nuclear bombs since 1968. Of this total, some 200 are operational within the United States while 180 are deployed to NATO in Europe.
A life-extension program for the B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb (the latest version) will see this "dumb nuclear bomb" transformed into a smart nuclear bomb whose accuracy should rival bombs equipped with Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) GPS guidance kits.
With the addition of a guided tail kit assembly, a smart B61-12 will have an accuracy, expressed in CEP (Circular Error Probability), of some 30 meters, which is far better than the CEP of 100 meters in its dumb bomb mode.
The life extension program (LEP) for the B61-12 (or the B61 Mod 12), including the JDAM-like guided tail kit assembly, should come to $9.5 million, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). NNSA is a semi-autonomous department within the Department of Energy.
NNSA said the B61-12 LEP "is the most complex B61-12 activity the nuclear security enterprise has undertaken in more than 20 years."
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said modernizing the B61 is part of the expensive and wide-ranging upgrades required to modernize the U.S. nuclear triad.
Another new nuclear weapon for the B-2 will be the Long Range Stand-Off Missile or LRSO, an air-launched, nuclear cruise missile designed for America's strategic bomber fleet that includes the B-2, the B-52 and the Rockwell B-1 Lancer. LRSO will replace the AGM-86 Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM) which is only carried by the B-52 bomber.
