B - 2:

The The Spirit Spirit of Innovation of B-2: The Spirit of Innovation

Rebecca Grant Rebecca Grant

Air Force No Objection, 88ABW-2013-2250, 9 May 2013; NGAS 13-0405

B-2: The Spirit of Innovation

Rebecca Grant

i

B-2: The Spirit of Innovation Table of Contents

Foreword ...... pg. v

Chapter One: Cones, Drones, and Low Observables ... pg. 1

Chapter Two: Two Horses in the Race ...... pg. 7

Chapter Three: Cruise Missiles and Tacit Blue ...... pg. 15

Chapter Four: A Bomber? ...... pg. 23

Chapter Five: Another Horse Race ...... pg. 33

Chapter Six: Risk Closure ...... pg. 43

Chapter Seven: “My Airplane Blew Up On Me”...... pg. 55

Chapter Eight: A Miracle a Day ...... pg. 63

Chapter Nine: Slip and Recovery ...... pg. 73

Chapter Ten: Success ...... pg. 83

Endnotes ...... pg. 93

III iv FOREWORD

ook skyward, and wonder. Wilbur and Orville Wright wondered if they could fathom the secrets of birds Lin flight. Every aerospace pioneer since – and every individual who has helped them – channels that very human curiosity and wonder into a desire to innovate. The lucky ones get to do it with brilliant iconoclasts, tough managers, and skilled teams, and the very most fortunate see their flashes of insight take flight. Left and below: Wilbur and Orville Wright perform early test For ten years, from 1979 to 1989, flights with two of their flying machines at Kitty Hawk the development of the B-2 was circa 1910. kept secret. Inside that black world, Opposite: The B-2 Spirit Stealth thousands of people worked their Bomber soars into the blue. wonder creating a stealth bomber unlike anything the aerospace world had ever seen. “The B-2 evolved from that very first question,” said one engineer. “What can you do in the design of an airplane when the only priority was to carry a man and be as small as possible in all the characteristic observables?”1 Observables . . . through radar, infrared, and the naked eye, tracking bombers had gotten easier and easier since the first integrated Could the return of radar from use of radar in World War II. a combat aircraft be measured Surface-to-air missiles and ground- and controlled to let an aircraft controlled Soviet fighters were close steal through the world’s most to locking up the borders of the formidable networks ? Soviet Union. If a bomber could not penetrate, deterrence weakened. Engineers wondered: if an under- standing of the phenomenology of radar could help improve tracking, was there a way to turn the tables?

v CHAPTER ONE

vi

Chapter One: Cones, Drones, and Low Observables

ngineers had been thinking about how to counter airborne tracking radar practically since its invention. EDuring World War II, British engineers theorized about creating a plasma field around an aircraft to obscure its radar return. If they could find a material with the right electrical properties, it could disrupt normal radar return at certain frequencies.

With the war against Germany That same year, NATO intelligence raging, the British settled for a much picked up reports of Soviet deploy- quicker fix called “Window,” strips ment of the SA-2. Its radar-guided Opposite: Remnants of a World of foil dropped from bombers to missile moved at Mach 3.5 to heights War II era radar station. create a cloud of chaff and white of 60,000 feet and distances out to Below (top): British bombers drop out German radar. Window was about 20 miles. Tracking came from clouds of foil chaff to white-out German radar; such a secret technology that the gathering information about the (bottom): Soviet SA-2 radar- RAF kept it under wraps for more timing and angle of reflected radar guided missile. than a year, until the summer waves. of 1943, even as their bomber crews suffered tremendous losses. Commanders feared that just one use of Window would lead the Germans to exploit and counter it. When the RAF finally took it into combat, chaff worked wonders. Nothing came of the first inklings of designing an aircraft to minimize its radar return. But the idea lingered. In 1953, Air Force specifications for a potential new reconnaissance aircraft included the stipulation that “consideration will be given in the design of the vehicle to minimizing the detectability to enemy radar.”2

1 CHAPTER ONE

Right and background: Pyotr How would future aircraft survive? the research Ufimtsev holding his book that truly unleashed the stealth Although it was a sideline, research in 1962. His revolution. in the 1950s and 1960s probed discussion of

Below: The inherently stealthy at low observables for shaping James Clerk and survivable SR-71. Minuteman missile warheads and Maxwell’s cruise missiles like Snark and equations as a Hound Dog. basis for pre- As far as anyone knew, there was dicting how still no way to apply the low observ- a geometric able benefits of a sphere to a combat shape would aircraft. reflect elec- tromagnetic Under Kelly Johnson’s leadership, waves was the Mach 3 SR-71 program tried the path to a breakthrough for stealth out a few of the principles of stealth. aircraft. Because the SR-71 development was so highly classified, few knew What Ufimtsev realized was that how far Lockheed had gone in radar waves, a notch farther down exploring the potential of stealth. the electromagnetic spectrum, would behave the same way as The engineering of the day lacked optical light. Ufimtsev’s insight principles for how was to apply the principle to to measure and con- calculate the sum of the radar trol the total sum of cross sections of different geo- an aircraft’s radar metric shapes. Fortunately, it reflectivity. The best was a snooze for the Soviet Union’s they could do with censors. After all, Maxwell had radar return was died in 1879. to soak some of it up with absorbent The Soviet Union saw no national material. What they security value in the paper and it couldn’t do, yet, was was cleared for publication. to control the waves. DRONES Part of the answer was lying in What first convinced the U.S. stacks of foreign technical litera- government to push stealth forward ture, waiting to be translated by the was not research by the Russians Air Force Institute of Technology. but a strange test result with The document in question was a a miniature drone on a range report titled Method of Edge Waves in Florida. in the Physical Theory of Diffraction. The Defense Advanced Research The author was Russian physicist Projects Agency (DARPA) ran Pyotr Ufimtsev. He’d first published several experiments with miniature

2 CONES, DRONES AND LOW OBSERVABLES

remotely-piloted vehicles or RPVs – Florida where operators set up a today’s equivalent of small, tactical test against the miniature drones. unmanned aerial vehicles. One mini- The big gun spat shells at the mini- RPV, made by McDonnell Douglas, RPV as it flew down the range, surprised operators with its small trying to track and engage the little radar cross section in tests at the drone by radar. Due to its size and company’s Grey Butte Microwave shape, the drone was just too small Measurement Facility range in the to reflect back enough radar energy Mojave Desert in California. for the ZSU-23 to guide its guns. The RPV data suggested that flying “The radar could not guide the gun objects with smaller radar cross accurately and the gun never hit the sections could work around the airplane,” recalled John Cashen, Soviet defensive systems. In 1973, who would soon find himself the Defense Advanced Research designing the B-2. Finally, the test Projects Agency, the Pentagon’s idea crew manning the gun had to resort factory, was impressed enough to to optical tracking. take the mini-RPV to Eglin AFB for It was a revelation. Cashen, who Left: ZSU-23/4 tracked vehicle. a bigger test against the ZSU-23. learned of the tests later, described First fielded in 1965, this formid- Above: An RPV similar to that the impact. “This was the first used in tests against the ZSU-23. able self-propelled air defense evidence, at least to DARPA, that gun quickly became the scourge you could beat a Soviet anti-aircraft of pilots because it could take on system with a reduced radar cross aircraft at low altitudes. Pilots could section,” Cashen said. “Everybody not fly low enough to get under understood based on the ZSU-23 the detection radar for SAMs if test that if you could reduce the range of first radar detection, then air defense radars searching for incoming objects would not detect and track a low observable aircraft until much later than the radar designers intended. “On top of that, it would also affect the in-close tracking, even if it was not by radar,” Cashen added. Skewing close-in tracking would ZSU-23s were with the front- interfere with higher-frequency fire line forces. They were so popular control radar. Put those elements that the Soviet Union eventually together, and an object with a small exported 2,500 of them. RCS could, in theory, get close One ZSU-23 in particular found enough to render Soviet air defense its way to the Eglin test range in systems ineffective.

3 CHAPTER ONE

Low observables and drones were achieving low were worth a try observables – could a stealth com- to confound the bat aircraft be the answer? ever-increasing At DARPA, Ken Perko had already Soviet air defenses. set out to ask that question in By the early 1970s, December 1974. Perko had been the situation was recruited by Kent Kresa , who was bleak. Even the head of the Tactical Technology SR-71 was no lon- Office, to help build up research ger entirely safe. on tactical air- The SA-5 debuted craft for the Above: Soviet SA-5 missile. in 1967 with a range of about 37 miles government’s Right: Kent Kresa and a ceiling up to 105,000 feet. In innovative bu- Below (left to right): F-5, F/A-18, Vietnam, a new array of Soviet- reau. The mini- A-10 aircraft. made SAMs bagged U.S. fixed- RPV and other wing aircraft and helicopters unmanned by the hundreds. The 1973 Yom vehicle tests Kippur war showed how effective a indicated to Perko that there might mix of integrated, surface-to-air be some promising technology at missile systems could be. Soviet- hand. The only way to find out was built systems claimed up to 100 to ask. Israeli aircraft in about two weeks “We got a Telex from DARPA of war. The Egyptian and Arab asking what Northrop would coalition losses were four times propose for a design driven by higher, but the war was another low observables,” recalled demonstration of how much trouble Cashen. Soviet-made air defenses could cause for tactical aircraft. The request from Perko asked two questions. What were the signature Many in the Pentagon were eager thresholds that an air vehicle would for more innovative research on have to achieve to be essentially future aircraft survivability. Cones

4 CONES, DRONES AND LOW OBSERVABLES

undetectable at an operationally Since the mid-1960s, the Air Force useful range? And what were the and Army had paid a handful of capabilities of each company to Northrop engineers to evaluate the design and build an aircraft with radar cross section of ordinary types the necessary signatures? of aircraft as part of a larger interest “Industry didn’t propose any of this. in improving defenses. Among the It was truly a government-instigated group’s long-time members were question to industry: could you do S. Stanley Locus, Fred K. Oshiro, it?” said Cashen. Hugh C. Heath, Moe Star, J. Randall Coleman, and Kenneth M. Mitzner. Northrop made the list because John Cashen then joined as a radar it was manufacturing the F-5, a expert from Hughes. Their task was popular export fighter. The company not exotic. But it developed over had lost out on competitions for time a deep reservoir of expertise what became the A-10, and the in the techniques for measuring Navy’s F/A-18 Hornet. It was and calculating RCS. From this craving future work to complement group would come many of the key the steady flow generated by the insights on how to design a stealth F-5 international sales. aircraft. DARPA sent Perko’s request to all “We knew that it was the laws the companies they could think of physics that caused radar to of which made fighters. For some be invented in the first place,” reason, they skipped Lockheed. said Tom Jones, the dynamic CEO It was a huge oversight. Someone of Northrop. By the same token, had finally read Ufimtsev’s paper understanding those phenomena as translated by the Air Force, and could lead to the defeat of radar it was a thirty-something engineer tracking and enhance the survival keenly interested in low observables. rates of aircraft. He realized that by treating an Preliminary studies by Grumman, aircraft as a group of geometric Above (top to bottom): McDonnell-Douglas and Northrop Denys Overholser, John Cashen, shapes, each with its own radar- were followed by full concept Tom Jones. reflecting properties, it might be white papers commissioned from possible to tally up the radar cross McDonnell-Douglas, Northrop and section of the aircraft as a whole. In Hughes, which was selected for its fact, the young engineer believed radar expertise.3 he could write a computer program for designing a stealth aircraft. It DARPA accepted the proposals was Lockheed’s Denys Overholser. from both McDonnell Douglas and Northrop. In the end, Lockheed’s The advanced design team at Ben Rich got into the program, Northrop knew nothing of this. too, by gaining permission to tell Their approach to stealth came from DARPA more about the SR-71 a different lineage of low observable techniques. The race for stealth was research. on. 5 CHAPTER TWO

6

Chapter Two: Two Horses in the Race

ockheed and Northrop were both selected to work on Opposite (top): Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit on the demonstrators in the fall of 1975. The program was tarmac at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam; (bottom): Lockheed judiciously named the Experimental Survivable Testbed Martin F-117 Stealth Fighter. L Below, left: Early Lockheed XST (XST). Wedding survivability with aerodynamics was the first conceptual sketches showing design based on strict geometric test. No one really knew whether it would be a fighter, bomber shapes. or reconnaissance vehicle.

Over the next five years, the craft with a surface consisting of advanced design teams at Lockheed flat plates, the Lockheed team could and Northrop would transform precisely estimate the radar cross stealth from a slap-on, modifica- section of its demonstrator. tion technology to a revolutionary The Northrop approach was dif- approach to combat aircraft design. ferent from the outset. Its core was While there were two horses in the built around the deep experience race, Lockheed had a more mature and insights of a handful of radar technical stable. Their genius lay cross section experts that for years in being able to design an aircraft had honed techniques for pre- whose outer surface was a series dicting RCS of ordinary aircraft. of strict geometric shapes. Flat However, as 1974 ended, most planes, triangles and parallelograms of those contracts had lapsed. defined what would become known Northrop had all but decided as Have Blue. By designing an air- not to invest any more money in it. The RCS experts were dispersing to other jobs in the company. John Cashen had been hired into the group as it was getting ready to pack up. He was told to forget his electromagnetics background and concentrate on avionics integration. Perko’s telex rattled in to this sleepy environment.

7 CHAPTER TWO

Northrop saw an opportunity cated, controlled approach march- and leapt at it. George Urquhart ing ahead at Lockheed. The became the first manager Lockheed team stayed away from while Mo Hesse oversaw the any design features that could not XST proposal work. Most of be predicted in the Overholser the team were part-timers with computer. Northrop did not have Cashen working IR, visual and Lockheed’s computer model, and it acoustic and the brilliant Stan both penalized and liberated them. Locus, a Manhattan project alum- Below: The Northrop XST faceted “Computers in those days could not design with flat bottom. nus, handling the radar cross do anything more than put facets section. together. We knew that,” explained All the ingredients would not add Cashen. “We knew more about up to a win on the XST. But in the predicting radar cross section of process, the Northrop advanced three-dimensional shapes than design team would be building a anybody in the world because of foundation for the B-2. the Air Force contracts experience.” Early Northrop designs for XST The Northrop RCS experts knew were “100% faceted, and flat- the limitation of RCS prediction bottomed,” noted Cashen. However, with the computers of the day. the group soon began discussing Mercurial and aggressive, Locus another way to achieve low and Cashen simply pushed observables through curvature. beyond it. Since they did not Cashen believed that “you could have confidence in summing the make an airplane look like a re-entry predictions mathematically, the vehicle.” Radar cross section was Northrop method on XST was to not size-driven. To be sure, there rely on modeling and testing was a size factor, but it was small. to validate their highly-refined Stealth design in those days was a instincts. process of drawings, clay models Cashen and Locus soon came to and shop work on wooden models. believe that curvature would not Promising designs were driven out degrade the radar cross section. for night-time testing at Grey Butte, In fact, it might produce even the only range with the sensitivity better range results. “I could see to assess the very low signature lev- the waves,” said Cashen. Locus els sought in the competition. None saw it that way too, and the whole of it was highly classified as yet. group concurred. “We didn’t need a “It was the most creative period,” computer program to tell us what recalled Cashen. “We were drawing the RCS could be. That was the an airplane and before you know it, difference between Northrop and curvature started to come in.” Lockheed,” as Cashen put it. The Northrop team was branching off significantly from the sophisti- 8 TWO HORSES IN THE RACE

Curvature also made good aero- tum and pace of the work. With dynamic sense. “For one thing, we so many part-timers due to the were trying to make an airplane minimal budget, the data review that could fly,” acknowledged accelerated the pace and gave the Cashen. The Northrop team elected best results. not to depend on a fly-by-wire “That’s how Northrop’s airplanes system because they felt it would were created. Not with some cost too much. Therefore, the computer code,” said Cashen. design had to be stealthy and THE STALKING HORSE aerodynamic. Drag and stability Above: The Norhtrop XST going problems drove the small team to In August 1975, Perko issued a on the pole for RCS testing. try to add curvature. formal request for proposal. Perko’s Below: Welko Gasich Measuring RCS was one thing, criteria insisted the airplane be but the key to designing a stealth flyable as judged by wind tunnel aircraft was reducing RCS. The testing. But he also made clear fundamental insight was that the that victory would go to the team aircraft could be less than the sum with the lowest radar cross section of its parts. “If you deal with each reduction, based on evaluation local phenomenon, you can make criteria set by DARPA. a very large object very small on Northrop plunged in with a new radar,” Cashen said.4 contract and the guidance of Welko Gasich, who had run the F-5 “These guys were brilliant,” said program. Thrilled as the Northrop Cashen, and Locus the most team was with their exciting brilliant of all. They talked through progress, it was Lockheed that curvature consequences and back- held the high cards. Their work on scatter. “Stan would put it all the SR-71 and their modeling put together on the model, take it to the them so far ahead as to make range, and by God, it worked.” Northrop “almost a stalking horse,” By early May, Northrop had its as Cashen termed it. first results when Stan Locus returned from testing models on The two rivals kept their work the Grey Butte range. The radar completely separated by alternating cross section engineers gathered time on the range. They got a chance around the light table to exam- to size up each other’s different ine the data. “We were amazed,” approaches when they had to agree said Cashen. on the design of a pole for range testing – and split the costs, since Spurred by the possibilities, the XST the government declined to pay for design team shifted into high gear, it. Northrop wanted to build a pole working after hours all through the with curves; Lockheed preferred summer of 1975. facets covered with radar absor- Engaging in almost daily peer bent material (RAM). review of data kept up the momen- 9 CHAPTER TWO

The role of RAM was another big That was the theory – the proof distinction. The Northrop design came on the range at Grey Butte. philosophy for this very first low Radar waves were not vaporized, observable aircraft competition was but organized. Sometimes they to use RAM only where needed. popped off the aircraft in unex- That was just as well, for Northrop pected ways. RCS testing on the was literally buying RAM commer- range quickly revealed that they cially from a catalogue. “What we would have to work harder to deal found with the commercial-grade with phenomena such as traveling stuff was the RAM itself created waves. According to Cashen, the radar cross section,” said Cashen. phenomena of travelling waves had Below: Various forms of RAM. In contrast, Lockheed fabricated their been seen on the SRAM missile, but Lower right: A version of the symmetric SRAM missile in flight. own, benefitting again from the SRAM was symmetric. With their experience of their SR-71 work. XST design, they found “that in However, the most significant dif- flush, edge-dominated designs, the ference between Lockheed and same phenomenon occurred on the Northrop centered on the radar edges.” cross section design trades Edge waves occurred when the chosen by each contender. radar wave encountered an edge and Perko’s criteria for the began a loosely-coupled traveling XST competition called for along the edge. As the wave went measuring the radar cross down the edge, controlling RCS section reduction by quad- depended on catching and directing rants. its energy. Northrop put top priority on reduc- “Two things will happen,” said ing the nose-on RCS, and second Cashen. “It’s going to reflect back, priority on reducing the tail. This or it’s going to radiate off. When design, like others to come, sought you have a sharp edge, most of it’s to achieve what the Northrop team going to reflect.” called the “basic minimum,” a XST had a sharp nose. The so- reduction of radar return all lution was to put RAM on the around the aircraft. The basic mini- mum used design to pull the wildly reflecting radar energy of an ordinary aircraft into a smaller signature. It shrank return, then herded the radar return into very thin, controlled spikes of energy that would be reflected at the side of the aircraft, where they were less significant to enemy radar.

10 TWO HORSES IN THE RACE

reflecting point, then catch the wave coming the other way. “We shed it at the other end and we killed the edge wave beautifully that way,” Cashen explained. “It was invention. Simple as that.” The happy result was an XST design with decent ability to control RCS at low frequencies. On this criterion at least, Cashen thought they might have done a better job than the Lockheed demonstrator. “We beat them at low frequency by tens of That night, after the formal pre- Above: Irv Waaland ID photo, and at the B-2 rollout ceremony. dBs because they didn’t pay any sentations, both teams met for a attention to it,” he later judged. small party at Ken Perko’s home. However, signature reduction at It was a tense gathering. The low frequency was not a dominant next day, DARPA announced that criterion at the time, and the Lockheed had won and would go Lockheed team had done a better on to build the F-117. job at fulfilling the criteria set by The Northrop signature reduction DARPA and the Air Force. was not what DARPA wanted. While Top members from both teams flew nose-on reduction was achieved, back to Washington, D.C. to debrief the rear aspect low observabil- their results. Cashen remembered ity just wasn’t low enough. The the briefing well. Northrop’s dele- butterfly shape of the controlled gation included aircraft design return carried too big a penalty engineer Irv Waaland, along with under the quadrant criteria used Cashen and their boss Mo Hesse. to compare the signatures of the Theirs was the second appointment, two demonstrators. The Lockheed and the body language didn’t look shape had reduced signature good. across a 90 degree sweep on the “Waaland, myself and Mo Hesse rear quadrant. Northrop’s signature were walking in to the conference reduction began to bulge after 70 room as Kelly Johnson, Overholser degrees. To top it off, “that last 10 and the Lockheed side were walk- degrees held a big spike,” admitted ing out,” he said. The Lockheed Cashen. “The term was “big-ass.” demonstrator model was in a closed box Kelly Johnson carried under his arm.

11 CHAPTER TWO

In the simplest terms, the aero- The total signature for the Lockheed dynamic design features of the XST demonstrator was lower, pure and constrained signature reduction. simple. “When they added all the A major limitation for Northrop numbers up, Lockheed got an A+,” Above (left): The evolution of Lockheed’s design from the was their decision not to rely on Cashen said later. “hopeless diamond” to Have Blue; fly-by-wire flight controls. Confident (center): the details of the pure But losing the XST did not take diamond shape; (right): The Have that nose-on signature mattered Northrop out of the stealth game. Blue design being tested. Note most, the designers achieved a good the vertical tails canted inward, compared to the F-117 outward radar cross section reduction across canted design. the front from a swept leading edge. The Northrop XST aerodynamic design clashed with radar cross section reduction requirements at the trailing edge. With fly-by-wire Lockheed could control the swept, diamond shape of its demonstrator. As a result, “they had a great deal more flexibility in what they did,” said Cashen. It paid off in better signature reduction. By the time the Northrop team realized their design was running a risk given the DARPA preference, it was too late. Northrop would have had to scrap the XST model and retrace their steps to include fly-by-wire in order to bring down the rear-aspect RCS. However, their design was already being built to go on the pole. There was no time to start over.

12 TWO HORSES IN THE RACE

The head-to-head competition between teams from Northrop and Lockheed to develop an Experimental Survivable Testbed (XST) led both to significant technological breakthroughs that would later make the B-2 Stealth Bomber and F-117 Fighter a reality.

13 CHAPTER THREE

14

Chapter Three: Cruise Missiles and Tacit Blue

om Jones got a mysterious telephone call not long after Opposite: Northrop’s Tacit Blue experimental airborne command Northrop’s advanced design team lost the XST duel. platform.

Dr. William Perry was serving as Director, Defense Below: Advanced design work flowed into the Air Force’s T development of the AGM-129A Research and Engineering, at the Pentagon. Perry called Advanced cruise missile. Jones to encourage the Northrop chief to bid on whatever low observables projects came Northrop’s way. For years, Jones told no one of the call. But the RCS coterie on the advanced design team would soon find they had a steadfast, if not cagey, ally in Jones.

Back at DARPA, the Northrop This development was special. proposal for XST had excited a Coming after the XST experience, lot of interest. The stalking horse this gave the advanced design team had shown itself to be a real conten- a chance for in-depth research that der with an innovative approach. led to conceptual breakthroughs in However, the stealth fighter down- the understanding of edge waves, select left Northrop without a for example. Cashen felt that it program to keep its team engaged. was during this program that The first new work came in the Stan Locus, in particular, codified form of a program for a stealthy, principles of design for stealth intercontinental cruise missile, which that would see the light later flowed into the Air Force’s of day for Tacit Blue and development of the advanced cruise for the B-2. In a series missile (AGM-129). In 1976, it was a of memos, Locus worked study project. DARPA experience in out the understanding of low observables was incorporated how to treat edges in a into the design of the low-signature low observable design. engine inlet and nozzle. “He evaluated – without the computer – the basics Because the missile was an un- of scattering from edges,” said manned system, Northrop’s Ventura Cashen. division took the lead and borrowed several stealth experts loaned from the aircraft division in Hawthorne.

15 CHAPTER THREE

Analysis and a simplified under- consolidate airborne management standing of the physics led them of battlespace data. Like other to a startling conclusion. “If an ice stealth projects, Tacit Blue began cream cone was the perfect re- life under a different moniker. entry vehicle, then the thin flat plate It was first called BSAX, for was the perfect airplane,” summed Battlefield Surveillance Aircraft – up Cashen. Experimental. The specific role for It would be a few years before they BSAX was to collect precise threat realized how valuable that insight and targeting data and relay it to was. bombers and fighters. The aircraft itself would be unarmed. Meanwhile, the customer changed course. With Lockheed busy turn- By any name it was “a whole ing the XST into Have Blue and the different push on stealth,” as Kresa F-117, the best place to continue described it. “We went under contract in April Right: Lockheed’s Have Blue experimental stealth aircraft 1978 to build an LO bird with a was the next evolutionary radar ,” Waaland said. “Unlike XST, step from their XST Program. it was going to be all aspect stealth,” Below (left): T-16 Assault Waaland added. Breaker missile releasing multiple explosive charges The reason why the radar and designed to kill clusters of tanks; (right) T-22 Assault the all-aspect signature were so Breaker. stealth development along different important became evident when lines was at Northrop. the Northrop team was briefed on “Perry said get them into the game,” the concept of operations. Kent Kresa recalled. A Northrop BSAX was to fit in with a larger team travelled back to Washington operational concept known as to hear specifics on a new Pentagon Assault Breaker. This DARPA- idea for a stealthy, battlefield control led concept envisioned launch- aircraft later known to all as Tacit ing missiles to kill clusters of Blue, or the Whale. tanks in Soviet echelons without If there was ever an aircraft driven resorting to nuclear weapons. by an operational concept, it was Cashen described it as “a way for Tacit Blue. Pictures released publicly in 1996 showed a butter dish with stubby wings and cockpit reminis- cent of the front of a VW bus. It looked like it probably couldn’t fly – but it did – 132 flights in fact. The idea for Tacit Blue sprang from a growing desire in the 1970s to

16 CRUISE MISSILES AND TACIT BLUE

U.S. technology to What Tacit Blue be- Left: The Tacit Blue performed beyond many people’s defeat the over- came, however, was expectations and flew 132 test whelming superior- the crucial conceptual flights. ity of Warsaw Pact bridge from rolling Below: Drawing a crowd outside armor by using the dice on XST to it’s hangar at the Air Force Museum, Wright-Patterson AFB. precision-guided preparing the con- weapons.” Missiles cepts for the B-2 launched from the bomber. air or ground would The unique require- be controlled by ments ensured that command guidance Tacit Blue would start from the radar making key contri- aircraft in the mid-course of their butions to the B-2 well before the flight, then switch to terminal guid- Whale itself ever flew. Four stood ance to strike individual vehicles out – radar, spikes, curves, and (the radar concept was developed low frequency. under the Pave Mover program and eventually became J-STARS). Radar was a major threshold. Incorporating a powerful radar BSAX – Tacit Blue – was supposed and its antennae into a stealth to be that airborne command aircraft was a new frontier. platform. As a command ship, it had Tacit Blue would be the first stealth to be as close to the forward edge aircraft to carry a massive low- of the battle as possible without probability of intercept radar, getting shot down. That, of course, which was the core of its mission put it smack in range for everything system. from the SA-6 to the ZSU-23. Northrop paired up with Hughes. Stealth was the only way to make “We convinced ourselves, and there- the concept work. This time, there fore DARPA, that a low probability would be no butterfly shapes as with XST. The platform had to be low observable from all aspects – 360 degrees around. At first, the new program really meant a chance for Cashen and other XST alumni to keep building their skills on the advanced design team. The Pentagon was placing another bet on nurturing the stealth design base. “It was pioneering work. Every day was a discovery,” said Cashen.5

17 CHAPTER THREE

Right: The Tacit Blue’s gracefully tilted vertical stabilizers give it the distinctive “whale tail.” The aft deck design directly contributed to that on the future B-2.

of intercept radar would make confound the detection lobes of this airplane non-targetable,” said enemy radars. No matter where it Cashen. The issue was not making flew on its commandship orbit it it non-detectable, but controlling could ensure that only brief spikes radar returns to give the platform a of signature appeared, enough good chance of surviving near the to whet the appetites of enemy battle’s edge. ground controllers but not enough Basically, the designers were taking for them to build a good track. a low probability of intercept radar The third, and most famous, of and wrapping a stealth airplane Tacit Blue’s innovations: the per- around it. The team “needed a box fection of the rounded shapes. with enough dimension to house the Tacit Blue was the program where mechanically-scanned fixed phase all the curves began. array antenna” and to be covered Facets were not working. “We with a band-pass radome to shield knew we had to incline the walls,” it. At 35,000 feet there wouldn’t be Cashen said. At one point the much threat from above. Unlike DARPA managers grew so con- XST, the front and rear aspects cerned about the obstacles Northrop were not top priorities. This aircraft was encountering that they asked would be far more vulnerable in ex- Lockheed to take a look at some posing its sides all the time while different shapes for the battlefield orbiting around the battlespace plane. They also cracked down on and guiding all those missiles. Northrop, forcing them to evaluate Thinking through the tactics helped an alternate design if they wanted them settle on the concept of to keep going on the contract. spikes – the second big innovation. “They let it be known we should Instead of radiating in all directions, look at a flying wing,” said Cashen. the Tacit Blue aircraft would The XST team had started to reduce reflectivity to the basic understand the value of curva- minimum, then gather and control ture both for stealth and aero- the remainder in narrow spikes to

18 CRUISE MISSILES AND TACIT BLUE

dynamic benefits and work on Tacit Blue eventually added stubby the advanced cruise missile wings and gracefully tilted vertical carried it forward. The challenge stabilizers. From the back and sides, of embedding a big antenna in Tacit Blue foreshadowed some of the Tacit Blue made the issue critical. shapes and angles of stealth aircraft Then the problem was solved one yet to come like the F-22 and F-35 night at Disneyland. fighters. “If you’ve got to have tails, butterfly is the best thing,” Cashen Brainstorming for aircraft designers shrugged. in those days involved a lot of modeling clay. In these last years The fourth memorable break- before computer-aided design, through concerned low frequency. clay was the quickest way to Previous programs concentrated transfer 3-D shapes out of the low observables work on the designer’s mind’s eye and into shorter wavelengths employed by something that could be modeled fire control radars. During the Tacit and tested. Blue program, designing for low frequency became a priority for the The Tacit Blue team was a little first time. “Tacit Blue did not start obsessed. One of the designers, with any low frequency. That was Fred Oshiro, was struggling to the thing that General Allen threw finish the front shape. He carried in,” explained Waaland, who was modeling clay with him when he took his children to Northrop night Above: Fred Oshiro. at Disneyland. Sitting on a bench, he pressed the clay into an unusual Left: The B-2 center body (below) was a direct descendant of the form, a steep sloping front section, Tacit Blue’s ingeniously-shaped flaring into a flat, sharp leading front end. edge. “He came up with this shape with a wide angle radius, just like the front of a Winnebago,” quipped Cashen. Oshiro came into work the next morning, put the clay on the bench and told the shop foreman to build the model. “That was Fred and his genius,” said Cashen. He just came up with it.” The body of Tacit Blue produced the needed RCS. Head on it was like a prototype for the B-2 center body.

19 CHAPTER THREE

referring to Air Force Chief of Staff flight tests ended in 1985, and the General Lew Allen. demonstrator then spent a decade Cruise missiles played a role again. hidden in a guarded hangar. What “They were doing tests of cruise worried those involved was the missiles out in the desert. All of fact that the aircraft could be a sudden they noticed you could picked up visually. The Air Force follow the thing straight in if you finally decided to retire it. They used a low frequency radar.” The declassified just enough about the wingspan of the cruise missile innovative airship to allow it to find matched the wavelength of the low a home in a museum and in the frequency radar and “it just lit up,” annals of stealth.

Above: Tejon desert test site. said Waaland. All that was in the future. At Northrop, the work on Tacit Blue Below: The cockpit of the Tacit Making Tacit Blue work at low Blue has been compared to the frequencies would turn out to be drew together a number of inno- cab of a Volkswagen microbus. an enormous breakthrough for the vations that paved the way for the B-2. Tacit Blue went on to successful B-2. Tacit Blue had a flush topside flight tests – although it was one of inlet, the first in the business. Its the least stable aircraft ever flown. broad curvature dominated Tacit Northrop had of course come Blue’s one of a kind design. Stare around to the necessity of fly-by- at the front cockpit and Tacit Blue’s wire for the exotic missile control shape is pure B-2. platform. “You can’t talk about the B-2 without In the end it achieved a tremen- talking about Tacit Blue,” summed dously low signature. Tacit Blue’s up Cashen.

20 CRUISE MISSILES AND TACIT BLUE

The Tacit Blue’s flush topside inlet, the first in the business, was just one of many innovations that would be incorporated into the design of the B-2 Spirit.

21 CHAPTER FOUR

22

Chapter Four: A Bomber?

eyond the exotic Tacit Blue, could there be other applications for stealth? Northrop quietly started Binvesting some its own money into research on a stealthy fighter in 1978. The Air Force had other ideas. On a visit to Hawthorne in the spring of 1979, government officials led the team into Waaland’s office and asked what ideas they might have for future applications of stealth.

Did you ever think about a strategic Then there was Tom Jones’s com- Opposite: The YB-49 Bomber, forerunner to the modern B-2 bomber?, asked one of the Air Force mitment. True to his promise to Spirit. officers, Major Dave Englund. work on stealth projects, no matter Left: John Patierno. Waaland and Cashen immediately if they came out of the blue, Jones backed the concept of a bomber Below: U.S. Air Force Lt. General thought the same thing. Accord- Tom Stafford, NASA astronaut from the beginning. and veteran of four missions – ing to the grapevine, Lockheed Gemini 6 and 9, Apollo 10, and was working on a low-observable “I’d been asked by Perry would the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. bomber. Surely the nonchalant ques- you please, you, Northrop, respond. tion from the government’s team Well, I had to say yes. I knew we proved it. Were they once again knew enough to configure that looking for a stalking horse? And did bomber,” Jones said. Northrop want to play that role? The formal request came from Their boss John Patierno puffed on Air Force General Tom Stafford. his pipe. “I’ve got to tell you Dave, By spring 1979, the Northrop doesn’t do big bombers. team was looking at That’s not our business.” the problem. Step The Air Force did not rest easy with one was to review that answer. Jack Twigg reminded the threat models the design team that they were in and synthesize the business in no small part because problem. the Air Force Jones told them to had fed them give it six weeks. “Tell them that on Tacit Blue, and that date we will be in the Pentagon wanted them to to brief on our studies of a manned, keep working. penetrating bomber,” he said to

23 CHAPTER FOUR

Top right: The B-1 Bomber had Welko Gasich. Jones wanted the the supersonic capabilities but lacked the desired stealth. first B-2 concept briefing to com- municate the possibilities to the Below: Jim Kinnu. top leadership of the Air Force, just to show them it was theoretically possible to make a stealth bomber out of a flying wing and that Northrop believed in it. “I picked the date because I knew that our guys – Waaland and Cashen and Patierno – they briefed me all the time” and they could deliver, extract from Waaland, Cashen and Jones recalled. others on the advanced design team “The possibility was there. We a way forward for Tacit Blue. By the didn’t know how to do it in detail. A end of it, Kinnu had a risk closure lot of things had to be discovered to plan for how to narrow the tech- be able to do it. We saw that there nical gaps. It taught him all over was an opportunity here. Maybe again that it was critical to lay out a we can make it work. It was like a risk closure plan before cementing prize,” summed up Jones. a program schedule. Bringing home the prize fell in Now, in the early summer of 1979, large part to Jim Kinnu, a veteran Kinnu joined a meeting where the who’d joined Northrop in time to advanced design leaders considered help straighten out Tacit Blue. This how to apply Northrop’s approach taciturn engineer with extensive to a bomber. experience outside Northrop soon On a blackboard he drew four became the long-time program quadrants for combinations of high manager for the B-2, leading the and low altitude and subsonic or program from 1980 to 1987. supersonic speed. The B-1 already Yet it was with Tacit Blue that he had low supersonic. learned one big management lesson. All agreed the technology was not “The first step was to get Waaland there yet for supersonic stealth. and Cashen to work together,” he “We were already starting to work recalled. Like prodigies, they were on a fighter application for stealth brilliant separately, but they worked technology,” said Kinnu. It was together “about like oil and water,” a supersonic problem, of course, said Kinnu. and those familiar with the project It had taken Kinnu three intense realized there was a long way to weeks of meetings in the big con- go to match low observables with ference room in Building 3-60 to speeds beyond Mach 1.

24 A BOMBER?

To Kinnu, the sweet spot for a the picture they painted was of bomber was high and subsonic. a dense Soviet air threat where “You gain a lot more range, and there survivability would have to be are less things coming at you, and if 360 degrees around the airplane, you are stealthy, they aren’t going “I looked at the results,” Cashen to see you,” he later explained. recalled, “and to me it said flying wing.” “Waaland and Cashen got the XST was a wedge, Tacit Blue a clever assignment to work on a bomber radar box, but the bomber would application of our technology,” be something different altogether. continued Kinnu. Northrop still had substantial advanced design work in the white world. Kinnu kept feeding designers, configuration experts, and others to the black world design. Whenever subsystems could be designed in the white world, Kinnu kept them there. Already, the momentum for the bomber and the pull on manpower made it prudent to slim down the shotgun-style approach to other advanced design and leave only a few projects in the white world, plus the black world bomber. Disciplined as they were they began with the fundamentals. Both remembered their experience Above: Early flying wing sketch. This airplane demanded all-aspect with reviewing a flying wing during signature reduction. A strategic the tough times on Tacit Blue. bomber was not going to melt away “Waaland had looked at the results in a plasma fuzz anymore than the too and he thought the same thing,” F-117 or Tacit Blue demonstrators. said Cashen. The designers would have to “We took one look at the flying wing capture and manage RCS to create and said that’s the shape that gives a minimum signature instead you more efficient structures and of a radiating blob like the B-52 more efficient aerodynamics – lift to and all other bombers. Flying drag ratio,” added Jones. an ideal profile, the bomber crew would have to maneuver away FROM FLAT PLATE TO FLYING WING from the worst radar threats. The reason the flying wing was Northrop survivability analysts perfect was that it most closely worked for advanced design and resembled that infinite flat plate –

25 CHAPTER FOUR

the perfect stealth shape. be curved. “The answer was the Consider the theory. A thin plate introduction in every possible way would have no angles to reflect back. of general curvature,” summarized Radar return would flow over and Cashen. race beyond the aircraft. Reach- Step two was dealing with edge ing to infinity, there would be no waves. Here the designers faced a edges to grab and scatter radar choice, but work on XST, advanced waves. cruise missile and Tacit Blue showed Obviously no bomber containing them the way. fuel, a weapons bay, and a cock- Below: What was once old is new “The law that Stan came up with again. Waaland and Cashen soon pit could be a true flat plate. Any says you are going to get spikes realized that the wing was the incline or slope to accommodate the perfect stealth shape. from the straight edges,” explained cockpit, for example, violated the Cashen. “The corollary says if you basic principle. Still, curve, you eliminate spikes, but the the RCS specialists RCS grows where you curve. You and the aerodynami- can’t get rid of RCS, all you can do cists all had to strive is push and pull it around, like a for that low observable balloon.” effect, making design The choice lay in where to crowd trades based on stay- together the RCS return. Years of ing as close as pos- models and range results had piled sible to the ideal. up data on how to manipulate radar “Anything you do in return – the very essence of stealth. stealth design is to Shaping and other techniques endeavor to create enabled the designers to select this infinitely thin, flat where they wanted the RCS to plate,” said Cashen of reflect, how intense that reflection this period. would be, and whether it would Coming together now scatter or be contained in spikes. was a revolutionary Of course, there was a dilemma. “If body of knowledge you put all the RCS in the spikes to which had begun to emerge from achieve low basic minimum, then XST, and been articulated with the you have to deal with the spikes,” advanced cruise missile. The con- said Cashen. “If you choose to trol of the RCS, and the manage- get rid of the spikes by curving ment of edge waves all had to func- everything you have to deal with the tion within one design. Plus it had basic minimum.” to fly. Choices like these would weigh Step one was curvature. What could heavily on the designers. Fortu- not be kept flat and thin would nately, experience counted. “It turns

26 A BOMBER?

out its easier to deal with the spikes half a degree to assist trim. “In than the basic minimum. The reason the B-2, you couldn’t just cant Below: Understanding the is because basic minimum dwells the engines, because the engines RCS allowed planners to find survivable routes through as it flies by radars. Spikes, if they were buried,” said Haub. Inlets, sophisticated enemy defenses. are narrow, appear as glimpses,” exhaust, engines: all were affected. Cashen said. “The normal rules changed quite a That was the whole idea of stealth. bit,” noted Haub. It was inherently tactical, and it Control was another issue. For was always about tilting the odds. a time, for yaw control, they had With all-aspect reduction, the odds thrusters. Waaland’s first concept soared in favor of the attacker. briefs depicted a B-2 shape with ENTER THE B-2 two small, canted tails. Although the advanced bomber No one was satisfied. Cashen and would not get its official designa- the RCS mafia did not like things tion until 1984, the B-2 emerged that popped up. “I wanted every- clearly from Waaland’s secret, thing to be installed and flush and hand-drawn briefing charts in the stealthy,” he said. “It was just more summer of 1979. elegant that way.” Following the guidance from “Finally, somebody got the bright CEO Jones, the team put together idea that Jack Northrop had designs to present to the Air Force controlled that thing with split quickly, sticking to what they knew. Settling on a radar cross section reduction concept was one thing but it also took a number of aerodynamic decisions to create a flyable design. The flying wing design was neutrally stable. It would be up to the aerodynamicists to introduce control systems to make it trim and stable. Radar cross section constraints necessar- ily “threw away a lot of the aerodynamic solutions” noted Bill Haub, a young aerodynamicist who joined the team as they labored over the proposal. Other Northrop designs like the F-5 took advantage of standard tech- niques such as tilting the engines

27 CHAPTER FOUR

Above: Copy of the original rudders,” recalled Cashen. Split Waaland and team believed they artist concept rendering of the advanced bomber. rudders became the one major could bring the baseline RCS inheritance passed from the YB-49 of the bomber well below Tacit to the B-2. Blue’s signature. “At the lower On August 7, 1979, Waaland briefed frequencies, we could do better” General Stafford on the Low than Tacit Blue, Waaland said. The Observables Bomber Study. The Northrop team was excited about time elapsed was not much more the prospects, especially given the than the “six weeks” mandated need for the bomber to elude low by Jones. True to their word, the frequency early warning radars briefing concentrated on range, and penetrate deep into the Soviet payload, and the concept of low Union. observables. Waaland and the At high altitude, the bomber team decided the range would would survive by defeating both need to be at least 6,000 nm. Their detection systems and kill systems. primary threat concern was the Discrete, narrow side spikes with a SA-2, “the one that shot down specified (and still classified) RCS Gary Francis Powers,” in the U-2. as measured in decibels per square One chart featured a low altitude meter would help it get past the Tall concept, but the real beauty was the King radars and foil the Soviet-style sketched B-2 presented as the high AWACS. Shielding the exhaust and altitude penetrator. “In the first minimizing skin temperature would configuration, we had fins on it,” dampen the infrared signature and recalled Waaland. Wingtip spoilers, help prevent Soviet satellites from elevons, split flaps and differential picking it up. Full RCS reduction and engine thrust were also needed for a high subsonic speed were critical control.

28 A BOMBER?

for eluding radar SAMs. If airborne interceptors showed up, all of the above would work in combination to elude or outrun them. For bomber pilots, it was irresist- ible. “Perry and the government wanted a stealthy bomber. They saw it as the only way to counter Above: Bill Haub the Soviet Union,” said Waaland. Below (left): Early B-2 models The F-117 was thriving. “They were with small vertical tails or small wingtip stabilizers – direct still nervous about whether you descendants of the YB-49; could do it at high altitude,” said (right): Photo clearly shows the left hand split rudder. Waaland. Lieutenant General Tom Staf- ford had seen a lot by the time the Northrop team arrived with Waaland’s charts. He was a fighter pilot and astronaut who flew Apollo X. Now, as three-star head of the Air Force Research, Development and Acquisition on the Air Staff, he was nearing retirement. But he knew a good thing when he saw it.

29 CHAPTER FOUR

Above: The Soviet TU-114 AWACS aircraft.

Right: A Soviet Oborona Tall-King radar tower.

30 A BOMBER?

Above (left to right): B-2 Spirit, B-1B, and B-52. The nation’s bomber force that is still active today, although, only the B-2 has the survivability to penetrate and survive enemy defenses.

31 CHAPTER FIVE

32

Chapter Five: Another Horse Race

y January 1980, then program manager Waaland Opposite: The B-2 ‘s unique combination of flat planar shapes had a formal study contract to turn the ideas they’d and precise curves make it the ideal low observable bomber. Bbriefed to General Stafford into a full proposal. “It was going to be the bomber,” Waaland recalled. The B-1 was history – cancelled, back in 1977 – and the new bomber was going to take over a conventional and a nuclear role for Strategic Air Command. It was the prize, just as Jones had foreseen.

But Lockheed was working on a pretty strong evidence that they bomber, too. “We were in a horse originally started the bomber race,” said Kinnu. Cashen, Waaland, design with a prismatic approach, Kinnu and the rest of the team but then converted it over at were right in their instinct. The Air some point in time to an approach Force already had Lockheed under using second-generation techno- contract to study a penetrating logy,” recalled Kinnu. bomber based on their faceted In August 1980 came the announce- 6 approach. ment that there would be a formal The enthusiasm of the designers competition between Lockheed was tempered by the sense that and Northrop for the advanced Northrop might once again be in technology bomber. A formal the race only to spur on Lockheed. competition called for proposals, “We were advised at the highest manufacturing plans, and of course, levels that we were an insurance price estimates. The program would policy,” Waaland said.7 be huge. For Northrop, it also meant finding team members. Lockheed For XST, Northrop had been the had already joined forces with stalking horse. Now, while Lockheed Rockwell, maker of the B-1. was engaged on the approaching first flight of the F-117, Northrop Patierno and Kinnu talked one had moved forward with the design evening that summer of 1980 about breakthroughs of Tacit Blue. who to team with. Boeing was their first pick. “They’d never been Could Lockheed make the jump for a subcontractor, but they were the an all-aspect bomber? Certainly right guys to get,” said Kinnu. At they would try. “I think we have

33 CHAPTER FIVE

Below (top): Albert Myers; the time Northrop had no one with flying wings, which had been cut up (bottom): T. Wilson bomber experience. Boeing was for scrap when the Air Force gave Bottom: Chart representing the the maker of the B-17, the B-29, the up on the program 30 years earlier. vast supplier team that ultimately came together on the B-2. B-47 and the B-52, literally tens of But Northrop had stealth. Boeing thousands of bombers. Drawing agreed to join the team. from their expertise was critical. While Northrop held its cards with LTV was another rapid choice, confidence, behind the scenes a good producer with a strong concerns were growing. Work technical staff. For radar, they on Tacit Blue was still proceeding would let superstars Westinghouse at full speed. There simply were and Hughes compete. not enough RCS specialists to fuel Flight controls presented even more two programs. Cashen, Locus and challenges, so the approach was to others were helping out on B-2 but hire a smart specialist to help. The still trying to meet requirements for first name that came to mind was the Whale. Albert F. Myers at NASA Dryden. The design wasn’t moving fast They hired him in 1981 to manage enough for the competition schedule. flight control engineering, and it was a prescient move. “We’ve got a date to be on a pole with a 6,000-lb. 4/10ths scale model Jones handled the Boeing nego- of this bomber,” Cashen said at one tiation himself. On the other side tense meeting that summer of 1980, of the table was T. Wilson, CEO “and if we don’t close the design of Boeing. It was a turnabout for within the next two months, we are giant Boeing, to be taking a briefing not going to make the date.” from “little Northrop.” Boeing had built literally tens of thousands of Cashen dropped everything and bombers. Northrop had to its cred- worked on the problem, with Don it only a handful of B-35 and B-49 Heinz, Hal Markarian, Dick Scher- rer, who had been instrumental on Have Blue at Lockheed, and others. Scherrer produced the hawk bill shape of the leading edge. It gave them the needed aero performance for the high subsonic airframe. On every stealth aircraft they’d done, propulsion integration was the obstacle and the inlet the last element to close. “The key to the closure of the design was to

34 ANOTHER HORSE RACE

We’re just not making it, Patierno Left: Details of the complex inlet structures for the engines – a told him. It’s just not happening. compromise between air flow We’d like you to take it over, become and RCS.

the proposal manager and then the Below: Nuclear bomb testing. program manager, Patierno told Kinnu. Kinnu’s immediate response was: “I can’t make that kind of decision now. I have to go home and talk to my wife.” “You can’t talk to your wife about this!” Patierno exclaimed.

NATIONAL TREASURE Stealth was no longer a loose col- lection of open-source papers or a research project tended by a fenced-off coterie of technologists. It was becoming a national trea- sure, an advantage so powerful it could turn the Soviet Union’s air defense advantages on their head. The new black world/white world lines within Northrop’s advanced separate the propulsion integration design division were just a sign of from the rest of the airplane as the massive security measures to much as possible,” Cashen recalled. come. To house the engines in a top- Stealth technology as it evolved side “nacelle,” their solution was was guarded carefully because of to install a gutter, a curve between its military and geopolitical impact. the body and the wing, to assist in the separation. All through the Cold War the United States and the West strove to A management change was also maintain capabilities for a credible essential. In the fall of 1980 the Air attack on the Soviet Union in order Force issued a Request for Propo- to deter a Soviet attack on the U.S. sal for an Advanced Technology or its allies. But the Soviets had a Bomber. The Air Force gave them way with surprises. The first was 90 days for the initial proposal. the detonation of an atomic bomb “About three weeks into it, at 6 PM, in 1949. Next came their hydrogen Patierno came over to my office and bomb, again earlier than expected, shut the door,” said Kinnu.

35 CHAPTER FIVE

Below: Sputnik. and in 1957, the Soviet Union ability opening when the U.S.

Bottom, right: The government’s orbited Sputnik, the first man-made bomber force could not get through. program manager, a young one- earth satellite. Nuclear arsenals star Dick Scofield evaluating early “We had shortfalls in our ability cockpit designs. numbered thousands of warheads to match the Soviets and we were by the 1970s. Treaties had outlawed losing our ability to deter them, or most ballistic missile protection at least the perception was we were systems, but the bombers still had to losing our ability to provide proper contend with Soviet air defenses. deterrence. The Soviet IADS had After détente in the mid-1970s, become sophisticated enough that America and the Soviet Union were it would be very difficult to call it entering a second Cold War. The a viable deterrent force without Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan something like the B-2,” said in 1979. The U.S. and western allies Scofield. boycotted the 1980 Moscow Summer A stealth technology bomber was Olympics in protest. Iran’s govern- the revolutionary solution that ment fell and U.S. diplomats spent could close the window of vulner- 444 days as hostages in Tehran. ability and keep deterrence alive. “The technology coming along in the With this as background, Northrop’s late 1970s provided the leadership team did not lack for motivation. with a new way to approach the They took over a red brick building task of dealing with the Soviets on Chadron Street in Hawthorne and the sophisticated defenses and made it into a classified facil- they had at that time,” summed up ity. Eighty and 90 hour weeks were Air Force Lieutenant General Dick common. Engineers in those days Scofield, who at the time was a wore white shirts and neckties, young officer working for the Air except for Kinnu, and except on Force’s Systems Command. Perry, in the Carter administration, had called it the Offset Strategy. “Its central idea was that syner- gistic application of improved technologies – command and con- trol, stealth, embedded computers, and precision guidance – would allow the U.S. to overcome Soviet defenses and destroy Soviet tanks,” noted a history of the period.8 The Offset Strategy was to be the Saturdays, when they might skip the intellectual cradle for high-level tie. Kinnu instigated another crash government support for stealth. effort to sort out the major develop- Analysts saw a window of vulner- ment risks and tasks and align them

36 ANOTHER HORSE RACE

Left: Jack Northrop in front of his flying wing in his favorite pith helmet.

Below: Irv Waaland and Jack Northrop

into a work breakdown structure. scale models for the bomber would The structure helped them carve again be the deciding factor in the out major hunks of the program to competition. delegate to subcontractors. “We had reached a point through One bright spot came when the XST and so on where this head-to- advanced design team was allowed head, winner take all on the pole to show a small model of the bomber was the norm. Which was kind of to Jack Northrop himself. By neat,” said Cashen. “Technical solu- coincidence, the B-2 would have a tions determined the contractor.” wingspan just six inches shorter Winning on the pole was tanta- than that of his YB-49 flying wing. mount to winning the program The man who had founded the and by all indications Lockheed company was 85 years old and appeared to be ahead. For one thing, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, Ben Rich’s team had started work which would claim his life just a on the range earlier as Northrop few months later in February 1981. struggled to finalize their model. Mr. Northrop’s delight in the B-2 With supreme effort, Northrop model was plain to see. “Now I got its flying wing model ready for know why God has kept me alive all range work in October 1980. The these years,” they heard him say. tests didn’t go well. POLE OFF “We came home with results that we The proof of stealth is always on the were less than happy with. Frankly, range. For Northrop and Lockheed, we were wondering if we had a shot the data from pole tests of their at this thing,” said Cashen.

37 CHAPTER FIVE

The redesigned B-2 on the pole for RCS verification tests.

38 ANOTHER HORSE RACE

Northrop was convinced they had “The model would flex and the paint the right airplane. At full size, their would crack. So we had to stiffen B-2 would have range and payload the model,” as Kinnu put it. near that of the B-52. They believed “When you had micro-cracking Lockheed was offering something you’d get a radar return off that. considerably smaller and shorter- You didn’t want that to happen. It legged, more in the category of the was significant,” said Kinnu. F-111 fighter bomber. On the night of November 30, 1980, But without good scores for the all- typists, secretaries and engineers aspect signature reduction results, worked through the night, then set Northrop’s design would not stand up the 15-volume proposal on tables a chance. for every member of the Air Force The team plunged in to figure out evaluation team. what was wrong. The model of the “It was one of the best proposal bomber used in range testing was efforts I’d been on, and we ended constructed of wood and painted up feeling pretty buoyant,” Waaland silver to simulate metal. On the later said. range, the model was elevated 50 The team arrived on December 1. feet in the air. It baked in the desert They stayed several days, issuing heat by day and contracted in the requests for information, then left cooler air when pole and model to do the same thing at Lockheed. were elevated for night-time radar cross section testing. The model The crisis came when the Air Force was hauled on and off the pole. alerted them to a protest from none

Mechanics and engineers leaned other than Ben Rich. Lockheed Below: Workers doing final checks out of a cherry-picker to work on it. claimed that the Northrop model before nighttime RCS testing. The wear and tear was too much. The design itself was fine. “In the second test of the contract we had micro-cracking of the paint,” explained Kinnu. Subtle dings and dents in the model were generating radar cross section return and skewing the results.

“We discovered that the finish on did not have all the required details the model at almost the microsco- specified for the competition. pic level was cracked. We had Although the 15-volume proposal painted over wood, and the wood was in, the Air Force was still look- was expanding, contracting, and ing over the work of the two teams, cracking the silver paint,” said and awaiting final cost proposals Cashen.

39 CHAPTER FIVE

Below: Ronald Reagan, 40th from both. The only way to clear larger control surfaces and needed president of the United States. the air was to send Northrop back no tail at all,” Rich said.9 to the range facility in the middle of The real celebration came back in winter to test additional details on Hawthorne later at a routine lunch- the model. hour data review. The protest gave Northrop another “Welko set a heavy book bag down chance to run the RCS tests with on the light table,” Cashen recalled. a clean model, this time coated in He opened it and started pulling fiberglass. out wineglasses and champagne. “At the end of January, we went on Six months remained until the the range again, on our own bid announcement. “But we all knew, and proposal money,” said Kinnu. just from the RCS standpoint,” It was a good investment. The said Cashen. Northrop was going results were better. “Substantially to win this horse race. If there was better,” added Kinnu. The new data going to be a program, we would on the clean model was submit- be the winner, Kinnu felt. The doubt ted with final cost proposals in the hinged on whether funding of the winter of 1981. B-1 would pre-empt the B-2. Aircraft division head Welko Of equal significance were develop- Gasich took the radar engi- ments in Washington, the Air Force neers to dinner to celebrate their and the world that would greatly outstanding results at a Cloudcroft, add to challenges for the bomber. New Mexico restaurant near the President Ronald Reagan took range. Sean Connery was dining office on January 20, 1981, just as there too, with a group from his the Northrop team was finishing its nearby film set. Meeting 007 seemed successful range work on the clean like a good omen indeed. model. Reagan had campaigned Although they were not sure of it at hard on renewing American the time, the big, flying wing design military power. He wanted superi- was going to make the difference for ority – and among other things, that them. Ben Rich later revealed why. meant stealth. The Lockheed strategy was to build “There was the window of vulner- a medium-sized aircraft in hopes ability, which the administration at the customer would be forced to a that time felt very strongly about smaller, cheaper option. “Because being able to close,” said Scofield. our airplane was designed to be His new Defense Secretary, smaller, the control surfaces on the Caspar Weinberger would turn out wing were smaller, too, which meant to be perhaps the B-2’s staunch- we needed a small tail for added est ally. Derided by the right as a aerodynamic stability. Northrop had

40 ANOTHER HORSE RACE

“liberal” Republican, Weinberger stealthy B-2 – with Northrop being Above (left): T.V. Jones at the B-2 contract award announcement was a Harvard-trained lawyer who selected as the Prime contractor ceremony; (center): Irv Waaland; had enlisted in the Army and ended and winner of the Advanced (right): Jim Kinnu. up serving on MacArthur’s staff in Technology Bomber competition World War II. Two years as Director against Lockheed. Of course, only of Office of the Management of the part of the package was revealed to Budget in the Nixon administration the public. Jones insisted on a terse earned Weinberger his nick-name public announcement to comply “Cap the Knife.” with the law, and the Air Force Soon after he was sworn in as approved a 12-line public statement Secretary of Defense, reporters about a “study contract.” While asked what surprised him most Jones was working on the press about the Pentagon. release, the Pentagon made a big formal announcement of the “The principal shock was to find decision to resume B-1 production out, through daily briefings, the on October 2, 1981. extent and the size of the Soviet build-up and the rapidity with which Colonel Keith Glenn made it official it had take place – in all areas, land, with a phone call to Patierno, who sea and air,” Weinberger replied. then called Kinnu down to his office. “We were dancing!” said “He believes in this Cold War stuff Kinnu. “It’s a moment I’ll never and now he’s in a position to do forget.” something about it,” carped one de- tractor.10 It didn’t take long for Weinberger to make his decision. The B-1 line would be reopened and 100 B-1 bombers would be built as a stopgap measure. This would be followed by a new program for 132 advanced tactical bombers – the

41 CHAPTER SIX

42

Chapter Six: Risk Closure

Opposite: Every square inch of he story of the B-2 engineering development is rich the B-2 wing surface – about a million and a half – must conform with the trials and tribulations of a very complex to the strictest low observable aeronautical system.” So wrote Kinnu and John Griffin, a requirements to achieve optimum T stealth. senior Air Force engineer, in a study two decades later. Bottom: Early government/ contractor ‘team meeting.’ Technology risk was an essential part of the B-2 program. Note the “tools” on the wall for managing the program. Nothing like it had ever been done before. As designed, the

wing surface would add up to over 10,000 square feet, and all of it had to conform to the strictest low observable requirements.

The engineers were happy to take screens, the final configuration or risks – as long as they had a firm design of the B-2 could not be plan for how to zero them out. Their established. term was risk closure. The Northrop Risk closure became the essential team knew plenty about the task in the years following the trials of stealth by the time they won contract award. the B-2. All agreed on the guiding philosophy. “The key to Tacit Blue Task one was setting the schedule. and the B-2 was risk identification, How soon could Northrop build selection, and management,” said and fly the bomber? Cashen. “If you take on too much risk and you can’t close it in time, people lose confidence and you lose the program.”

The contract award specified several areas where the B-2 engineers would first work to gain confidence in the design, long before moving on to assembly of the first aircraft. The key areas of uncertainty were identified as “risks” and closing The international climate inject- them out became the top analytic ed urgency into the bomber pro- priority. Until the risks closed on gram. Responding to it, Kinnu and paper and on the designer’s CAD his team laid out in the original

43 CHAPTER SIX

proposal a fast schedule to develop they desired, but Northrop warned the bomber and fly it in December them that they were asking for 1986. “They needed a bomber right a level of technology which no away, there wasn’t going to be a one could guarantee. Although B-1B, it was balls to the walls,” said the range work showed “all the Kinnu. promise in the world” Kinnu was The Air Force “thought that was too well aware that there was no hard- gutsy” as Kinnu put it and instructed ware yet. Northrop and the Air Northrop to add a year for risk Force ended up agreeing on a closure up front in the program. performance specification that set a Now the bomber would aim for a series of goals for low observables. Above: B-2 Case Study by configuration freeze in the summer One metric was the current status, John Griffin and Jim Kinnu another was the desired result. In documented the B-2 development of 1983, and follow a schedule and is a must-read on any new leading to first flight in December the end, they would negotiate as to program. 1987. Northrop planned to increase what could be done. Bottom, right: Original SAC production to a rate of 30 bombers “They left it up to us how to achieve patch. per year and provide enough for that,” Kinnu said. Meanwhile, Air the Air Force’s initial operational Force analysts – including a counter- capability by the end of 1990. stealth red team – would continue Naturally, the Air Force was deter- to evaluate threat scenarios and mined that its new advanced tech- feed the information into the B-2 nology bomber would stay abreast program requirements. of the latest threat developments. Soon enough, Northrop would Beginning in the spring of 1981, close risk and begin the manu- Waaland and others made contact facturing process. Kinnu imple- with action officers from Strategic mented a manufacturing technology Air Command, who would lay out plan alongside the final bomber more of their requirements. proposal.

Waaland “got SAC in and they kept feeding us performance requirements,” said Kinnu. Items like navigation without land refer- ences and other bomber basics were emphasized by SAC. “That’s why we have the astral inertial tracker that came off the SR-71, plus an inertial navigation system, so that one could update the other,” he said. Goals for low observables were another matter. They listed what

44 RISK CLOSURE

Composites were one of the first the parts were made they were major risk areas identified. The torn down again for full analysis B-2 was going to be enormous. of their ability to carry the design As a flying wing with a 172-foot structural loads. For a time, the Air wingspan, the surface area was Force insisted that Northrop keep immense. Conventional metals like subcontractor Boeing at work on steel, titanium and aluminum would an alternate aluminum wing, just in weigh down the big bomber too case. However, the Northrop team much to be of any practical use. was able to prove they could de- Composites were not new in the sign, manufacture and quality-test aerospace industry but no one had composites for the 172-foot wing- used them on the scale contemplated span bomber. Above: Close-up of composite material. for the B-2. According to Kinnu In those days the size and capacity and Griffin, composites were for composite facilities was a Below, left: Learning to precisely “considered a major risk.” insert thousands of fasteners in source of bragging rights. Later, composites. Kinnu’s plan called for the compos- as the program grew, Northrop’s Bottom: One of the huge ite structures risk to close by late autoclave capacity went beyond autoclaves required for composite 1983. It illustrated just one of the anything seen in the aerospace curing. many processes by which Northrop industry. It caused one visitor to brought the B-2 from theory to the Pico plant to exclaim: “you reality. could do the composite work of the free world in there!” First, Northrop worked with the Air Force to fund research on In this area, the learning curve for MANTECH – short for manufac- the B-2 drove the learning curve turing tech- for America’s entire aerospace in- nology. LTV dustry. Composite work on the B-2 got a con- eventually paved the way for com- tract to learn posites and integrated digital de- how to insert sign on programs like Boeing’s 777 fasteners in and 787. composites and improve techniques such as composite water jet cutting. Boeing set to work on pultrusion, autoclave improvements and methods for using ultrasound to inspect the composite structures. Central to the strategy was fabricating several large, composite parts, including major sections of the wing. Once

45 CHAPTER SIX

Below: The stealthy force – F-117s Two new areas were added into the er or more,” said Scofield. He knew, with the B-2. requirements, and both reopened because he was the Air Force’s risk. One was to study a defensive F-117 program manager when electronics system for a stealth he got a call to take over the B-2 aircraft. The second was a major program from Colonel Keith Glenn. trade study on a three-man crew, Sorry as he was to leave the F-117 versus the original plan for a two- just as production was ramping up, man crew. the B-2 was irresistible. Little did All the brilliant innovations from Scofield know that new job would XST on would not matter if the turn into an unheard of eight-year company could not finalize the assignment. Scofield would stay in technical design and manufactur- place as the Air Force B-2 program ing plan to build the first B-2s, manager from 1983 until 1991, and scale up again into an efficient rising from colonel to two-star production line. Although the general in the process. schedule now contained an extra With the F-117, the Air Force year, the task ahead was daunting. controlled its first big bet on stealth ORDER OF MAGNITUDE by limiting the mission to specific tasks and planning to buy only a Risk closure was vital, because the squadron’s worth of aircraft. The B-2 was without question the most B-2 was different. Everything about complex, ambitious stealth program it was bigger and more ambitious. yet conceived. The mission systems from radar to The bomber was “a much more defensive electronics to nuclear complex airplane than the F-117. hardening were complete depar- The degree of complexity from tures from the F-117 experience. F-117 to B-2 was 5 or 6 times great- Over time, the bomber would become part of the force struc- ture, conducting routine operations from nuclear alert to conventional missions. That was never in the cards for the F-117. “Their mission was to carry two laser-guided bombs to strike missile sites in Eastern Europe and leave. That was it,” said Scofield. Later it grew beyond the silver bullet role, but in the 1980s, it was a much simpler mission with a much more focused capability. The F-117

46 RISK CLOSURE

had also lifted many of its subsys- “People wonder why we designed tems directly from other aircraft. the avionics architecture to the Then again, the B-2 was big. Dave complexity that we did in the B-2. If you think back to the early 1980s, Mazur had come from the Air Force F-117 program where he’d a fast processor was 512 kilobytes,” been an engineer. The B-2 had “so Scofield said. Processing at 512 many more square feet, so many kilobytes was not a problem, as long more fasteners,” to deal with, said as there were plenty of processors. Mazur. “We had many more processors to handle parallel processing of the Unlike the F-117, Strategic Air data on the airplane than we would Command wanted its B-2 to have have today,” he said. a full suite of defensive system avionics. The imaging radar was To top it off, the “B-2 program part of it. So was a concept for planned full capabilities on the a system to detect enemy threat first airplane,” said Scofield. There emissions. would be no prototype. The first air vehicle had to incorporate all the Top: Dave Mazur. All this required integrated cockpit low observable requirements right Above: Wiring electronic displays. These mission avionics from the beginning. components. were over and above the on-board As design risk closed, the next Below: Early cockpit design computer systems required for “cut and paste.” Note, the side the quadruple-redundant flight major hurdle would be the transi- stick was eventually replaced by the more traditional center stick. controls. tion to manufacturing. Northrop as a corporation had to spin up an As Mazur pointed out, the B-2 immense production facility, all to had sensors requiring many small, be conducted under the strictest low-observable antennae, another possible security. In a few short huge contrast with the F-117. High- years the bomber team would gain antennae in particular could balloon from a few dozen engineers be “a big scatterer,” creating yet in one building to several thousand another challenge to solve.

47 CHAPTER SIX

employees and subcontractors at where structure penetrations were multiple sites, all with a common located – everything,” said Myers.11 goal. To guide the work of the teams the Taking an aircraft from paper to senior managers worked in lock- flight was a process the senior step towards design reviews where Northrop team knew well. Step all elements of the airplane would one was to reach the point called be reviewed together. Preliminary configuration freeze. At configura- design review brought all the tion freeze, design engineers ceased elements together formally for the their endless tweaks and modifica- first time. Critical design review tions so other engineers could lay would give top managers a look at out the incredibly intricate stages of the final plan for the real airplane. building the aircraft and scaling it Much of the risk closure plan up for production. A few unavoid- focused on design changes. How- able changes might creep in later, ever, preparing for production was but always with a penalty. Subse- equally important and included a quent changes could impact other lot of firsts. The risk closure plan systems and components already also sent Northrop and its top set in their final configuration, subcontractors to the factory floor causing changes to roar through to try out manufacturing techniques the design like spring river floods. that had to work for the stealthy Consequently, the goal was to make B-2 to be built. Boeing would build all those critical trade-offs before and certify the biggest autoclave in the freeze. the world to make the composite The complex bomber was already wings. The Seattle giant would also being divided into numerous build the world’s largest ultrasound segments so that managers could facility to inspect the composite add manpower and complete parts. In Texas, LTV was figuring literally thousands of designs for out how to mold the sawtooth en- everything from running lights to gine inlet duct for stealth. Northrop Background: The original B-2 advanced electronics. built several small autoclaves for planform. Northrop put in place “zone forming edge structures. And the management” by dividing the list went on. aircraft in to zones for structures, WORKFORCE flight controls, propulsion, envi- Patierno and Kinnu knew the win ronmental control system, and so was a game-changing program. on. One single design engineer Northrop was committed to invest managed each zone and “he was nearly two billion dollars just at responsible for everything that went the beginning of the program. into that part of the aircraft – all Ultimately it would change the installations, all the wiring, piping,

48 RISK CLOSURE

Left: Learning to work with composites.

Below: On the line.

face of Northrop and its facilities, far. The Lockheed Skunk Works had although that all seemed hazy to the its own way of doing business and leaders trying to close risk and look a deeper company bench to draw ahead to production. on thanks to Lockheed’s work on Surrounding the technical issues other programs. Northrop had the was the challenge of expanding brains but lacked the organizational the number of people working on sophistication. the B-2 program and acquiring the The euphoria at beating “Ben Rich facilities to house them. and that team from over the hill” Kinnu saw it as a shock to the at the Lockheed Skunk Works in system of the brilliant, but small, Burbank carried them only so far. advanced design team in the Chad- Ahead lay the mammoth task of ron building that had taken them so building up a huge bomber program

49 CHAPTER SIX

Below (top to bottom): Doug and racing to field the technology to be where the structure crossed into Wood, Valerie Lewis-Corder, Mark Tucker. close the window of vulnerability. the radar absorbing materials. “One of the biggest struggles Then there was the high pressure was manning up, and getting the culture of the advanced design right people,” said Kinnu. Top team. Cashen, Waaland, Kinnu and talent came from programs like the Patierno stood out as larger–than- space shuttle and from around the life figures to the young engineers pool of southern California’s aero- joining the team. space industry. However, they’d all “Kinnu was in charge, Waaland have a lot to learn about working did technical matters, Cashen on stealth. Before that, they had to worked the spooky stuff,” recalled be cleared for the most top secret, one. Together they were known as special access data. “John Patierno’s junkyard dogs.” Those who came over were often The younger staff had to admire amazed at what they found after their absolute dedication. “By endless waits for security clearance. today’s standards, they were First glimpses of the plans for the firmer and harder as managers B-2 made for memorable moments. than would be allowed now,” Haub “I was shocked it wasn’t a fighter,” said. “But nothing was personal.” commented Doug Wood , an engineer The junkyard dogs drove their who joined the team in July 1980. teams hard. “It was not an exagger- ation to say we were working 80-90 Valerie Lewis-Corder was a New York attorney with other experi- hours per week,” said Haub. As the ence in the aerospace field when team expanded it was not unusual she joined Northrop’s four-person to come in and find another person contract shop in 1982. Her shock sharing the desk you thought was was in seeing the dollar figures yours. already committed to the contract. When they did attract people One document listed a figure of willing to make the commitment, $9 billion. “Is that really nine they got stand-outs. Lewis-Corder’s billion?” she recalled asking in office started staffing up in 1983. amazement. Before long, there were over 100 people working on contracts alone. Mark Tucker joined the program in 1983, specializing first in manufac- Lewis-Corder stayed with the turing. When he saw the B-2 mock- B-2 and Northrop for the next 25 up, “that was eye-watering,” he years. “That’s the kind of company said. He was surprised at the aero- Northrop was,” she said. dynamic design and stealthiness Back in Ohio, Dick Scofield faced – and immediately aware of how a similar problem ramping up the stringent the requirements would B-2 program office. The Air Force

50 RISK CLOSURE

encouraged him to hand-pick the Kinnu had the same problems and team, but even then it was not easy. successes at Northrop. He had his “Not all the best people can work in core people like Cashen, Waaland that environment where you can’t and others but some of the other tell anyone what you are doing,” senior people he wanted “got to Scofield realized. “You have to take say no because they just didn’t on the decision-making responsi- want to come over to a black world bility yourself because you can’t go program.” ask your boss for help.” Scofield’s One key engineer who joined in solution? “We had to go hire intel- 1985 was Ed Smith. Ed had just ligent people who were also very come off the Orbiter program and smart,” he commented. saw the B-2 as a very similar chal- Scofield also learned there were lenge – one of a kind system, fly-by- some top picks in the Air Force who wire, no tails and stealthy. As Vice Top: Inside the cockpit as it takes refused to dedicate themselves to a President of Engineering, Ed was shape. top priority, black world program. the program’s Chief Engineer and Above: Ed Smith For the dedicated ones, Dayton’s saw they needed to distribute work black world management arena was a across a thousand suppliers while breeding ground for general officers. moving to a new facility, lock the

51 CHAPTER SIX

Right: Scott Seymour confers doors and pull the team together with BG Tom Goslin, 509 Bomb Wing Commander under their rigorous security um- brella. His key observation was that Below: The Century Boulevard corporate office tower. most of the team had not worked together before, and building the team became one of his most im- portant activities. This was evident with one of his first challenges – the airplane had a weight problem, and major programs. Names like very similar to Orbiter. He attacked Scott Seymour and of course Kent it with an iterative design and fed Kresa went on to take the top jobs work out to suppliers, put in sub- in company management. B-2 was systems, and modified the structure a school for talent. Couples met and to account for the new low altitude married, sons joined fathers on the requirement. The solution was a work force, and the B-2 team, as big team solution, and in solving it he as it was, kept a family feeling that significantly improved overall team went well beyond the average as- effectiveness. sembly line esprit de corps. Many of the young engineers join- But that bright cultivation of talent ing the B-2 program at Northrop was just beginning as Kinnu in later rose to lead manufacturing California and Scofield in Dayton divisions, advanced design work, wrestled with the reality of the aggressive schedule they’d adopted. Where would they put everyone? Kinnu’s team quickly outgrew the Chadron building. They moved in- to a leased glass office tower on Century Boulevard in West Los Angeles and soon had nearly 1,000 people employed on the bomber. Finally they had to go big. “We got the Ford plant at Pico Rivera in California. We acquired it, stripped it totally bare,” Kinnu said. “We built the facilities we needed.” In place of the automobile assembly lines grew a secure facility equipped for all but final assembly of the B-2. But there was a major shock ahead.

52 RISK CLOSURE

Right: The Ford plant in Pico Rivera.

Below: The restructured and fully operational B-2 facility. Note the design partially evident in the park area at the lower right corner.

53 CHAPTER SEVEN

54

Chapter Seven: “My Airplane Blew Up On Me”

eople and dollars were pouring in, the composite Opposite: Banking over the Pacific Ocean the B-2, originally analysis was going strong, but at this point, the B-2 designed as a high-altitude penetrator, had to perform at low Pwas still a series of drawings on computer screens, altitudes as well. with engineers toiling to bring all the pieces together for a preliminary design review. One lurking risk closure issue was about to hit with gale force. Back in April 1981, before contract award, the Air Force had inquired about a mission modification. Could the bomber fly low, too?

The B-2 was designed as a high- that looked afresh at the flying altitude penetrator. The Air Force wing plus a range of other designs, had picked it almost two years such as the delta-shape low altitude earlier from Waaland’s conceptual penetrator briefed to the Air Force briefing to General Stafford. As in August 1979. All the pole work it turned out, the high altitude and their success of three months bomber had what Kinnu termed a earlier did not matter if the basic fallback capability. Waaland had shape of the airplane was wrong designed it to cruise at low level for the Air Force’s mission. using a terrain-avoidance system. The studies showed that the flying Still, Northrop felt the first thing wing concept was still the right they had to do was reassess the shape. “There’s no contest, it’s whole concept. It wasn’t just a mat- the right way to go,” Waaland ter of finding a fix. Was this really concluded. However these new Air the right aircraft design for both Force requirements would require the high and low altitude missions? design changes to the flying wing. “They asked us to do a clean sheet of Northrop put the low altitude modi- paper analysis. Would we have the fications high on the risk closure same airplane?” recalled Waaland. task list. The plan was to stiffen the “Irv, John and I agreed that the wings, and add fuel. “Fortunately, thing to do was to go back to our we were a flying wing,” said Kinnu, starting point and re-examine and there was already plenty of everything we had done,” Kinnu room to add more fuel without hav- said. The team launched a study ing to build on more structure.

55 CHAPTER SEVEN

Right: Two views of a model depicting the original B-2 design.

“It was still an extremely good high ground control centers, airborne flier, and now it was a good flier interceptor fighters, and surface- on the deck,” said Kinnu. Up went to-air missiles sites. Now the threat the gross weight, and both design appeared to be changing to the point missions went in. The Air Force where the Air Force felt compelled officially issued a change request to add a second major combat to Northrop to include low altitude. mission profile to the bomber Jones, at headquarters, backed the requirements. Not only had the Air plan to treat it as the kind of change Force run their survivability models where Northrop would absorb the against the threat, as they routinely cost instead of submitting a new did; this time they had raised the bid. They’d wait for the results of threat and increased its capability further studies on increased loads with little explanation. “Suffice it to due to the low altitude mission say, instead of being three feet tall, Then two things happened. First, it was ten feet tall,” said Kinnu. the Air Force analysts revealed If the threat emerged as the Air their projections for a new, more Force believed it would, the Soviets ominous Soviet radar threat. A could potentially send fighters to team at Lincoln Labs fed in a steady chase after the B-2. Given enough stream of new potential threats, warning, the fighters might light and Northrop engineers responded their afterburners and catch the as to how the planned signature of bomber at high altitude. the bomber would cope with them. “You would have to penetrate low “It was good of the Air Force to do rather than high,” said Kinnu. Low it and good for the program as a altitude became a way to run the whole,” Kinnu concluded. fighters out of fuel and chase time. However, this was no mere update. As Kinnu explained, if the fighters Stealth had always relied in part launched, the Air Force thought on canny estimation of Soviet the bomber would dive low. “Now tactics – how they would link their they lose you, so they don’t know

56 MY AIRPLANE BLEW UP ON ME

where you are, and with stealth the most pessimistic projections. and the clutter of earth, they’d The Northrop team understood have a heck of a hard time finding the magnitude of the problem and you. They light their afterburner the pain it would cause to the B-2 to go up there and catch you then design and schedule. They set out they have to come down and search to complete risk closure analysis. for you and still keep their speed up and they are going to hit bingo Then came the bad news. In early fuel quickly and they’ll have to 1983, the data was in. The B-2 was break off contact, even if they have going to need a major redesign. a contact.” Of course, the whole “Everything was going along fine stealth plan was to elude contact in until we got to the aeroelastic anal- the first place. Low altitude was just ysis,” Kinnu said. The idea behind another complication to throw at aeroelastic analysis was to test the defenders. loads and structures in wind tunnel “This changed the flight envelope,” models, derive the results, and use recognized Al Myers, the flight the data to design actuators swift enough for the hydraulic controls. Left: Soviet fighters, such as the When the data was in, it showed MiG-25, posed a serious threat to the B-2 unless low altitude flight that the controls worked fine in the could be perfected. smooth air at high altitude. But at low altitude, the controls would become saturated in a strong gust environment. “It turned out to be a much tougher environment than they thought,” said Scofield. The B-2 had been optimized for high altitude but now it would be subject to stresses similar to that of a supersonic fighter. “Now we were controls specialist. “In the most going to go at a high Q on the deck,” dense threat environment, you might explained Kinnu. need a low altitude route,” he said. Both pitch and roll were handled The second problem was speed. by trailing edge controls so the SAC wanted the B-2 to fly near problem was severe. To fix the Mach 1 – on the deck. Introducing problem, the control surfaces had the low altitude requirement was to come inboard of the wing’s first logical “if you agreed with this bending node line, all the way in to projected capability” noted Kinnu. the trailing edge notch. Since the B-2 was all about offset- ting Soviet advantages down the “My airplane blew up on me,” road, it had to be able to cope with Kinnu told Patierno.

57 CHAPTER SEVEN

Air Force requirements changed THE GUST LOAD GENIUS Just building the models to use along with the rapid technological advances during the Cold War. What Kinnu’s team eventually con- for the redesign was beyond the cluded was that the flight controls current state of the art. “The analysis – for pitch in particular – were tools and techniques simply didn’t malpositioned on the wings. They exist,” said Myers. “Immediately could not respond strongly or that became one of our priority swiftly enough to gusts and buf- activities – to pull together the feting at low altitudes. Pressure right collection of people capable loads and bending would hit at the of developing such a model. This wrong places, and all sorts of things was a joint effort between the were bound to go wrong. The flight controls organization and the pilots would not have enough pow- structural dynamics organization.” er to counteract severe gusts. Load Myers later described the magni- transfers from the outboard wing tude of the computer modeling to the inboard wing were poor. task they faced. In the early 1980s Around the engine inlet ducts, the complexity of flight control there were several places for single models was described in terms of point failure and excessive fatigue the number of states in the on the structure. Added to that, the model. “Flight control design was bomber would get into trouble at normally done on models that had high angles of attack because there on the order of 10th and some wouldn’t be enough airflow to make really ambitious models had 12th the ailerons effective. order systems,” Myers said. Not so To meet the new Air Force require- the B-2. “Once we had the models ments, the B-2 would have to be re- put together, it took a lot of work designed, moving control surfaces to residualize them down to the and compensating for the stresses size where they were 110th order of high-speed, low altitude flight. systems,” Myers explained. Jones reviewed the data with them. To work the problem, “I brought in everybody I knew in the country It was no small matter. “The rede- that I felt could contribute to [solv- sign would be the largest single ing] the problem,” said Myers. internal event that occurred during development” of the B-2, Kinnu and The team Myers pulled together Griffin concluded later.12 to work the modeling and analysis capability included outside experts Fortunately, the man to tackle the from Honeywell and NASA Langley problem was already on the B-2 assisting the in-house Northrop ex- team. Al Myers led the effort to perts. build the model for the redesign of the B-2 for its demanding low The specific problem of low altitude altitude mission. ride was solved by invention of

58 MY AIRPLANE BLEW UP ON ME

a gust load alleviation system. Al Left and below: Views of the redesigned aft end and the larger Myers tackled it. The gust loads had flight control surfaces needed for been a factor early on, during the low altitude flight. late proposal phases. But with the new mission, the original gust load alleviation was “almost worthless,” Myers said. With SAC now insisting that the B-2 go at high subsonic speeds on the deck as well as at higher altitudes, the airspeed increased the proportional response from the gust loads. “We were not certain what we were doing would comply with the laws of physics,” Myers said as the process began. Myers came up with a gust load alleviation system to quell it. Quick response by the flight controls would steer the B-2 to compensate for the gusts. By the time they finished, the B-2 had relatively larger control surfaces than a typical fighter. They moved faster, too. The F-16 surfaces clocked 80 degrees of motion per second, while the B-2’s inboard elevons hit 100 degrees per second. Just how good was it? A typical standard was to decrease 10% to 12% of the gust load. On the B-2, the fast-responding flight control center body and the distinctive system decreased a whopping 40% shape of the trailing edge of the of the gust load. B-2 so widely recognized today Together the changes created a The Air Force watched the changes significantly different design. Gone unfold. By the spring of 1983, was the basic diamond-shape when Scofield joined the program, body. In its place was a stronger “they’d pretty much decided that

59 CHAPTER SEVEN

Right: Comparison of the original B-2 planform with the final design.

Below: General Charles Gabriel.

they had to redesign the planform the redesign allowed engineers to to add the additional flight con- make other beneficial changes such trol surfaces and beef up the as improving the shape of the center structure,” he recalled. Northrop body. The team added a sawtooth was also working with members trailing edge to place flight control of the Defense Science Board, who surfaces well aft of the center of continually reviewed the change pressure. Other changes included process. a symmetric W inlet and symmet- It fell to Scofield himself to take ric exhaust. The cockpit also moved the news to Chief of Staff General forward. Charles Gabriel. The silver lining was a very efficient “The first briefing I had to give on new structure at the front of the the program was to General Gabriel airplane. to say we’re going to change the Undoubtedly, the reconfiguration airplane,” he said. resulted in a better bomber. “Jim “If that’s what we have to do to have had a big smile on his face,” Cashen a good airplane, that’s what we’ll said of Kinnu when it was over. do,“ Gabriel told the tall, young THE INFAMOUS CEO MEETING colonel. Now, the question was whether to Northrop’s technical fix was exten- extend the schedule to cope with sive but elegant. It was also expen- the redesign. Kinnu and his fellow sive, with estimates for the redesign program managers from the major running close to $2 billion. subcontractors voted unanimously “Jim, being a structures engineer, for moving first flight out by nine knew we had an inefficient primary months, to late 1988. structure,” said Cashen. Although This was a decision for the top dogs. the flight control inadequacy was In September 1983, Tom Jones what pushed them over the edge, met with Lieutenant General Tom

60 MY AIRPLANE BLEW UP ON ME

McMullin, who was commander of the capability that the technology Below: Details of the redesigned planform. the massive Aeronautical Systems could give us as quickly as we can,” Center at Dayton, and Scofield’s he said. First flight stayed on the boss. schedule for 1987. Kinnu hoped there The CEOs said no. If they relaxed would be some “understanding” the schedule, the momentum of the from the Air Force when milestones program might slack off. Losing like first flight approached. momentum might lead to an even Slowing down work on the structures bigger slip to the schedule than was and the major subsystems was the already projected. Would that open price to be paid. But as General a window to simply scrap the B-2 Gabriel had said, if it made for a and extend B-1 production? better airplane, it had to be done. In the end, as Scofield put it, national security priorities won the day. “We really needed to continue because of the priority of the program within the department, and the desire to field

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62

Chapter Eight: A Miracle a Day

rom 1984 through 1989, the B-2 program entered into Opposite: B-2 production in the purpose-built facility in Palmdale – a period of invention, discovery, and innovation on a an incredible government investment that will pay dividends Fscale rarely seen in the American aerospace industry. well into the future. It would change Northrop forever, and help vault America’s air dominance far ahead of what potential adversaries could offer. Not that it was all smooth sailing. At times, the technical challenges threatened to overwhelm even the savviest engineers. “We thought for a while they were just letting us go to see how far we could,” Scofield felt at times as the technical challenges deepened.

Complex and ambitious as the aircraft To complete CDR, the plan called was, there was simply a lot to invent. for a team numbering literally “A miracle a day,” was the phrase thousands of engineers and pro- they lived by. duction specialists to draw the plans for every piece of the bomber. All new aircraft aim toward a goal Good systems engineering practice known as Critical Design Review grouped subsystems into major (CDR) – the moment when the pro- categories such as propulsion and gram manager, with the advice of worked to refine the details for each, numerous other lead engineers always keeping track of how the and teams, will certify that every elements of one subsystem impacted detail and subsystem of the design another. Done right, the interfaces is complete. The schedule for the would all be diagrammed well before B-2 still called for the process to building of the first B-2 bomber culminate with a Critical Design began. Many major elements – Review in December 1985. such as the composites for the Preliminary reviews would target wings – would have been tested in subsystems, but the idea behind prototype or mock-up. Of course, CDR was that the airplane should to trim schedule time, there would be close to completion, ready for a be no full system prototype, which final scrub of plans before lay-up for made the critical design review the first air vehicle began in earnest. process that much more critical.

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Background: Rendering showing Meeting the CDR by the end of able to operate out of different color-coded groupings of B-2 subsystems. 1985 was essential to achieve B-2 bases during wartime – in fact, they first flight in late 1987. wanted the B-2 to be able to land Given the risk closure objectives, and take-off from any airfield that and the stance of the CEOs, the could accommodate a 737. The push toward CDR for the B-2 original, low observable design would be more dramatic than most. called for a sharp leading edge – all For example, the B-2 was still in part of creating an airplane as close the midst of design trade-offs that as possible to an infinite flat plate. would affect major items like radar, Now the issue was getting enough navigation, and even the number of airflow over the wing for a safe crew-members after Strategic Air take-off at high angle of attack on Command asked them to look at some hot day at an unusual wartime adding a third crew station in the airfield. cockpit. “With a sharp edge, as you start to Although the advanced design pull angle of attack at a low speed, team had a good grip on the the airflow starts to go span-wise,” low observables and aerodynamic said Cashen. Without enough air requirements, major questions for rushing back, the trailing edge con- the stealth bomber lurked in all the trol surfaces lose power. The num- unknowns likely to appear during bers were conclusive. “With a full the final design and manufacturing bomb load on a hot day, we could process. stall the airplane,” said Cashen. The unknowns popped up almost Solutions acceptable for normal from the start. One sent Cashen airplanes just wouldn’t work for and the advanced design team back stealth. One afternoon Sam Craig, to rework the leading edge of the one of the aerodyamics experts wing. They called it the toothpick. working the problem, called Cashen into his office. TOOTHPICK EDGE “Give it to me in the simplest terms,” The B-2’s leading edge was already Cashen asked. a marvel of fabrication and design, and its shape was the jealous I need radius here, Craig indicated, domain of the RCS engineers. pointing to a section of the wing’s leading edge. Wartime conditions and aero- dynamics now demanded a change Ultimately, the solution was to put in that edge. The B-2 might be radius only where it had to be to compelled to land at some unusual generate the airflow. The leading airfield during wartime. SAC edge originally had a constant thick- wanted their new bomber to be ness. With the change, the design

64 A MIRACLE A DAY

Left: The non-linear dimensions of the B-2 wing are evident.

tapered the edge radius to increase Caspar Weinberger reportedly called airflow to crucial wing sections. it “the last great invention of the B-2.” The leading edge section was now Of course, it wasn’t. There were rounder in the middle and thinner many more to come. at the ends – like a toothpick. MANUFACTURING Ken Mitzner, their great theorist, had done experiments which re- Most of them were in the manu- minded Cashen that only the main facturing process. Kent Kresa had lobe of radar return would be af- come back to the aircraft division fected by plumping up the radius. just as the B-2 was building up Kinnu let them send Locus to the as a program. “Kinnu’s vision was range with a model of the tooth- innovative but also risky and pick. The first time, it didn’t work. crazy,” Kresa said of this period. Kinnu let them try again, and this “On production, we had never done time they got the taper right, and anything like this,” he said. brought home the range results As a stealth aircraft the B-2’s skin that proved it. had to be absolutely pristine to play

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Above: Working skin composites its part in electrical conductivity Still, nearly every major manufac- was a laborious process. to manage the radar cross section. turing step on the B-2 was a matter Right: Complex parts like this Previously, airplanes were tooled of breaking new ground. inlet duct proved challenging, to say the least. from the inside out. When toler- Take, for example, the engine inlet ances built up, the outside surface duct. Cashen was confident a flush- could vary. Nearly all fighters and mounted duct would work for the bombers were built with some B-2 as it had for Tacit Blue. Actu- degree of shims to nudge it all ally manufacturing the duct was an- into place. Most aircraft could other matter. “This tolerate a fractional bulge here or was almost a flush there to help make the guts of the inlet, which we had aircraft fit. a lot of trouble mak- With stealth that wouldn’t work. ing work,” Waaland The tolerances had to be exact or said later. The tech- the low observables would suffer. nology was beyond That led to a complete reversal of difficult. LTV had to the usual aircraft manufacturing build a mold, form it philosophy. and pull the tool out of it. Learning how “On the B-2, everything had to be to do that to exact specifications solved without penetrating the outer took time. mold line,” recalled Scott Seymour, who was then an engineer new to A blessing came in the form of in- the program. formation technology beginning to blossom in the early 1980s, such as The process of actually building computer aided design. However, the B-2 brought to mind Jones’ the process wasn’t easy. caution from earlier years about laying in “a program to discover the The decision to shift all design and knowledge we don’t have.” engineering work to computer- aided design was revolutionary at Work on everything from compos- the time. Kinnu invested Northrop ites to electronics had considerably money in a process called NCAD – added to the body of knowledge. Northrop Computer Aided Design.

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Northrop personnel wrote the pro- to get them all on a common CAD, gram for this proprietary design. classified system,” Kresa remarked This was Northrop’s approach to later. taking an older 2-D computer aided Eventually, it resulted in a first – design and a 3-D system called total design integration within one Nor-Loft and making it into a new computer database, accessible to 3-D design system. the prime contractor and subcon- Of course, Kinnu had to justify tractors alike. spending dollars on infrastructure. Al Myers later found that in a poll “You’ve got to design these stealthy taken among aerospace engineers airplanes and the way it’s going in the 1990s, two-thirds said they with Cashen and Waaland in terms had first trained on computer-aided of designing and controlling a design with NCAD. “We trained the

country to do digital design,” Myers Left: An early NCAD rendering of said. the cockpit stick lower assembly. Northrop also invested in robotic Below: Screen-shot of a CAD system, and several versions of systems to carry tools and parts the system being used. from supply to autoclave and back, for example. The investment made Pico Rivera practically a “factory of the future.”

smooth surface, you are going to need computer-aided design to build the airplane from the outside in,” he reasoned to his bosses. “Northrop had to grow into it,” said Seymour later. Like the composite work, CAD was a good investment for the B-2 and for the nation. Ultimately, it was sharing the computer-aided design with the team and major subcontractors that kept the B-2 design and manufacturing preparation moving forward. Kinnu then linked the CAD systems to major suppliers. “It was brilliant

67 CHAPTER EIGHT

“We were investing a little over $1.5 facturing system to inject quality billion, Boeing was investing a little and environmental criteria from the over a billion, and Vought put in composite shop to the factory floor. $800 million,” just to set up the line, In the end the environmental poli- Kinnu recalled. cies were such a success that BLACK BOMBER IN A GREEN WORLD Northrop was awarded the inau- The enormous, secretive Pico Rivera gural Tom Bradley environmental plant could not help but attract award by the AQMD. Of course, the attention of one of California’s there were a few special materials most powerful entities: the South that got environmental waivers. Coast Air Quality Management But the changes at Pico Rivera District. Known and feared through- and later at Palmdale added up to out the southland, the AQMD a culture shift. From carpooling wanted to know what was going rates to operating some of the first on in there, and what environ- natural gas cars, Northrop made mentally suspect materials were in itself, in the words of Denny Beroiz, use, and they would not be denied. “a good green company making black airplanes.” The fact that Pico Rivera housed a black program only made the NUCLEAR MISSION prospect of hunting for exotic Had they known about it, another Below (top): The emblem of the South Coast AQMD; (bottom): fumes and chemicals more enticing. “environmental” challenge was Denny Beroiz AQMD had already scored a being faced by the B-2. It would victory with a $200,000 fine levied have caused an AQMD inspector on Lockheed. One inspector with a to faint. This was the nuclear envi- gleam in his eye made a visit to the ronment. The B-2 was hardened Pico Rivera plant, and compiled a and shielded from nuclear effects list of hundreds of violations, to a degree matched by no other most relating to incomplete records aircraft – before or since. or other clerical matters. Waaland’s 1979 brief to the Air Then AQMD decided to sue. Top Force had discussed “atomic cloud Northrop executives were actu- avoidance.” What SAC really want- ally named in the suit. After a ed was for the B-2 to fly through a year of wrangling by lawyers, the radioactive environment if neces- AQMD made known it would be sary and still do its mission. content with a sum of one million While it always had a conventional dollars. role – that’s what the Offset Strategy What Northrop did instead was to was all about – SAC also expected make B-2 production at Pico Rivera the B-2 to be its mainstay bomber. a model of green compliance. They It would carry all nuclear weapons instituted a joint inspection manu- in the inventory from hard-target

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penetrators to the multiple-mega- Left and background: Special coatings had to be formulated ton B53. Beyond this, it might have that would do their stealth “jobs” to “go low” on the deck through and still survive nuclear blast effects. radiated atmosphere or cope with the shock waves from its own Below (top): John Mall; (bottom): A Mark-53 nuclear bombs on egress from the Thermonuclear Bomb. target. Just as the B-2 relied on low observable technology to get into the target area, it depended on surviving nuclear blast from its own weapons or from nuclear-tipped Soviet air defense missiles. Mall. The detonation itself gave Of course, all this had to be done off gamma-neutron radiation. Next, with respect for the unique compos- a massive thermal wave of great ites and radar absorbent material intensity could sweep over the air- that kept the B-2 stealthy. No small craft and scorch everything inside number of those daily miracles con- it. Then came electromagnetic cerned finding materials that would pulse or EMP – the result of exo- also hold up against the effects of atmospheric gamma rays interact- nuclear weapons. ing on the magnetic field. This was uncharted territory. “We had to make sure coatings, “None of the materials we used on crew, and systems survived,” said Tacit Blue made it to the B-2,” said Mall. The principal challenge was Waaland. “They hadn’t been devel- testing the stealth coatings to find oped for the nuclear environment.” the ones that could do their stealth “jobs” and still survive the spate of Strategic Air Command tightened nuclear blast effects. This took a lot the nuclear requirement in 1984, of time. well into the second phase of preliminary design. Among other Sometimes, materials that passed things they wanted 100% harden- the test still had to be discarded ing of all avionics boxes against because they were too venomous to nuclear effects. use in large scale production. John Mall17 was hired at Northrop “Environmental compliance drove in 1978 to work on the F-18, but by us nuts,” recalled Mall. The AQMD 1984, he found himself absorbed in would have been pleased to hear it. all things nuclear for the B-2. Ultimately, the Northrop team found Nuclear hardening actually in- the right materials for durable volved several different, nasty sce- survivability. Best protected of all narios. First there was pre-detona- was the cockpit. It had a passive tion dust, “very bad on paint,” said thermal protection system, and a

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windscreen with “a quick-reacting wiring. To counter it, individual photochromic that reflected ther- electrical components were guarded mal waves back,” said Mall. The against the over-amperage. process had been developed “The B-2 is a very robust airplane,” especially for the B-2 by one of the Mall said. “That airplane will be suppliers. good for a very long time.” The B-2 also had to be able to CAP THE KNIFE detect nuclear flash and instantly shut down then reboot many of its As the complex trial and error electronic systems. Shutting down process went forward, it fell to was the only way to avoid a pulse Scofield to take progress reports that would fry the components. both good and bad back to Washington. There, the spirit sur- “About the only thing that was not rad-hardened was the anti-skid Below and right: The complexity 13 of stealth needed to be retained system,” Waaland jested. through the structural curves and dissimilar materials of composite, There was just one more thing – metal and glass – as well as lightning. An F-16 had recently under the stress of a nuclear environment. suffered a catastrophic lightning strike and SAC insisted the B-2 not fall victim to a lightning bolt. “Lightning was actually harder than EMP,” recalled Mall. Since light- ning was basically overamperage, by nature lightning striking an rounding the B-2 evolved into an aircraft wanted to find and fry the extraordinary, durable partnership between the Pentagon leadership, the Air Force, and Northrop. Jones later said it was Brown and Perry who had devised “such a simple set of relationships” with the government. To him, it was unique in his experience in the aerospace industry. From the first proposal evaluations, close contact with the Air Force team cemented strong working relationships. Brown’s and Perry’s support was founded on technical insight in the Carter administration carried over seamlessly to the Reagan adminis-

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tration and especially to Secretary presidents briefed Weinberger on Weinberger. RAND’s independent study of the “Caspar Weinberger was a very B-2. This vice president had liter- strong supporter. We had a lot ally grown up around stealth and of help,” said Scofield. As the Air its pioneers. He gave the program Force program manager, Scofield high marks for its early risk closure briefed Weinberger every three steps, but flagged the pending first months. After completing briefings flight delay and its slow-down of Above: Caspar Weinberger, the flight test program as potential U.S. Secretary of Defense under to the select few on the Air Staff he President Ronald Reagan. briefed the Chief of Staff. “Then I’d problems. The senior RAND execu- go straight to Weinberger,” said tive who took the briefing to Wein- Scofield. “He’d have five or six of berger, and later to Congress, was 14 his direct reports. He always took Michael Rich – Ben Rich’s son. the meetings. We always had good dialogue, good interchange. I didn’t always have the best of news, but he was always appreciative of the fact he was getting straight infor- mation,” said Scofield. Through his steady personal super- vision, Weinberger gave the B-2 the support needed on a complex, vital program. To Weinberger, it was im- portant for the Air Force to succeed with its ambitious and vital B-2 program. “He was always willing to give us whatever resources we needed to solve the problems we had to deal with. It was important to him,” Scofield concluded. Not that he took it all on faith. In late 1987, Weinberger heard a highly classified briefing from analysts at the RAND Corporation. This south- ern California think-tank had been set up by the Air Force after World War II, and earned its reputation in part as an expert watchdog of aerospace programs. Now operat- ing independently, one of the vice

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72

Chapter Nine: Slip and Recovery

he B-2 program had its share of disappointments and Left: The shared workspace of the B-2 cockpit – pilot, left; mission one of the biggest was the failure, after much effort, to commander, right. Tprevent a slip in the schedule for first flight. In the end it took place a year and a half later than first agreed. Had the CEOs been right to insist that the B-2 hold to the schedule even after the major redesign?

At first, keeping a fast pace seemed holding on to the CDR schedule to be working. Critical design re- the team dropped off items such as view for the B-2 occurred on time additional testing of the effect of from October to December of 1985. engine exhaust heat moving across The program was still on schedule, the aft deck. It would turn out to but it was a mixed blessing. “With be a momentous decision, as the that closeout,” recalled Scofield, we surprisingly hot temperatures on had a number of action plans that the aft deck recorded a few years the 3 major companies would have later in flight test led to years of to execute in a timely fashion” to problems. make first flight. Second, delay added up to more Structural design drawings were cost. The B-2 program had famous- 90% complete. But only about 20% ly proceeded without the need for of the vehicle subsystems were cost-cutting. The leadership of closed with final drawings released. Northrop, the Air Force and the This was a huge problem. A better Pentagon did their best to insulate it number would have been 90%. Any from cost-driven problems – and it incomplete drawings injected risk was, after all, the era of the Reagan of changes elsewhere in the sys- defense build-up. But the schedule tems. Areas such as electrical wir- slip inevitably brought cost to the ing and full testing of the exhaust forefront. effects on the aft decks would later Third, the delay in first flight also turn into problems. The B-2 would meant a delay in flight test. The have to play catch-up all the way to Air Force, and the select few in first flight. Congress who knew about the There was a cost, too. First, the program, would not have nearly program had to make up time. In the amount of flight test data they

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Below: Iron Bird for component expected as the B-2 moved toward of engineers and physicists to figure and system test. full production. A crisis in confi- out how to design antennas that dence was brewing. worked in an LO system,” Myers From CDR onwards, it was all added. Northrop was not about to about timing to complete manufac- get into the antenna business – so turing and test. “They had to com- “we taught manufacturers how to plete not only the technical aspect design and build [LO] antennae,” 15 of design, but the manufacturing said Myers. design which would allow the air- Change began to pop up every- plane to be actually manufactured,” where. These were not, for the most explained Scofield. part, new requirements. Rather, As the prime contractor, they were identifications of prob- Northrop was respon- lems that had to be solved in order sible for manufacturing to proceed with assembly of the critical pieces of the B-2 very first B-2. such as wing leading More changes caused more churn. edges, but the company “Each time there would be a change was also responsible for it would ripple the whole system,” integrating the work of observed Scofield. its suppliers – including “The effort from CDR to first flight big ones, like Boeing. In is centered on manufacturing the many cases, Northrop parts, assembling the aircraft, engineers had to lead an qualifying the components, and education process to get the suppli- checking out the assembled system. ers accustomed to the demands of This is simply hard work,” Kinnu stealth manufacturing. and Griffin noted. Antennae were a case in point. The At the working level, there was B-2 needed antennae that did not constant pressure to make changes radiate in a way that added to the as assembly took shape. But too radar cross section. Putting two many changes could unravel the dozen big radiating antennae even work plan for good. Kinnu and his on an infinite flat plate would give engineering leadership team real- it the radar cross section of Jupiter. ized “there was always a ‘better’ But when Al Myers asked suppliers way to implement design features” about manufacturing non-radiating or make enhancements. They kept antennae, they would “give us a change orders on a tight leash, with blank stare, as if to say, ‘Isn’t that Scofield’s help.16 an oxymoron?’” Myers recounted. “Because there was no alternative, Pressure continued as projected we had to develop an in-house group dates for roll-out and first flight

74 SLIP AND RECOVERY

approached. Soon all realized that The core of the expanding work Below: Chris Hernandez. the December 1987 first flight wasn’t force came from other Northrop Bottom: The first B-2 taking shape going to happen. Major contribu- programs like the T-38, F-5, and in Palmdale Hangar 401. tors to delay ranged from electrical their subcontract work on F/A-18 system installation and check-out and the 747. A number had worked to new criteria for Air Vehicle 1 previously at Rockwell. Of course, (AV-1’s) pre-flight test requirements. all had to wait out the detailed secur- “There was no basis for estimating ity clearance process before they this kind of product,” said Doug could begin their jobs, and they all Wood. had to learn how to work within a black program where major compo- Still, the excitement of the program nents were designed, built and and the sense of teamwork kept assembled in different locations. them at it with a passion. Chris Hernandez joined the elec- New hires joined in the spirit, too. trical wiring group as a young They came from all over California engineer in 1987. He would later and indeed, the nation. As AV-1 took become the B-2’s chief engineer. shape Northrop began to prepare But in 1987, he was amazed at for a future production ramp-up. the problems. The B-2 had 22,000 After all, Northrop was gearing up circuits, and it seemed like half of to build 132 B-2 bombers. them did not go where they should.

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The design tools for wiring were to, and known radars to avoid, “almost non-existent,” Hernandez weather, and so on,” as Moore recalled. It took a methodical described it.

approach to sort that out. It was all a big software exercise, The B-2 incorporated the most and too often there was tension advanced mission systems ever between the avionics and the soft- attempted for a stealth aircraft, ware. Problems were booted up Above: Dave Moore. and probably any aircraft up to to managers and integration was Below: Just some of the circuits that time. Dave Moore joined the done on the 3rd shift, until the 8 AM Chris Hernandez had to deal with before they could be installed in program in 1983 to work on the turnover meeting. the aircraft. defensive systems, then spent time John Mall was still working with on mission planning – the onboard the team on nuclear hardening. He, systems calculating “targets to go like others, found the environment intense but productive. “This was not a politically correct environ- ment,” he said later. “You could yell at people.” In his opinion, that was part of what made the B-2 work. Due to its complexity, the B-2 required innovative thinking on nearly everything. As expected, validating the composites held its challenges. While not a pacing item, the composite work generated its share of unknowns. Ultrasound tests sometimes revealed voids in the composite molding or dis- bonding. That meant cutting the skin, patching, and repairing – and then of course, reestablishing the low observables. Here again the investment in CAD paid off. The manufacturing approach for the B-2 was able to eliminate most prototyping. The plan to go from design to produc- tion was based on the use of 3-D modeling as made possible by computer-aided design. With CAD, the team could skip prototype

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tooling and prototype manufactur- cialized structural test. AV-3 was Left: Building up electrical panels. ing of aircraft. The first B-2 built the avionics integration bird while Right: Wiring complexity in would also be the first to fly. This cut AV-4 would test weapons and AV-5 the weapons bay. Note the air deflectors, and the round attach significant time off the engineering would validate further integration. point for the rotary launcher. and manufacturing development Segmentation allowed for test to schedules. move forward, and the early air The flip side of streamlining was vehicles would simply be retrofitted that the B-2 was a highly concur- after they finished up flight test. rent program. The idea behind Still, the “concurrency of engineer- concurrency was precisely to cut ing development and production engineering and manufacturing de- was creating havoc,” Chris Hernandez velopment time by doing the final said of the frenetic period before aspects of design, build, and test all first flight. In other words, it was at the same time. Overlap could be crunch time. highly efficient but it also called for Scott Seymour had been working superstar performance from all in- at the Navy test facility at Patuxent volved. However, if a change had to River in Maryland prior to joining be made, it could slow down other the B-2 program. He worked first parts of AV-1 and the next low-rate on flight test plans and landing gear, production bombers. then moved into management. He The only relief was that each of the became head of test site operations first six B-2s had a special role to in 1988. play in the flight test program. AV-1 By then, the first B-2, AV-1, was would test the low observables, coming together in completed form. while AV-2 would go through spe- But everything demanded a “huge

77 CHAPTER NINE

Right: Team focus is evident as learning curve,” as Seymour put it. everyone signs up for Total Quality products for the warfighter. Dealing with a low observable air- craft whose surface had to be taken into consideration at all times posed a special challenge. Engineers might just want to change out a box – one of the line replaceable units of avi- onics, for example. Yet if they went in to get the box it meant restoring the low observable coatings. AV-1 “had to be 100% green for low observables,” recalled Seymour. Seymour saw that solving all the problems without penetrating the outer mold line was “quite a cultur- al difference.” The key, he believed, was the culture of trust between Northrop and its main subcontractors, and Northrop and the government personnel now closely integrated with the program. It took long hours to put “a mir- acle a day” into practice. At one point, they finally had pieces to assemble a mid-elevon. Mark Tucker came in on a Saturday planning to PREPARING FOR FIRST FLIGHT work from about 6 AM until noon. Absorbed in the work, his team In November 1988, the hangar stayed until after midnight. “That doors at Palmdale opened. Out was pretty rampant through the rolled AV-1. The plane was not program,” Tucker commented. ready to fly and only a select few viewed it. Sanctioned pictures “We were blessed on this program showed only the front of the air- with such incredible people,” said craft, but a trade photographer got Seymour. an aerial shot of the unique engine One feature of the B-2 gave every- inlets and ducts. one exceptional pride. “The B-2 was For the B-2 team, roll-out began a probably the only big airplane that period of redoubled efforts. The never leaked fuel,” said Jorge Diaz, criteria for AV-1 demanded not who was about to take over as Chief only preparation for first flight, Engineer.

78 SLIP AND RECOVERY

but significant low observable “The pioneers – Irv, John, Jim, they features, too. Both groups were did a fantastic job,” Diaz recalled. scrambling to complete their tasks, The B-2 was sound – it just needed and changes from one group firm nudges in the right direction. often impeded progress by the other. The bar was set especially high for “One of the biggest challenges lead- the first B-2, for two reasons. First, ing up to first flight was the series of AV-1 was not a simplified demon- compromises that had to be made strator but a bomber with full low between the aero guys and the LO observable functionality. As test guys,” said Mazur. articles went, the B-2 was setting Once again, it was a matter of very high expectations. finding the right people to infuse Second, the low rate production technical leadership into a complex was still highly concurrent. Con- program. currency made it very hard for Left: Jorge Diaz, Chief Engineer D iaz arrived to the manufacturing section to plan take over as their work. Changes might come Chief Engi- along and upset one plan and delay neer for the another. That meant that any B-2 on Janu- changes in any segment “really ary 16, 1989. rocked the boat,” said Diaz. Soft-spoken, As 1989 began, the entire B-2 team with old world was working flat out. Technical charm, Diaz talent abounded. Engineers and had gradu- production personnel were putting ated from Univercidad Nacional in endless hours. Many slept at the Autonoma de Mexico as a met- plant. They jokingly formed the allurgist and come to work for “Century Club” for those who’d Rockwell in 1959. worked 100 days straight – or Diaz had actually retired with the more. The main task was to cull usual plans to spend more time what absolutely had to be done with his wife and family. Instead, and organize the work flow to he moved to Palmdale as a tem- accomplish it. porary bachelor to chart a path As Diaz knew well, engineers through the fragmentation that tended to be entrepreneurs. With had crept into the program. His first flight approaching, everyone work on Apollo, Saturn, and the thought they owned the B-2 – Space Shuttle Discovery made engineering, manufacturing, pilots. him no stranger to complex Just as Kinnu had found, the major program management and split- problem was working through second decisions. changes on what was essentially

79 CHAPTER NINE

Background: The B-2 Spirit takes a hand-built aircraft. Diaz’s fix was promoted to other jobs but they off from the desert floor for its inaugural flight. to reorganize the engineering gathered, too. Family members progression so that those working flocked to Palmdale for the event. on the airplane got a chance to Diaz watched the control panels proceed. “Everything that couldn’t closely. Suddenly, “I saw that the be fixed ended in my office,” Diaz fuel was getting hot and the pres- said. sure dropping,” Diaz said. He was JULY 1989 worried. Someone told him, you The main driver was the series of have ten seconds to decide. I don’t flight justification tests. They’d been need ten seconds, Diaz thought. coded “red for four years,” said “We’re not flying today. We’re Wood, but in the late spring of 1989 aborting the flight,” he said. it all came together. It turned out to be a decision that High speed taxi tests gave them a saved the aircraft. The hangar at jolt of excitement. The test was done Palmdale had an air filtration system at night. “I could hear the throttles to keep the environment as clean as come up,” recalled Wood. The possible. Workers used cheesecloth feeling was “pretty indescribable,” rags to clean the fuel cells. Over he said. time, miniscule particles of lint Saturday, July 15, 1989 was the date wore off, circulated through the air, officially planned for the first flight and into the fuel filters. Fueling the of the B-2. Workers drove up from Pico Rivera to witness it. Cashen, Waaland, and Kinnu had all been

80 SLIP AND RECOVER

B-2 loosened the lint and created a team diagnosed and fixed the Below: The initial flight test crew of Bruce Hinds, Northrop block in all four AMADS. It was just problem. The press to get the B-2 Grumman Chief Test Pilot, like having four clogged fuel filters. into the air was feverish. “Even and Colonel Richard Crouch, Commander of the B-2 Combined “What was the chance of that – all today it’s a blur to me,” said Chris Test Force at Edwards AFB being four?” Seymour wondered. On Hernandez of that final weekend. congratulated (top) and at the post-flight interview (left). take-off the fuel flow could have A much smaller, more somber group stopped and the B-2 might well gathered two days later when the have crashed. B-2 tried again. “I felt really bad cancelling the On Monday , July 17, 1989 , the B-2 B-2 first flight, but I was doing took flight. “I cried,” said Kinnu. my job,” said Diaz. Actually, this was familiar territory to Diaz. “I’d already cancelled three space shuttle flights,” he demurred. The disappointed crowds dispersed and over the weekend the Northrop

81 CHAPTER TEN

82

Chapter Ten: Success

hen the triumph of first flight receded, there was Opposite: B-2 production in full swing at Palmdale. still much work left to be done on the B-2. For Below: Ollie Boileau brought the right approach at the right starters, when the first B-2 flew across the range, time – he remains a management W legend at Northrop Grumman. it bobbled its low observable signature tests. As usual, the Bottom: Tony Imondi was problems lay in the process, not in the design. Engineers went instrumental in getting the B-2 back to the basics to diagnose each small piece of the surface operational. area to determine where there were low observable problems. Small fixes added up to a big improvement.

It would take more than three years general manager for the B-2 pro- for Northrop to deliver the first B-2 gram. to the Air Force. “How will we know “Ollie came in with a sledge- the B-2 is a success?” those working hammer,” recalled Kresa. Diaz, his on the plane often wondered. Chief Engineer through 1992, saw It wasn’t just about the range results the impact right away. “He really or the maintenance or the avionics made a cohesive team,” Diaz said. integration or even the remarkable, “B-2 owes him a lot.” unprecedented, and total absence After first flight the goals were to of fuel leaks. To Hernandez, there get production underway and to was a simple answer: “when the prepare for the Air Force test pilots pilots come back from war.” to give the B-2 a workout. Almost ten years would pass from Major Tony Imondi was the first that July day when the B-2 flew Strategic Air Command pilot to until the bomber made its debut fly the B-2. He’d come to Edwards in combat in the dark skies over with a group of six hand-picked Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999. pilots, and spent time learning the THE SLEDGEHAMMER B-2 systems and flying T-38s until In December 1989, Northrop added the B-2 itself was ready. “It handled fire to the mix in the person of like an F-111 with four fuel tanks,” Ollie Boileau. A long-time aero- he said. The engineers drew on space executive, Boileau had briefly the pilots’ assessments of the sim- retired from General Dynamics in ulators and test-bird avionics to

St. Louis when he took over as make several changes.

83 CHAPTER TEN

Above: Taking ownership of the Waiting was not easy. Resolv- 20 aircraft, although money to operational aircraft. ing the inevitably complex prob- retrofit AV-1 into a 21st plane was Below: The B-2 flying above lems that arose with the massive added at the end of the decade. Whiteman AFB. stealth aircraft strained the patience Nevertheless, the B-2 was destined Bottom: Margaret Calomino of government and manufacturer to make a big impact as a combat alike. Over time, manufacturing bomber. smoothed, and Northrop had the Officially, the B-2 achieved “ini- right aircraft, AV-6, to deliver to tial operational capability” in April the Air Force as its first operational 1997. The B-2 owed its speedy stealth bomber. IOC in part to a specially-designed At last, on December 17, 1993, the Northrop precision weapon called first B-2 touched down at White- GATS/GAM. man AFB, Missouri. “Everything changed when we delivered an air- GATS/GAM was an acronym on an plane,” Imondi said. “When we got acronym. It stood for GPS-aided a flyable, combat airplane, every- Targeting System/GPS-aided muni- thing changed.” tion, with GPS, of course, being the Global Positioning System satellite By the mid-1990s, there were sever- constellation developed by the Air al B-2s at Whiteman. The fleet was Force. now grouped as Block 10, Block 20, or Block 30 aircraft, according to One person involved was Margaret the sophistication of the avionics. Calomino, who joined the Arma- The newest B-2s were coming off ment Division in 1984, integrating the production line as Block 30 air- all weapons onto the airplane. craft – ready for war – and sailing She remembers being briefed on a through customer acceptance. program to combine accurate posi- tioning with a synthetic-aperture Unfortunately, the B-2 would never radar picture on board the B-2. achieve full production. A 1992 Starting many miles out, the decision capped the fleet at a mere synthetic aperture radar could

84 SUCCESS

paint a picture of a target such as a surface-to-air missile battery. The combination of radar image and GPS gave the weapon coordinates for a precise hit. Dave Moore had a hand in this program that designed the special, state-of-the-art precision munition for the B-2. “It was supposed to be a quick and dirty program,” re- called Moore. Those working on it were isolated from other contracts, but we understood that it was im- Perry in the cockpit to bend the Above: Preparing JDAMs to go to war. portant to get the B-2 into combat Secretary of Defense’s ear about the and show its versatility. Kent Kresa B-2 and JDAM. The B-2 became wrote the government to say that the first Air Force jet to be certified Northrop would not compete for to employ JDAM, and the wing the upcoming JDAM competition if liked the new weapons with its all- we could upgrade all the B-2s. “We weather precision. had to sign a non-compete agree- Most of all, the pilots at Whiteman ment with the Air Force,” Moore grew to love the B-2 as they moved and Calomino said. Calomino notes together from training to combat that while there were those in gov- rehearsal. In October 1996, a B-2 ernment initially against the invest- destroyed 16 separate targets using ment, ultimately, it was the GATS/ GATS/GAM. That “opened a lot of GAM that allowed the B-2 to take eyes,” said one pilot. its place as a conventional bomber in the years before JDAM was fully THE QUIET WARBIRD tested, ultimately demonstrating its The B-2 made its combat debut capability in the skies over Serbia. on the first night of Operation Al- Thanks in part to Imondi, the B-2 lied Force on March 24, 1999. The was at the front of the line for B-2’s primary weapon was the Joint Direct Attack Mission (JDAM) 2000-lb. JDAM, also making its integration. combat debut. Stealth, precision, range and mass united for the first One day in 1995 he had the honor of time. flying Secretary of Defense William Perry in the B-2. In deference to his Of all the remarkable achievements instrumental work on his first tour in of the B-2 at war, four stood out: the Pentagon in the 1970s Perry was opening the air campaign, flying often called “the father of stealth.” alone, destroying an SA-3, and Imondi took the opportunity with taking down the Novi Sad bridge.

85 CHAPTER TEN

Imondi was the Operations Group the target runs, you are doing a lot Commander, the man in charge of of aiming, a lot of radar scope inter- the B-2 squadrons going to war. pretation, so you are very busy. You Whiteman launched two B-2s on don’t have time to think about any- night one. There had been false thing but getting the weapons out,” starts to this air war, so those he said. The weapons releases were gathered in the command post good. Time to turn for the border. “Then it seemed like it took about Above: A Soviet MiG-29. half expected the bombers to be recalled. three days to get out of country,” Below: Night refueling enroute to as Single remembered it.17 the combat zone on an extended They’re not coming back, Imondi mission from CONUS. told them. Not tonight. The B-2 soon proved it could do what no other asset could do: fly Leading the mission was Lieuten- alone and arrive in a hostile envi- ant Colonel Eric Single. Ahead lay ronment. Fighters and jamming air- Serbian integrated air defenses and craft were routinely in the air, but fighters, including the formidable on this night, the weather was too MiG-29. bad to launch all the tankers and As they entered Serbian airspace other assets needed. The air war NATO and Serbian fighters were stood down – but not the B-2. mixing it up below them. The other Two B-2s entered hostile airspace B-2 saw the white trail of an air-to- by themselves. “It was eerily quiet,” air missile. said Major Tom Bussiere of the tar- Single saw no dog- get run. One B-2 kept pre-planned fights below his B-2 targets, but Bussiere’s retargeted but he did see flash- all 16 weapons in flight for new es from the TLAMs coordinates. and CALCMs going No other aircraft flew in-country off “about the time that night. For their solo effort, the we started ingress- B-2 pilots were awarded the Distin- ing in country.” guished Flying Cross. Other than that, the sky was quiet. Another deeply satisfying mission “Do they know I’m was rapid re-targeting to destroy an here, do they not SA-3. The B-2 had been designed know I’m here?,” to elude air defenses. Now, with he wondered. precision, it could destroy them, too. A B-2 crew was refueling He didn’t have much before crossing the Yugoslav time to think about border when they got a SATCOM it. “Once you get message to plug in a new target. into the target areas, They released JDAMs on the new

86 SUCCESS

Right: The Novi Sad Bridge before and after bombing.

Below: A GBU-31 2,000 lb. JDAM being loaded.

target, and a few days later, an Imondi flew a mission near the end intelligence officer said to them, of the campaign, after all his young hey, you guys blew up an SA-3.18 crews had their turns. Twelve years Perhaps the most famous target had passed since he first laid eyes destroyed by the B-2 was the on the B-2 tucked away in its not- Novi Sad Bridge. By May 1999, quite-lint-free hangar in Palmdale. that bridge had been attacked by On that May night the target area conventional fighters and by F-117s was dark, cloudy, and quiet. “I was but it was still standing. Mission almost overcome with emotion,” planners at Whiteman decided to Imondi recalled. The target run was take no chances and employ a full over almost as fast as it started and round of 8 weapons on the Novi Sad the B-2 slipped away unscathed yet bridge. In one quick pass, a single again B-2 targeted six JDAMs on the FUTURE IMPACT center span with another 2 JDAMs From 1999 to 2003, the B-2 flew at one end. The bridge collapsed combat missions in three very into the water. different campaigns in distinct Over the 78-day campaign the regions of the world with varied air B-2 pilots flew 51 sorties, all from threats. Missouri to the European theater For Afghanistan, the B-2 opened and back. Their epic intercontinental the campaign soon dubbed Oper- flights proved a level of reliability ation Enduring Freedom. It flew for the B-2 which no other combat several missions, then pulled back aircraft ever attempted. to let other bombers and fight-

87 CHAPTER TEN

ers continue the work, since the develop and build a new bomber airspace held no threats. as early as mid-2020, but there are At the beginning of Operation no plans to retire the B-2 from its Iraqi Freedom in 2003, the B-2 conventional or nuclear deterrence again took on the most dangerous missions. targets in areas where the rem- The B-2 is very much a front line nants of Iraq’s air defenses were asset. Innovation on the B-2 has most active. The B-2s logged 22 not stopped, and its lineage within sorties from a forward base Northrop Grumman and the aero- and 27 from Whiteman AFB, space industry is still producing primarily during the first 10 payoffs. days of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Fifteen years of operational history The B-2 targeted equipment in in the Air Force did not cut the ties Republican Guard strongholds and between Northrop’s B-2 team and struck fixed targets. These precision the bomber they created. “No mat- missions with up to the minute ter what, I’m still in awe to see it target updates were well beyond fly,” said Mall. anything the first SAC planners The B-2 itself is a different creature had dreamed of in 1979. in many ways after a decade and a The combination of precision, half in the fleet. Through constant retargeting flexibility, stealth, and innovation, the Northrop and Air payload made the B-2 perfect for Force team have improved on many the job. of the most vexing compromises With a fleet of only 20 aircraft, made for the sake of the break- the B-2 remains the nation’s only through design. bomber for heavily defended tar- For example, the tape is gone. “We gets. Where the B-2 will fly combat eliminated 2800 feet of tape off next is impossible to predict. What’s the airplane,” explained Mazur, certain is that even today there are who was promoted to B-2 program regions of the world with dense air manager. Above and background: The defenses where only the B-2 has the Shield of the Air Combat Tape once covered the seams Command ability to survive and complete the around access panels and other gap mission. The Air Force intends to Right: Details of the original surface material “stack”, and the simplified version with updated fasteners that greatly enhanced LO reliability and maintainability.

88 SUCCESS

points. When it came off for panels blood ties came from the people. Left: Top view of the original “tape and butter” materials over to open it had to be resealed and “The people who are here come gaps. Bottom view of updated cured to reestablish the smooth from that B-2 culture,” said Chris technique that eliminated hundreds of feet of tape. conducting surface for stealth. Hernandez, who had risen to the head of advanced design. Bottom: X-47A on the ramp – A new crew at Northrop Grumman a complex LO tailless air vehicle. proposed a radical fix with new, The short story of how Pegasus simpler materials and fasteners. evolved echoed the Northrop spirit of discovery. “We lost the Air Force UCAV competition to Boeing in 1999 and took it back from Boeing by winning UCAS-D in 2007,” said Hernandez. How did they do it? In a way very reminiscent of Cashen, Waaland, Kinnu and the pioneering advanced designers who invented the B-2. After their first loss, “Bill Haub and I scratched our heads and said we could come back and win this program in SDD, because this is just an ACTD, but we’ve got to fly something. We cobbled together

Now the panel comes off and goes back on in 15 minutes,” finished Mazur. The B-2 has continued to infuse a spirit of innovation and competition throughout Northrop Grumman. Take, for example, the project that became the X-47A. While it looks somewhat like the B-2, the real

89 CHAPTER TEN

Right: X-47A in flight.

Below: Scott Seymour, visionary, strategist, and supporter.

this thing based on work we’d the benefit for the joint force. That done over the years on different advanced design team remains in airplanes and ideas and thought, place and continues to work on this could probably work.” They developing future capabilities for focused on the Navy as their cus- the warfighter, leveraging the tomer. successes and lessons learned “From an aeroelastic standpoint of the past with maturing and there’s a lot of learning that we proven technologies. The B-2 was take from B-2 to UCAS,” Hernan- and is unique – a success born out dez added. of necessity and facilitated by a dedicated, capable government- Scott Seymour had moved from contractor team – a stepping the B-2 program to leadership stone to a next generation of air of the entire Integrated Systems dominance. sector. Just like Jones had done, he told his enterprising advanced And of course, Northrop Grumman design team “that’s a great idea, is always up for a race on stealth. go do it.” It was a significant amount of money to invest, and an uncertain outcome, but they all saw the technical possibilities and

90 SUCCESS

91

92 ENDNOTES

Endnotes By Chapter

Foreword 1. Rebecca Grant Interview with John Cashen, May 2008...... pg. v Chapter One: Cones, Drones, and Low Observables 2. Richardson, p. 96...... pg. 1 3. Richard Van Atta and Michael Lippitz: Transformation and Transition, DARPA’s Role in Fostering and Emerging Revolution in Military Affairs, IDA Paper 3698, April 2003, p. 12...... pg. 5 Chapter Two: Two Horses in the Race 4. Cashen, ibid...... pg. 9 Chapter Three: Cruise Missiles and Tacit Blue 5. Cashen, ibid...... pg. 17 Chapter Four: A Bomber? Chapter Five: Another Horse Race 6. B-2 Systems Engineering Case Study, John Griffin and Jim Kinnu, p. 16...... pg. 33 7. Rebecca Grant Interview with Irv Waaland, May 2008...... pg. 33 8. Van Atta, ibid...... pg. 36 9. Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed, Ben Rich and Leo Janos, 1994, p.310...... pg.40 10. Reagan’s Ruling Class: Portraits of the President’s Top 100 Officials, 1982, Ronald Brownstein, p. 434...... pg. 41 Chapter Six: Risk Closure 11. William B. Scott, “Stealthy Genesis,” Aviation Week and Space Technology, March 26, 2006...... pg. 48 Chapter Seven: “My Airplane Blew Up On Me” 12. Griffin and Kinnu, ibid, p. 37...... pg. 58 Chapter Eight: A Miracle a Day 13. Waaland, ibid...... pg. 70 14. Reference to Michael Rich briefing in NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEARS 1992 AND 1993 (Senate - August 02, 1991), AMENDMENT NO. 1056, (PURPOSE: TO ADD AN ITEM TO THE CERTIFICATE REQUIREMENT RELATING TO THE B-2 BOMBER AIRCRAFT PROGRAM), April 2003...... pg. 71

93 ENDNOTES

Endnotes By Chapter

Chapter Nine: Slip and Recovery 15. William B. Scott, “Stealthy Genesis,” Aviation Week and Space Technology, March 26, 2006...... pg. 74 16. Griffin and Kinnu, ibid, p. 48...... pg. 74 Chapter Ten: Success 17. Rebecca Grant interview with Lt. Col. Eric Single, October 19, 2000...... pg. 86 18. Rebecca Grant interview with Major Scott Young, August 30, 2000...... pg. 87

94 THE AUTHOR

Dr. Rebecca Grant is President of IRIS Independent Research, a defense and aerospace research organization she founded in 1995. She earned her PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics, then worked for RAND and the offices of the Secretary of the Air Force and Chief of Staff of the Air Force. She has written regularly for Air Force Magazine and has appeared on television and radio as a commentator on airpower. Dr. Grant also serves as director of the Washington Security Forum.

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