How do stealth bombers work

Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Stealth Technologies. Hiding a plane as big as this is hard to do.

Cite This! Print Citation. The B-2 has all-altitude capability to penetrate the most sophisticated air defenses in nuclear and conventional missions. This website is best viewed in browsers such as: Edge, Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. We encourage you to use one of these browsers for the best experience. Skip to content. Who We Are. This greatly frustrates pursuing missiles and fighters, but obviously still leaves it vulnerable if someone spots the plane and talks fighters into the vicinity to hunt it.

Except the B-2 has another trick up its sleeve that makes even that less likely. Anyone who has worked with most other jets knows that you can typically hear them before you see them, often by a matter of hundreds of feet. All of this still requires good pilots and planning. Determined defenders could use low-frequency radar waves and skilled fighters to hunt down a B-2 following a too-populated or well-defended route.

But the last element of B-2 stealth comes from good intelligence, allowing pilots and planners to send the bombers in through relatively undefended routes or through routes the B-2 can defeat.

Ideally, they get a picture of the air defenses they will attack from reconnaissance aircraft like the RC and are then able to dismantle them piece by piece. But the B-2 can and has been sent against other targets, including bunkers in Iraq housing command and control elements during the invasion of that country. This is particularly useful when planners need to eliminate a target too early in the timeline to dismantle the air network first.