The "Flying Wing's" charcoal gray exterior is coated with special paint, forming a sleek membrane that helps to absorb and scatter radar beams. Whiteman "low observable" maintainers (stealth material specialists) cover every screw, panel, seam and gap with special tape, further adding to the plane's stealthiness.
"The surface treatments are the frosting on the cake," Percival said. "The basic stealth of this plane comes from its shape and structure."
But it's just this frosting that took a licking in the press. Rain and bad weather had peeled back the tape and pelted off paint on the plane's leading edges, possibly making the bomber more vulnerable to detection. Fixing this fault required time-consuming repairs, which resulted from lengthy cure times needed to set adhesive foam, glue and tape. Furthermore, maintenance crews made these repairs in "climate-controlled" hangars, called docks, which facilitate the curing process. The docks took knocks in the press, too.
Today, the wing uses new tapes, and better adhesives that dry faster and stay on longer, resulting in less LO damage and dramatically less "re-LO" times. Whiteman maintainers, working with Northrop Grumman, have cut cure times from 50 to 90 percent. For instance, one tape that took 72 hours to cure now only takes three hours.
"A little nick here and a little ding there would be no big deal on any other bomber," Stotler said. "A B-52 isn't going to sneak up on anybody. But on the B-2, it could mean the difference between getting shot down or coming home alive. That's why we don't fool around when it comes to LO."
With these improvements, Percival said the Spirit is a weapon for all seasons, rain or shine.
"We actually welcome bad weather for combat missions," the colonel said. "We prefer flying into enemy territory on dark and stormy nights; it adds to our stealthiness. We can guarantee target destruction through 20,000 feet of bad weather.
