The U.S. Air Force was hiding the B-2’s maximum payload capacity for decades, until just a few months ago, when it very quietly acknowledged that the bomber can actually carry way more than initially admitted.
It’s no secret that the U.S. regularly understates the technical capabilities of its military systems – whether we’re talking about the disclosed top speed of the SR-71or the unclassified dive depth of the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine. In both cases, like many more, the military looks at the range of capabilities its platforms can offer, and usually chooses to disclose only the bare minimum.
But there’s more to this disclosure philosophy than just rounding down on a spec sheet, because the actual capabilities of complex systems are entirely circumstance- and environment-dependent. And the Air Force finally admitting the B-2 can carry a lot more hate than they previously claimed is a perfect example of that.
When the B-2 was first unveiled in 1988, the Air Force didn’t disclose much about its combat capabilities. Yet, within a few years, it finally released a maximum payload figure of 40,000 pounds which was also the figure cited in the branch’s first official B-2 Fact Sheet in 2017.
That 40,000-pound figure stuck all the way until May of this year, when the Air Force, without any press release or announcement, very quietly increased the B-2’s max payload figure by an incredible 50%, now showing that the bomber is capable of carrying 60,000 pounds of munitions.
It is likely that this silent acknowledgement was a result of several journalists pointing out that the B-2s that flew in Operation Midnight Hammer were carrying 20,000 pounds of ordnance more than their unclassified maximum payloads.
But this wasn’t an outright lie about the bomber’s capability, so much as it was an intentional decision about what to disclose. That is to say that the B-2’s max payload may genuinely be 40,000 pounds with a maximum fuel load, but by carrying less than its maximum capacity of 167,000 pounds of fuel, it can increase the amount of ordnance it carries as long as it’s got sufficient internal volume for the added firepower. In other words, it can trade maximum range for maximum payload, making neither truly static figures.
And because these figures aren’t static, governments have to make decisions about how they present their capabilities.
Some, like Russia, will promote their rarest edge-cases, saying their technology can do things that it could maybe theoretically do under the perfect conditions and with luck. Sometimes, it’s even worse, like when Russia claimed their Kinzhal missile had a range of 3,000 kilometers, only to later acknowledge that they included the combat radius of the launching bomber in their math, and that the weapon itself only has a range of about 500 kilometers.
The U.S., on the other hand, usually discloses the minimum required capabilities they dictated for a program as the final product’s actual specs, even if the final product vastly outperformed these specs in testing. And that’s not just about understating the specs, but importantly, it’s about setting expectations. If the U.S. says a missile can fly 500 miles, you can rest assured that it can fly at least 500 miles. But if Russia says a missile can fly 500 miles… you better check the fine print.
Feature Image: The B-2 Spirit ship hunting during a recent mission. (U.S. Air Force)
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