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| Science & Technology | |
| Behold 40% Of B-2 Bomber Fleet Executing An ‘Elephant Walk' | |
| 2022-11-30 | |
| [TheDrive] Eight B-2 Spirit bombers took to the tarmac at their Missouri base for an unprecedented display of stealthy airpower. While an ‘elephant walk’ is by now a well-known part of airpower exercises by the U.S. military and other air forces elsewhere around the world, the concept still has the power to impress. Case in point, the eight B-2 Spirit stealth bombers that took to the runway at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, at the culmination of the recent Spirit Vigilance 22 training exercise. The maneuvers involved the 509th and 131st Bomb Wings at Whiteman — the only operational B-2 base — and concluded on November 7, with an elephant walk and subsequent fly-off. This seems to be the first time that the flying-wing bombers had been involved in a mass launch of this scale. In contrast to minimum interval takeoffs (MITO) that were a trademark of the Cold War-era Strategic Air Command, U.S. Air Force bombers no longer sit, fully armed, on 24-hour alert. Nowadays, elephant walks are mainly about demonstrating readiness and the ability of a base and its constituent units to get large numbers of aircraft into the air rapidly, as could be required during a major contingency. While these kinds of drills have become increasingly common within the U.S. military in recent years, it’s a lot less common to see bombers involved. Stealth bombers? That's unheard of as far as we know.
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| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #1 40% My first guess is those were the only ones that they could get rolling. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2022-11-30 21:55 |