Intimidating
Kim Jong Un with B-2 bombers is expensive
Posted
By John Hudson Thursday, March 28,
Today,
the United States sent a warning to North Korea by deploying two
nuclear-capable B-2 bombers to drop munitions near North Korea in a joint
military drill with South Korea. The Associated Press called the muscle-flexing
"unprecedented." Time's ace
defense writer Mark Thompson deemed the military's announcement "unusual."
One
of the reasons the U.S. warning shot is atypical is because the United
States rarely announces the location of its top-secret B-2 bombers. But
another reason this is uncharted territory is because of the exorbitant expense
of taking B-2 bombers out of their home base in Missouri to frighten a
bellicose regime on the other side of the world. As the Center for Public Integrity reported last
year:
The
B-2s are actually not used much now, partly because few targets justify risking
aircraft that cost $3 billion apiece in today's dollars, and partly because
their flights by some estimates cost $135,000 per hour -
almost double that of any other military airplane.
$135,000 per hour of
flight? That's a steep price tag, especially considering the flight was
round-trip and involved two stealth bombers. Per the military's statement:
This
mission by two B-2 Spirit bombers assigned to 509th Bomb Wing ... involved
flying more than 6,500 miles to the Korean Peninsula, dropping inert munitions
on the Jik Do Range, and returning to the continental U.S. in a single,
continuous mission.
The
military didn't say how many hours the B-2s were in the air. But even if the
B-2s were traveling at top speed the entire way (628 mph), which they most
certainly were not, it would mean 10.3 hours each way -- a tally that doesn't
even include the amount of time it took to drop the munitions on the South
Korean island. Adding it all up, that's 20.6 hours of flight time for two B-2
bombers -- for an estimated cost of $5.5 million.
That
may be a rounding error given the scope of the Pentagon's budget, but the costs
don't stop there. According to a Los Angeles Times report on the
B-2 bombers in 2010, the after-flight maintenance costs of such an
operation will really burn a hole in your pocket. "For each hour it's in
the air, a bomber spends 50 to 60 hours on the ground undergoing
maintenance," reported the paper. "The Air Force spent more than $800
million last year upgrading, maintaining and overhauling the stealth bomber
fleet."
Let's
just hope the Dear Leader was sufficiently spooked. This could get expensive.
