USAF
View of one of the USAF’s B-2 Spirit bombers operating in Iran, with the mysterious white squares on the wings
New images of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers preparing to bomb Iran reveal disconcerting details on their wings: white rectangles with black edges, glued to the leading edges. Nobody knows what they are.
On March 17, the United States Central Command published images of two B-2A Spirit stealth bombers taking off from the Whiteman base, in Missouri, to carry out bombing raids on Iran.
These photographs reveal a detail disconcerting appearance on the exterior of these aircraft: some inexplicable white rectangles with thick black edges, literally fixed with tape to the upper and lower surfaces of the leading edges of its wings.
According to , these patches completely break the immaculate industrial design of this formidable war machine, being a mysterious change for which there is still no explanationneither official nor unofficial.
A B-2 invisibility to radars is an effect achieved thanks to its shape and the use of a special radar absorbing material (RAM), a synthetic coating that surrounds the aircraft and acts like a chemical sponge, swallowing electromagnetic radiation so that it does not reflect back toward the enemy.
See the surface of a plane that costs billions of dollars patched together with duct tape indicates that U.S. Air Force engineers are altering the Spirit’s stealthy anatomy with some unknown end.
One explanation could be the introduction of new materials and manufacturing processes extracted from the program, applied to the structure of these old planes.
“The B-2’s RAM coatings are absolutely critical to your successbut they are also one of the main factors behind its immense operational costs”, says the military expert Tyler Rogoway no. The B-21 Raider has better and cheaper material. But That doesn’t explain these patches.
Another explanation could be some new type of sensors. According to Rogoway, “the white squares very vaguely resemble the test marks that the B-2 sported at different times during its first decade of flight, when it was immersed in testing.”
But the reality is that the exact function of these panels remains an enigma. The USAF does not explain how this built-in component affects the plane’s performance in a real combat scenario. Given the lack of technical data on its internal functioning, “as with the rest of the B-2we simply don’t know what we’re seeing”, points out Rogoway.
The United States is deploying B-2s from the North American Midwest to the Middle East, a journey of thousands of kilometers which results from the United Kingdom banned the US from using British bases to carry out offensive attacks in Iran.
