David Axe, The Diplomat: “US ‘Misled Over Stealth Bomber’”
David Axe, “US ‘Misled Over Stealth Bomber’,” The Diplomat, 29 August 2011.
In 2008, a B-2 crashed at Guam, reducing the stealth fleet to its current level. In the wake of the accident, critics bemoaned the Pentagon’s tendency to concentrate increasing combat power in a decreasing number of ultra-expensive ‘platforms.’
In February 2010, there was another incident involving a Guam-based B-2 – a fire in one of the bomber’s two engines. At the time, the Air Force reported the damage as ‘minor.’ And that was the last any outsider heard of the incident for more than a year. …
China’s strategists ‘believe that as the weaker party it must use ambiguity to compensate for technological inferiority,’ says Andrew Erickson, a professor and analyst at the US Naval War College. …
Rather than misrepresenting the delicacy of its dangerously over-concentrated combat power, the United States could take Erickson’s advice, and ‘consider shifting at least some operations from large, tightly-grouped targets … to smaller, dispersed, networked elements.’ …
