US Air Force Grounds B-2 Stealth Bombers After Emergency Landing Fire

The USAF's 509th Bomb Wing confirmed that Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri remained closed since the December 10 accident. Satellite images showed what appeared to be a B-2 stealth bomber stranded on the runway.

The US Air Force has grounded its entire fleet of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers after one plane caught fire following an emergency landing earlier this month.

The billion-dollar bomber suffered an undisclosed in-flight malfunction on December 10, forcing a landing at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri — home to the USAF's 20-plane fleet.

A fire broke out on the plane after landing, but was reportedly quickly extinguished by ground crews.

A satellite image of the air base taken on Sunday appeared to show the stricken aircraft still blocking the runway.

A tweet of satellite images appearing to show a damage USAF B2 Spirit stealth bomber stranded on the runway at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri

© Joseph Dempsey/Twitter

A spokeswoman for the plane's unit, the 509th Bomb Wing, confirmed that the runway was closed and said the air force did not know how long the fleet would be grounded.

"We don’t have a speculated end date at this time," said Master Sergeant Beth Del Vecchio, "and yes, the runway is still closed."

"Recovery teams are still working out there to minimize any further disruptions, but just like the safety pause, we don’t have a speculated end date," Del Vecchio added. "Because the incident is under investigation, we are not releasing any further details on the nature of it, but we will be able to release it once the official investigation is complete."

The B-2, designed and built by Northrop Grumman, first flew in 1989 and entered service in 1997 — long after its Cold War mission of penetrating heavily-defended Soviet airspace in a thermonuclear war had long become redundant.

The original plan to build 132 aircraft was scaled back to 75 and then just 20, with another prototype converted to operational status. As a result, the programme's costs amounted to $2.13 billion per aircraft. Each flight hour costs the USAF more than $150,000.

One B-2 was destroyed in February 2008 while taking off from Andersen Air Force Base on the Pacific island of Guam, with both crew ejecting safely as the plane stalled and crashed on the runway. The accident was blamed on moisture in the electrical system leading an error in measuring flight data, which caused the plane to pitch up by a 30-degree angle on take-off.

Two years later, another B-2 was severely damaged by a fire on the ground — also at Andersen AFB on Guam.

A third serious accident took place at Whiteman AFB in September 2021, when a B-2 made an emergency landing. The aircraft's left main undercarriage collapsed after touchdown, causing it to veer off the runway onto the grass verge. The fault was traced to micro-cracks in landing gear springs that had not been replaced in over a decade.

The USAF recently unveiled the B-2's successor, the outwardly-similar B-21 Raider, also from Northrop Grumman.