Not true. The final B-2 production run was to be 20 planes after the
program
was cut from 132 then to 75 and finally 20. AV--2 thru -6 were to be
flight
test assets

AV-2 thru AV-6 were flight test assets and were always intended to be
brought up to production configuration; I have the complte set of crew
shirts. Including my wife's, "ship from hell", crew shirt.

Still wrong. Under the 132 and 75 plane programs, pre 1991, they were the
pre-production LRIP (Limited Rate Initial Production) planes to be used as
life cycle flight test assets. Possibly AVs 5 - 6 could be made operational
because they were close to the rate production configuration but the AVs 2-4
and especially AV-1 were so far from the production configuration that they
wouldn't be supportable as they were. At the time the program was cut back the
third time at the fall of the Soviet Union, the government wanted to curtail
the program but the cost of accepting 20 was the same as contract termination
costs. The program went forward and made the decision in 1990 to proceed with
a 20 plane fleet that included the upgrade of AV 2-6 to near production
configuration. Thise six planes all have their own separate support
requirements because of their vaying uniqueness.It was run as a separate
program within the government and the contractor. How do II know this? I
worked in the B-2 System Program Office at Wright-Patt in the 90s and did some
of the anaylsis on these planes myself.







but when the cut to 20 came, they were included as part of the 20
iin SAC's Bomber Roadmap with plans to upgrade them to final production
configuration. AV-1 was so different than the others that it was
warranted to
not be worth the cost of upgrade.

No ****.

At that time Northrop-Grumman was quoting
$350 MIllion. Then the $550M long lead initiative came along. the AF
took
the position that It couldn't afford to support another 20 and the $550M
got
diverted to upgrading AV-1 to operational configuration. Interestingly,
the
cost for the upgrade rose from $350M to $550M at the same time. It was
the
final B-2 out of 21 delivered. It is flying at Whiteman today.

Geeze, they had to rip the entire flight deck and ebay to make that work.

2001(IIRC), the non flying structural test article was recently delivered
to the AF Museum.
Pilot shortages were not the issue with a 40 plane fleet.

Pilot jobs are, pay attention and try not to take the most rediculess
interpretation of your own misreadings.



I misread nothing See above. I was a senior analyst on the program when
twahe dscisis made. It had absolutely nothing to do with pilot shortages. In
fact, at that time the AF was banking pilots and scaling way back on
Undergraduate Pilot Training slots because there were too many pilots for the
cockpits that were available. We were flying KC135s with two crews at once
just so everone could get enough time to stay current. Twenty B-2s soaked up
more maintenance assets than an entire wing of fighters. 40 B-2s would have
cost two fighter wings. At that time the fighter mafia had wrested control of
the AF from the old SAC types and were working hard to increase the number of
fighter wings. Sorry but you can't fly fighters or anything else without
green suiters.






At 150+
maintenanace manhours per flight hour, there weren't enough greensuiters
at the
time to maintain a larger fleet. I trust that number has gone down some.

Body and fender work is not so skilled.



Wrong again. Had anybody work done lately?