Tag Archives: Aviation

Google Earth caught a $2 billion stealth bomber on candid camera

This story originally featured on Task & Purpose.

The 172-foot-wide B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, which costs nearly $2 billion in today’s dollars, can sneak past enemy air defenses with the same radar signature as a small bird, but you can also spot it on Google Earth as long as you have an internet connection.

“It’s pretty funny, you’ve got a stealth bomber flying over a farmer’s house, into his field, it looks like he’s a crop-duster,” said the host of My Garden Channel, a YouTube channel that’s usually dedicated to gardening and plant care. But on Monday, the channel posted a video showing how viewers can use Google Earth to spot the stealth bomber for themselves.

A screenshot of the bomber flying over a field in Missouri took off on Reddit, where it received more than 109,000 upvotes and caught the attention of airmen on the unofficial Air Force subreddit.

“Lol ‘stealth,’” wrote one commenter.

“What are you trying to say? I don’t see anything,” joked another.

“Looks like a weather balloon to me,” wrote a third, referring to when the Army announced in 1947 that it had found a “flying disc” near Roswell, New Mexico, only to later retract the statement and say it was a weather balloon.

Unlike a UFO though, it’s not surprising to see a B-2 bomber flying over Missouri. After all, the only B-2 base in the world is at Whiteman Air Force Base, just about 20 miles south of the spot the aircraft was spotted flying over on Google Earth.

Still, with its flying-wing design, its ninja-like ability to penetrate enemy air defenses, and its reputation for flying all the way around the world to kill ISIS fighters in the dead of night, the aircraft gives an aura that makes spotting it in daylight with a simple tool like Google Earth or Google Maps a real treat.

“The B-2 is designed to fly into the maelstrom when Los Angeles is burning and GPS signals have been jammed,” wrote William Langewiesche in a 2018 article for The Atlantic about a B-2 mission to bomb ISIS fighters in Libya. “It is made to defeat the world’s most advanced air-defense systems. In addition to its conventional navigational capabilities, it has autonomous systems that operate independently from any ground- or space-based transmitters.”

Besides being deadly, it’s also cozy: the Spirit has a toilet, a microwave, a few coolers for storing snacks, just enough room for one of its two pilots to lie down and take a catnap, and even “extremely comfortable” cockpit seats, Langewiesche wrote. 

Still, the Atlantic writer questioned the US government’s decision to use the B-2, each of which cost $44.27 million a year to maintain as of 2018. That makes it the most expensive aircraft to maintain in the Air Force inventory, and it was used to bomb no more than 100 men camped in the desert in a country that does not even have air defenses. 

“Bombing ignorant gunmen camped out in a desert of a non-country is a far cry from launching an attack against a modern military adversary,” Langewiesche wrote. “But the high cost of the mission was perhaps an attraction by bureaucratic if not military logic—you may lose money if you don’t spend it—or the B-2s might have just needed some work to do.”

Whatever the reason for using the B-2 over Libya, concepts like stealth and strategic bombing are returning to the fore as the Air Force prepares for a possible war with China or Russia. In fact, the service wants to spend an estimated $203 billion developing the B-21 Raider, a new flying wing strategic stealth bomber that closely resembles the B-2 and is designed to replace the older aircraft. 

Air Force B-21 Raider bomber drawing
A B-21 Raider drawing highlights the future stealth bomber with Edwards Air Force Base, California, as the backdrop. Designed to perform long range conventional and nuclear missions and to operate in tomorrow’s high end threat environment, the B-21 will be a visible and flexible component of the nuclear triad. U.S. Air Force

“Designed to operate in tomorrow’s high-end threat environment, the B-21 will play a critical role in ensuring America’s enduring airpower capability,” the Air Force wrote on its website about the Raider.

Part of the reason why the Air Force is putting so much money into the B-21 is because it wants to buy at least 100 of the bombers. By comparison, only 21 B-2s were built. One of those was destroyed in a non-fatal crash in 2008, and another was damaged in September after sliding off the runway at Whiteman. The Air Force estimates each B-21 will cost about $639 million in 2019 dollars.

So perhaps someday we will also see images of B-21s mid-flight on Google Earth. Eagle-eyed readers may have spotted a red-and-blue blur effect on the image of the B-2. According to NASA, that’s because satellite images are different from typical photographs. While photographs are made “when light is focused and captured on a light-sensitive surface,” a satellite image “is created by combining measurements of the intensity of certain wavelengths of light, both visible and invisible to human eyes,” NASA wrote online. 

Most visible colors can be created by combining red, green and blue, so satellites combine red, green, and blue-scale images to get a fill-color image of the world, NASA explained. However, Newsweek pointed out that aircraft in flight may blur the colors due to how fast they are moving.

“If you put on the old 3D glasses with the red and blue lenses you can actually see this in 3D. Try it,” wrote one cheeky commenter on the Air Force subreddit.

It just goes to show that capturing a Spirit is difficult, but with a sky full of satellites, an internet connection, and a little bit of luck, anything is possible.

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How the stunt crew in ‘No Time to Die’ pulled off the film’s astounding motorcycle jump

Towards the beginning of the latest James Bond film, No Time to Die, a stuntman pulls off a breathtaking jump on a motorcycle. A rider, ostensibly the film’s protagonist, races up a steep ramp in Matera, Italy, then soars over a wall.

The 25th Bond film debuts on Friday, Oct. 8, and viewers can expect the typical excitement—car chases, explosions, gun battles, and the like. Popular Science caught up with the film’s special effects and action vehicles supervisor, Chris Corbould, to learn more about how they put some of those sequences together. There are no spoilers ahead; all the stunts referenced are visible in the film’s trailers, one of which is embedded below.

Here’s what we know about that motorcycle jump, and other awe-inspiring moments from this fifth and final installment in the Craig-as-Bond franchise; we also look back at one classic car scene from a 70s-era Bond film.

The motorcycle jump

The jump in Matera, Italy, features a stuntman named Paul Edmondson riding a Triumph Scrambler motorcycle. “That was absolutely done for real,” Corbould says. “Lee Morrison, the stunt coordinator in the film, has a big background in motorcycles.”

“Cary [Joji Fukunaga, the director] wanted one great bike stunt in that beautiful city, and that’s what Lee came up with,” he says. “I’ll never forget, when we did that on the day, there was a massive round of applause.”

“There was no trickery there—he just went up it and jumped it,” he adds.

Viewers interested in the jump can also check out Being James Bond, a documentary about Daniel Craig’s work in the Bond films; at about the 39-minute mark, there’s a brief clip of what appears to be the tail end of that stunt, with the rider wearing a helmet. Both Autoweek and MotorBiscuit have more details, and here’s some behind-the-scenes footage.

The donuts

In another moment towards the beginning of the film, Bond is behind the wheel of an Aston Martin DB5, and there’s a scene in which the car spins in circles, spraying bullets from guns protruding from the front of it. “Daniel [Craig] actually did that donut in the square,” Corbould says, “where it was spinning around and firing the guns at the walls.”

Corbould explains that the film involved a second unit, or the “action unit,” which filmed shots first, and then the actors arrived. “We shot the donut and DB5 shooting up the walls with stunt drivers,” he says, “and then when Daniel came out, he did another shot as well, so they could get shots with his face in it.” Autoweek also has more on those donuts, explaining that the scene involved modifying the stunt vehicle so that its front left wheel wouldn’t spin, thanks to a handbrake.

For the actual vehicles, the filmmakers relied on 10 physical versions of the DB5. Two of the vehicles were “pristine,” Corbould says, which they used for “whenever Daniel was getting in and out, [or] pulling away.” Meanwhile, eight additional vehicles played various roles. “Some were kitted out with gadgets; some were full stunt cars, with full rally roll cages in; they each had a job to do,” Corbould says.

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“You have to have multiples of each,” he says, “because if one gadget car clips the curb during the sequence, and bends an axle, you can’t have 600 people waiting around while we mend it, so you just pull that one out, and pull another one in.”

Those eight cars were Aston-Martin-built replicas, and by “gadget car,” Corbould means a vehicle that deploys gadgets, such as those machine guns in the front. Car and Driver notes that the guns “malfunctioned” back in 2019—the barrels didn’t spin as they were supposed to—when they were on set observing.

Bond films, of course, have a long history of action sequences. Back in early 1970s, for example, The Man with the Golden Gun involved a car’s crazy twisting jump over a river, which, as a company called Altair points out, wouldn’t have worked if the vehicle hadn’t been adjusted in a very specific way to include a type of fifth wheel to keep it on track for the stunt.

The seaplane

Finally, in another scene, a seaplane flies away from a fishing boat, towards the camera, as the vessel explodes in the background. “That was a real shot—that was a real trawler, and a real plane,” Corbould says. “It was all perfectly lined up from a helicopter shot.”

“We did it twice,” he adds. “The first time the framing wasn’t quite right, but the second time we absolutely nailed it.”

As for that fishing vessel, it didn’t actually explode. “We made it look like it was blowing up,” Corbould says.

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