WHITEMAN AIR FORCE BASE, Mo. - Should U.S. forces attack Iraq, "Caveman" is ready to pack up his brown-bag lunch - stuffed with an Italian hoagie and trail mix - and grab his air mattress and sleeping bag.
"Caveman" is the call sign of Air Force Lt. Col. Scott Vander Hamm, who pilots the radar-evading, bat-winged B-2 Spirit bomber, the first warplane the Pentagon will send into harm's way to penetrate Iraqi air defenses and command centers if President Bush gives the order.
Vander Hamm, the lanky and angular squadron commander of the 325th Bomb Squadron, flew three missions against Serbian targets during the 1999 U.S.-led air war over Yugoslavia. Together with his co-pilot, he took off from this rural western Missouri base and headed across the Atlantic to the Balkans, where he dropped 2,000-pound precision bombs.
The round trip was nearly 30 hours. Last fall, the B-2s flew to Afghanistan to hit Taliban targets and then headed on to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Those sorties averaged 40 hours. The Afghan campaign by the B-2s included the world record for the longest combat mission by an aircraft: 44.2 hours.
That's where a filling meal and an air mattress come in.
"To keep up the insulin level, I bring a hoagie and trail mix, and lots of water," Vander Hamm says. Behind the B-2's hard ejection seats is just enough room for an air mattress and a sleeping bag. Some pilots bring along $20 aluminum lounge chairs to set up in the $1.1 billion Stealth bomber.
For their long-duration missions, all B-2 pilots train in a 24-hour simulator. And their attention to sleep is as precise as their bombing coordinates. Vander Hamm says physiologists tell the pilots they should "power nap" for less than 45 minutes or settle down for a longer sleep of more than two hours. Anything in between makes them less alert and crabby, he says.
What makes the B-2 valuable as a fighting tool is its stealthy nature, which comes from its design and graphite skin, attributes which make it almost invisible to an adversary. Its engines are all but buried in its boat-like gray body, which prevents an enemy's radar from getting a clear fix on the intruding warplane.
The B-2 is also all rounded-angles with no tail, which causes the radar beam to disperse. "The Stealth is phenomenal. You will not see us," says Master Sgt. Wayne Cox, a stocky maintenance chief with 20 years of experience, who repairs the graphite skin of the aircraft. He points to a nearby B-52, a massive and workman-like bomber for the past 50 years, and then to the sloping B-2 inside a hangar, which appears to have arrived from another planet.
"From Stone Age to that," he says.
Pilots are continually preparing for long-range bombings at Whiteman, home of all 21 B-2s. The planes began arriving in 1993 and six years later took part in their first combat mission against the Serbian forces of Slobodan Milosevic.
On this day, two Stealth bombers are set to take off from Whiteman on a 20-hour training flight to test their skills. The pilots will fly north to Alaska where they will drop bombs at the Pentagon's Yukon Range before banking south toward the Pacific island of Guam. At Guam, two new pilots will take the controls and head to Alaska to release ordnance before turning back toward Missouri.
"We're ready. That's what I've told our bosses. Call us when you need us," says Col. Doug Raaberg, the 509th Bomb Wing commander, who is responsible for making sure the wing's two combat squadrons are trained.
The 509th also has a notable legacy. It was originally formed during World War II as the 509th Composite Group, specifically created to prepare for atomic bomb missions. A B-29 from the 509th, the Enola Gay, dropped the first atomic bomb, on Hiroshima, on Aug. 6, 1945. Three days later another of the wing's B-29, Bock's Car, dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki.
Raaberg boils down his wing's mission today. We "kick the door down," he says, and "knock their eyeballs out."
That means taking out an enemy's radar as well as command and communication centers, a move that prevents a foe from determining the direction of an attack and alerting his forces. Eliminating such targets enables other U.S. aircraft and ground forces to operate with reduced threat and to target troop concentrations and tanks.
In Kosovo, the B-2's all-weather precision capability was responsible for destroying 33 percent of all designated Serbian targets in the first eight weeks of action, according to the Air Force. In Afghanistan, the warplanes flew 12 missions in the first four nights.
The warplanes can carry upward of 80 500-pound dumb bombs and 16 of the 2,000-pound precision weapons. They can also hold eight satellite-guided 5,000-pound "bunker buster" bombs that can burrow up to 30 feet into rock or reinforced concrete. The bomb handlers also call them "the crowd pleaser." Several of them coax the stacks of gray and black ordnance into the belly of the B-2 with the help of a small truck with a metal arm that grasps the torpedo-like weapon.
They are also working to convert the 500-pound "dumb" or gravity bombs into precision weapons by using Joint Direct Attack Munition kits, although it's uncertain whether that will happen in time for a possible attack on Iraq.
Meanwhile, Raaberg says, Whiteman is in the process of moving some of the B-2s to forward operating bases at Fairford, England, and Diego Garcia. The plan, under discussion since the air war in Kosovo, would provide military leaders with a greater number of sorties from the B-2 by reducing the flight time from Missouri.
It would also reduce the wear and tear on the pilots, meaning fewer bites on the hoagie or trips to the air mattress.
Before that happens, five climate-controlled hangars will have to be constructed at Fairford and Diego Garcia, officials say, to enable maintenance crews to repair any damage to the B-2's stealthy skin with a special adhesive tape. The hangars, each costing $1.2 million, take about 30 days to construct, says Raaberg.
It's uncertain how many B-2s will move overseas. Four of the warplanes took part in the Kosovo and Afghanistan campaigns, although some military analysts predict that given the greater number of targets in Iraq, more B-2s would be needed by Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. combatant commander in the gulf region.
"We want to take care of our combatant commander, give him the firepower he needs and the flexibility to do what he needs to do," Raaberg says.