B-2 Spirit
ICAO B2A flying wing with no fuselage and no tail, and twenty of them exist. Live B-2 Spirit positions, when there are any.
Flying right now
Live · 30s
No B-2 Spirit is transmitting ADS-B at the moment.
Military aircraft are not obliged to broadcast, so this happens regularly. The count refreshes every thirty seconds.
Airframe
- Manufacturer
- Northrop Grumman
- Role
- Stealth strategic bomber
- Class
- L4J — Landplane, 4 jet engines
- Crew
- 2
- First flight
- 17 July 1989
- In service
- 1997
Operators airborne
Nothing of this type is up right now.
About the B-2 Spirit
Twenty-one B-2s were built and twenty remain, each costing around two billion dollars once development is counted — which makes it the most expensive aircraft ever made. It is a pure flying wing: no fuselage, no tail, nothing that returns a radar signal in a predictable direction.
It will not appear on this page in any meaningful way. A stealth bomber has every reason not to transmit, the fleet is tiny, and its missions are typically flown non-stop from Missouri with multiple refuellings rather than through busy airspace.
What is trackable is the support. A B-2 mission needs tankers, and unusual tanker activity over the Atlantic or Pacific has repeatedly been the first public sign that something was happening.
Callsign prefixes
- SPIRIT
- Occasionally used on transits
- DEATH
- A recurring B-2 block
How to recognise it
- —A flying wing with a sawtooth trailing edge and no vertical surfaces at all.
- —Grey, smooth and entirely without the shapes an aircraft normally has.
- —Almost never seen outside airshows and Whiteman Air Force Base.
Common questions
+ How many B-2s are there?
Twenty. Twenty-one were built and one was lost in a 2008 accident. The small fleet is a direct result of the programme being cut from 132 aircraft after the Cold War ended.
+ Can you track a B-2?
Essentially no. It does not transmit ADS-B on operational flights, and its missions avoid the airspace where receivers are dense. Watching tanker activity is the usual proxy.
+ Why does the B-2 have no tail?
Vertical surfaces reflect radar strongly. A flying wing removes them entirely, and the aircraft is kept stable by computers adjusting the trailing-edge surfaces continuously instead.