My 3500th parody. The Northrop B-2 Spirit is almost three decades old and unit cost for the 21 procured in more than $2 Billion each (development costs included). One crashed, so there are 20 left in service of which only 9 are ever airworthy! With the B-3 on the horizon, stealth is reduced. Emphasis has shifted to sensors, performance, and weapons load- more like the old B-52s and B-1s with a cost reduction per unit down to $600 million each. And sadly, the Russian and Chinese jet fighters can still kill these aircraft.

* although Northrop had a history with both flying wings and flying wing bombers (YB-35 and 49), the B-2's architecture and stealth nature come from the Nazi captured Horten Ho IX of 1945 which was the world's first stealth jet fighter. The US captured the V3 and Northrop reexamined it in storage, digitally mapping it and going over the old German stealth methods. The Horten brothers made more flying wings than Northrop and were consulted postwar by the US and even Argentina which built a flying wing transport. Hanna Reitsch broke more records postwar in Horten wings. The Roswell craft many believe was either a Horten parabola or delta design. It was never saucer shaped. The grooves cut into the bottom fuselage was anti-radar.