[Constitution Day]

hangar

[joe fonebone]

The term "hangar queen" reminds me of the late 70's, when you had to keep an aircraft in the hangar to scavange for parts to fix the rest, compliments of Mr. Jimmah carter........

[Psycho_Bunny]

I had the chance to see one of these in the sky, once.  They can only be described as "eerie".

 

[Blueflag]

The aircraft is not a hangar queen in the classic sense -- where any/all of the avionics, hydraulics, powerplant, electronics are down. It really gets down to optimizing the 'sortie maintenance' procedures. The USAF is doing that/ working on that.

The guys that work on the B-2 KNOW it is an honor to do so, and they bust their butts on every detail, including readiness.

While this article is factual, I think it slams the B-2 too harshly. The B-2 is incredibly effective leading edge technology. We've got some learning to do still.

[BikerGold]

Why the B-2 is Still a Hanger Queen

Simple...I was on their assembly line. Next question?

[mr_hammer]

Wanna play, got to pay! High tech gadgets don't come cheap. If they did everyone would have'em, right?

[EricT.]

I'm thinking that if I paid $2 billion for a single aircraft, I would spend as much time as possible making sure everything was 100% operational. This ain't like parking your old Buick and turning over the engine once a month.

[globalheater]

Paint robots ?

Like these ?

http://www.durr.com/en/presse/bilder.php?term=ecorp

[GladesGuru]

B-2 - - When only the very best is good enough.

[The Red Zone]

But there were quality control problems with the liquid coating, often forcing maintenance crews to go back to tape and paste. Now the quality control problems are thought to be solved, and, if that is the case, the readiness rate of B-2s may go up to 70 percent. Maybe, if everything works out.

Mebbe they could come up with a "dip" like the stuff that is used to coat tool handles.

[Lockbox]

BUFF ping

[Tallguy]

It took many years before the B-1B could maintain any kind of realistic readiness. This is the kind of thing that happens when you push a lot of new technology into a single platform. Some of that technology doesn't work as advertised, and the maintenance issues need to be worked through.

[webheart]

Someone really needed to edit this article. It really hurts the credibility of a writer, in my eyes, when they make errors that should have been trained out in middle school. A professional writer should be expected to write a flawless article, not only by skill, but because there are spell checks and grammar checks in every word processing program currently available.

No fewer than five misspellings of hangar, including the title. The writer obviously knows how to spell the word, since it is spelled correctly once.

"that the usual access panels and such on the B-2 must be" would be correct without the word "must."

"because of the result of" should say "as a result of"

"This means, that whenever there is a crises" is one of the most hideous sentence fragments in the whole article. It doesn't need the comma, and "crises" is a plural word.

"A team of four robots were installed, to liquid coating to B-2s" Good grief! A team was installed, and to do what to or with a liquid coating?

"the Indian ocean Still" A missing comma at the end of Indian Ocean, and forgetting the capital 'O.'

I might add that when saying B-2s, it would be a good place for the apostrophe, as in B-2's. It doesn't become a posessive just because of an apostrophe.

All-in-all, this is low-C work. I can't imagine anyone getting paid for it.

[calljack]

25 man hours per flight hour isn't really that bad.
The B2 is a pretty big airplane and I don't think they have just one man working on it. Some helo's working in the desert have a worse ratio than that.
25:1 is not the worst number we have to deal with.

[doctor noe]

I thought Joan Crawford was the hanger queen.

[tang-soo]

The B-2 was a success before the first craft ever rolled off the line. This plane played a major role in bringing down the Soviet Union because the Russians were so afraid of its capabilities, they spent a huge amount of resources for a new over-the-terrain RADAR system. The threat of the B-2 made the old system obsolete.