“From what I’ve heard, the B-2 briefly appears on (some) radars when it’s bomb-bay doors are open—and the exposure in minimal. Once the weapons are dropped, the B-2 disappears (again).”
Same with the F-22. Off-platform targeting for A/A engagements help reduce exposing your location by reducing emissions.
When dropping a JDAM, shooting a missile or the gun, the F-22’s doors open for a brief time and then close again.
The F-117 (before it was retired) had the same problem regarding doors. . .and that was how it was shot down that ONE time. That and the fact ROE prohibited a change in attack direction/time night after night after night. Heck running the same attack axis at the same time each night, even Ray Charles can see it coming.
ROE was the biggest reason we lost that F-117 over Serbia. After the conflict, we tracked down the Serbian SA-3 battery commander and brought him to the states for extensive debriefing. A couple of points:
First, that Serbian AD officer was easily the “Top Gun” of their SA-3 force; years as a SAM commander and he knew how to employ his battery for full effect.
Secondly—and most importantly—our unchanging ingress routing made his job easier. After a couple of days, the Serbs figured out that our aircraft would follow the same corridor into Serbian airspace, and they adjusted accordingly. Heck, they even had HUMINT guys outside Aviano and the other bases in Italy, who reported takeoff times for departing aircraft, along with type and weapons loadout. With those bits of information, the Serbs could predict (quite accurately) the time the same jet would enter their engagement zones.
Luckily for us, the Serbs were using SA-2s and SA-3s, not the S-300 or S-400. It’s also worth noting that much of the Serb air defense system was still intact after 88 days of bombing. To this day, I’m still not sure why Milosevic gave up; he was in a position to hold out for months, if not years, and force NATO to seek a settlement on his terms.
However, I do remember that one of Milosevic’s closest political allies tried to defect a few days before the Serbs waved the white flag. Milosevic apparently thought that if he’d lost the inner circle, his days were numbered.