Early in the morning of Tuesday, October 23, the ultra-modern low-profile American B-2A Spirit bomber made an emergency landing at a civil airfield in the city of Colorado Springs, which is located in the central part of the United States - the state of Colorado.
Developed by stealth technology, a combat strike aircraft assigned to the 509 bomber wing was returning to its Whiteman airbase in Missouri.
As a result of the incident, none of the aircraft crew members was injured, a special commission was created to investigate the causes.
This year, this is not the first case involving the participation of American air force bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
On May 1, 2018, the B-1B Lancer (an analogue of our Tu-160 “White Swan” missile carrier) made an emergency landing at Midland International Airport in Texas because of the ignition of one of the engines. It is noteworthy that the bomber’s crew first tried to eject, but one of the crew members refused to have a regular rescue device, and the commander decided to put the car into the lane of the nearest civilian airport.
Also, during one week of June 2018, the KC-135 Stratotanker and KC-10 Extender refueling aircraft and the CV-22 Osprey convertiplane made emergency landings due to equipment failure.
According to the official data of the US Air Force Command, the technical condition of the aircraft fleet is extremely unsatisfactory. The number of combat aircraft, depending on their types is in the range of 50-60%. In other words, every third or fourth aircraft is not able to take to the air.
As a consequence, the frequent unplanned landing of aircraft due to technical failures in the work of components and assemblies. So far, fortunately, with quite rare cases of aviation accidents.
