"Smartace11" wrote in message
...
Not true. The final B-2 production run was to be 20 planes after the
program
was cut from 132 then to 75 and finally 20. AV--2 thru -6 were to be
flight
test assets

AV-2 thru AV-6 were flight test assets and were always intended to be
brought up to production configuration; I have the complte set of crew
shirts. Including my wife's, "ship from hell", crew shirt.

Still wrong.

No, the conversion of the 5 airframes to production configuration was
planned from the very beginning.



Beginning of what? I don't need to argue the pount becaue I was there when
the decision was made. You are free to believe whatever you want. In truth
they are not production configuration to this day. They are opeational but are
in varying degress of difference from the rest of the fleet, AV- being the most
different. Mainly structural differences. Therefore they are not the final
approved (meaning accepted at the milestone called the Critical Design Review)
"prduction configuration". Ditto with the early LRIP/test models of most
planes, including the B-1, F-117, and F-22, several of which are now at the AF
Museum because thier configuration isn't easily supported. We had planned to
either use AV-1 as a part task trainer at Whiteman or turn it over to the AF
Museum. Theother planes were made operational because of cost - too expensive
to use strictly as test assets.

Under the 132 and 75 plane programs, pre 1991, they were the
pre-production LRIP (Limited Rate Initial Production) planes to be used
as
life cycle flight test assets. Possibly AVs 5 - 6 could be made
operational
because they were close to the rate production configuration but the AVs
2-4
and especially AV-1 were so far from the production configuration that
they
wouldn't be supportable as they were.

The Government had no way of knowing that AV-1 would be drasticly different,
until after first flight. You are shoveling bull****, my friend.

Youi obviously know little about the weapn system acquisition process. The
plane went through numerous design reviews and flight test readiness reviews
long before it flew and each change from AV to AV went through a configuration
control review board so the design of AV-1 and changes incorporated in in each
subsequent AV was well known as they were being built.