Only 19 B-2 Bombers Are Left, and the Air Force Decided the 20th Wasn’t Worth Fixing

Just after midnight on June 21, 2025, seven B-2 Spirit bombers took off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. About 18 hours later, they dropped 14 bunker-busting bombs on Iran’s nuclear sites at Fordow and Natanz.

Seven aircraft sounds like a modest strike package. It was more than a third of every B-2 in existence.

Here is the exact count, why the Air Force ended up with so few, the two aircraft it lost along the way, and how many B-2s can actually fly on a given day.

How Many B-2 Bombers Are There?

The US Air Force has 19 B-2 bombers as of September 2026. Northrop built 21 in total. One was destroyed in a crash on Guam in 2008, and a second was retired after a landing accident and fire at Whiteman in December 2022.

The fleet belongs to the 509th Bomb Wing and the Missouri Air National Guard’s 131st Bomb Wing at Whiteman, the only operational B-2 base. Test flying happens at Edwards Air Force Base in California. No other country has ever operated the B-2.

Each B-2 carries a name, and each name tells you something about the aircraft’s history. Here is the full fleet.

Aircraft	Serial	Status
AV-1 Spirit of America	82-1066	In service (the first B-2, rebuilt from a test aircraft)
AV-2 Spirit of Arizona	82-1067	In service
AV-3 Spirit of New York	82-1068	In service
AV-4 Spirit of Indiana	82-1069	In service
AV-5 Spirit of Ohio	82-1070	In service
AV-6 Spirit of Mississippi	82-1071	In service
AV-7 Spirit of Texas	88-0328	In service
AV-8 Spirit of Missouri	88-0329	In service
AV-9 Spirit of California	88-0330	In service
AV-10 Spirit of South Carolina	88-0331	In service
AV-11 Spirit of Washington	88-0332	In service (repaired after a 2010 fire on Guam)
AV-12 Spirit of Kansas	89-0127	Destroyed in a crash on Guam, February 2008
AV-13 Spirit of Nebraska	89-0128	In service
AV-14 Spirit of Georgia	89-0129	In service (repaired after a 2021 runway accident)
AV-15 Spirit of Alaska	90-0040	In service
AV-16 Spirit of Hawaii	90-0041	Retired after a December 2022 landing accident
AV-17 Spirit of Florida	92-0700	In service
AV-18 Spirit of Oklahoma	93-1085	In service
AV-19 Spirit of Kitty Hawk	93-1086	In service
AV-20 Spirit of Pennsylvania	93-1087	In service
AV-21 Spirit of Louisiana	93-1088	In service

Why only 21 were ever built

The B-2 was designed to slip through Soviet air defenses, and the Air Force planned to buy 132 of them in the mid-1980s. The order was cut to 75 as costs climbed.

Then the Soviet Union collapsed. In his January 1992 State of the Union address, President George H. W. Bush announced that B-2 production would stop at 20 aircraft.

The 21st came from the test fleet. AV-1, the very first B-2, flew on July 17, 1989, and was retired in 1993 because it was never meant to join the operational fleet.

In 1996 the Clinton administration approved rebuilding it to combat standard for nearly $500 million. In July 2000 it was named Spirit of America, the 21st and final B-2.

Buying so few aircraft made each one staggeringly expensive. A 1997 GAO report put the total program at about $44.75 billion for 21 bombers, roughly $2.13 billion per aircraft once development, production and construction were counted together.

That price is also why a lost B-2 has never been replaced. There was no production line to go back to.

The two B-2s the Air Force lost

The first loss came on February 23, 2008, when Spirit of Kansas crashed on takeoff at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam. Both pilots ejected; one suffered a spinal compression fracture.

The second was Spirit of Hawaii. On December 10, 2022, its left main landing gear collapsed as it touched down at Whiteman, and a fire destroyed the left wing. The crew escaped unhurt.

The accident board traced the failure to a hydraulic coupling in the landing gear and estimated the damage at more than $300 million. In April 2024, a Pentagon budget document said the aircraft was being divested in fiscal 2025 because the damage was “presumed to be uneconomical to repair.” That took the fleet to 19.

Two other B-2s came close to the same fate and were saved. Spirit of Washington caught fire on Guam in February 2010 and took almost four years to return, flying again in December 2013.

Spirit of Georgia ran off the runway at Whiteman on September 14, 2021, after its own left main gear collapsed. After a $23.7 million permanent repair in California, it flew again on November 6, 2025.

How many B-2s can fly on any given day?

Fewer than 19. The Air Force has said it usually has 12 to 14 B-2s available for combat, a figure it gave while the fleet still counted 20.

The rest are tied up in maintenance. Typically at least one is in long-term depot work at Northrop, two or three more are in heavy maintenance at Whiteman, and up to two are in flight test at Edwards.

The B-2’s mission capable rate, the share of the fleet able to fly at least one of its missions, was about 56 percent in fiscal 2023.

That is what made Operation Midnight Hammer such a stretch. Seven of 19 aircraft were committed to one mission, and the Pentagon called it the longest B-2 mission since 2001. Eight months later, four B-2s flew from Whiteman to strike Iran’s hardened ballistic missile sites in Operation Epic Fury.

Those raids came on top of a busy stretch. B-2s first struck Houthi weapons bunkers in Yemen on October 16, 2024, and satellite imagery in April 2025 showed at least six of them at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, flying strikes in the campaign against the Houthis.

Six aircraft on an island base is almost half of the dozen or so the Air Force can normally call on. With a fleet this small, every deployment is felt across the whole force.

It is also the smallest fleet in the US bomber force by a wide margin. The Congressional Research Service counted 76 B-52H Stratofortresses and 44 B-1B Lancers in January 2026.

The B-2 is the Air Force’s only penetrating bomber, the one built to get past a peer adversary’s air defenses, which is why it gets the hardest targets. How it compares with the rest of the field is laid out in our ranking of every stealth bomber ever built.

The myths about the B-2 fleet

The most common wrong answer to “how many B-2s are there” is 20, and it comes from a surprisingly official place.

The second myth is that every B-2 is named after a US state. Nineteen of the 21 were. The other two are Spirit of America, the rebuilt first aircraft, and Spirit of Kitty Hawk, named for the site of the Wright brothers’ first flight.

The third is the price tag. “Two billion dollars each” is accurate as a program average, but it folds in the program’s development and construction costs, spread over just 21 aircraft. The Air Force’s fact sheet gives a unit cost of about $1.157 billion in fiscal 1998 dollars.

Finally, the B-2 Spirit is no longer the only stealth bomber in the sky. Two B-21 Raider test aircraft are flying at Edwards.

How long will the B-2 fleet last?

Longer than planned. The Air Force once expected to retire the B-2 in the early 2030s as the B-21 Raider arrived. In April 2026, its budget plans pointed to flying the B-2 longer than that.

On September 16, 2026, Gen. Stephen Davis, head of Air Force Global Strike Command, said the B-1 and B-2 would both be extended. He did not say for how long.

The replacement is coming, slowly. The B-21 first flew on November 10, 2023, and a second test aircraft reached Edwards in September 2025. The first operational Raider is due at Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota, in 2027, and the Air Force plans to buy at least 100.

Until enough of them arrive, the whole weight of America’s stealth bomber force rests on 19 aircraft, the oldest of which first flew in 1989.

So next time a B-2 strike makes the news, count the aircraft. Every one of them is a sizable slice of a fleet that can never grow again, only shrink.