To be fair, initial stealth technology wasn't even THAT expensive. The initial development of 'true' stealth (Pave Blue/F-117) cost about 2 Billion USD in R&D a

To be fair, initial stealth technology wasn't even THAT expensive. The initial development of 'true' stealth (Pave Blue/F-117) cost about 2 Billion USD in R&D and a total of about 7 Billion for all the planes and everything else. Furthermore, it wasn't even that implausible. Some Soviet physicist already wrote the paper telling us how to calculate Radar Cross Sections. The initial prototyping was a huge success (pretty much matched up exactly what their expected/calculated values). Now, the B2. That's a different story. It's very hard to justify 2 Billion dollar bombers, no matter how you spin it. Linkie here: http://www.ausairpower.net/Profile-F-117A.html http://www.ausairpower.net/Profile-F-117A.html and also Ben Rich's excellent (though somewhat biased) book Skunk Works.