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B-2 can carry certain ordinance that B-1B can't (due to length of the bomb bay).

Forward deployment is to allow transit and arrival entirely over-water.

Interesting I guess the stealth would be top and bottom right if they have that beyond the horizon radar that bounces off the ionosophere/ground

edit: wonder if there is a phased laser "radar" where it spams a bunch of uniform dots and if some of them don't come back then there's something there

probably wouldn't work, scattering

the other one would be LEO cameras that are scanning the ground for a black dorito

maybe captures aerial disturbance/lines in the sky density change

I think it's not about the properties of land and water per se, so much as avoiding flying over populated areas where it can be observed directly.

What you're describing is called LIDAR.

Yeah I know they can map cities, was thinking about scanning the sky, probably dumb/doesn't make sense but yeah

Not a dumb question at all, it can work from space! I think getting enough return signal and contrast will be the main issues. Both can be solved with a big enough lens, but then cost and maintenance will become an issue. If the system can be optimized beyond needing a single lens per beam than it might be feasible!

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