America’s newest nuclear stealth bomber made its debut Friday after years of secret development and as a part of the Pentagon’s answer to rising concerns over a future conflict with China.
The B-21 Raider is the first latest American bomber aircraft in greater than 30 years. Almost every aspect of this system is classed.
As evening fell over the Air Force’s Plant 42 in Palmdale, the general public got its first glimpse of the Raider in a tightly controlled ceremony. It began with a flyover of the three bombers still in service: the B-52 Stratofortress, the B-1 Lancer and the B-2 Spirit. Then the hangar doors slowly opened and the B-21 was towed partially out of the constructing.
“This is not just one other airplane,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said. “It is the embodiment of America’s determination to defend the republic that all of us love.”
The B-21 is a component of the Pentagon’s efforts to modernize all three legs of its nuclear triad, which incorporates silo-launched nuclear ballistic missiles and submarine-launched warheads, because it shifts from the counterterrorism campaigns of recent many years to fulfill China’s rapid military modernization.
China is on target to have 1,500 nuclear weapons by 2035, and its gains in hypersonics, cyber warfare and space capabilities present “probably the most consequential and systemic challenge to U.S. national security and the free and open international system,” the Pentagon said this week in its annual China report.
“We wanted a latest bomber for the twenty first Century that will allow us to tackle far more complicated threats, just like the threats that we fear we’d at some point face from China, Russia, ” said Deborah Lee James, the Air Force secretary when the Raider contract was announced in 2015.
While the Raider may resemble the B-2, when you get inside, the similarities stop, said Kathy Warden, chief executive of Northrop Grumman Corp., which is constructing the bomber.
“The way in which it operates internally is incredibly advanced in comparison with the B-2, since the technology has evolved a lot by way of the computing capability that we will now embed within the software of the B-21,” Warden said.
Other changes include advanced materials utilized in coatings to make the bomber harder to detect, Austin said.
“Fifty years of advances in low-observable technology have gone into this aircraft,” Austin said. “Even probably the most sophisticated air defense systems will struggle to detect a B-21 within the sky.”
Other advances likely include latest ways to regulate electronic emissions, so the bomber could spoof adversary radars and disguise itself as one other object, and use of latest propulsion technologies, several defense analysts said.
“It’s incredibly low observability,” Warden said. “You may hear it, but you actually won’t see it.”
Six Raiders are in production. The Air Force plans to construct 100 that may deploy either nuclear weapons or conventional bombs and will be used with or with no human crew. Each the Air Force and Northrop also point to the Raider’s relatively quick development: The bomber went from contract award to debut in seven years. Other latest fighter and ship programs have taken many years.
The associated fee of the bombers is unknown. The Air Force previously put the value at a median cost of $550 million each in 2010 dollars — roughly $753 million today — but it surely’s unclear how much is definitely being spent. The overall will rely on what number of bombers the Pentagon buys.
“We are going to soon fly this aircraft, test it, after which move it into production. And we are going to construct the bomber force in numbers suited to the strategic environment ahead,” Austin said.
The undisclosed cost troubles government watchdogs.
“It could be an enormous challenge for us to do our normal evaluation of a serious program like this,” said Dan Grazier, a senior defense policy fellow on the Project on Government Oversight. “It is easy to say that the B-21 remains to be on schedule before it actually flies. Since it’s only when considered one of these programs goes into the actual testing phase when real problems are discovered.” That, he said, is when schedules begin to slip and costs rise.
The B-2 was also envisioned to be a fleet of greater than 100 aircraft, however the Air Force built only 21, attributable to cost overruns and a modified security environment after the Soviet Union fell. Fewer than which might be able to fly on any given day attributable to the numerous maintenance needs of the aging bomber.
The B-21 Raider, which takes its name from the 1942 Doolittle Raid over Tokyo, shall be barely smaller than the B-2 to extend its range, Warden said. It won’t make its first flight until 2023. Nevertheless, Warden said Northrop Grumman has used advanced computing to check the bomber’s performance using a digital twin, a virtual replica of the one unveiled Friday.
Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota will house the bomber’s first training program and squadron, though the bombers are also expected to be stationed at bases in Texas and Missouri.
U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, a Republican of South Dakota, led the state’s bid to host the bomber program. In an announcement, he called it “probably the most advanced weapon system ever developed by our country to defend ourselves and our allies.”
Northrop Grumman has also incorporated maintenance lessons learned from the B-2, Warden said.
In October 2001, B-2 pilots set a record after they flew 44 hours straight to drop the primary bombs in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. The B-2 often does long round-trip missions because there are few hangars globally that may accommodate its wingspan, which limits where it may possibly land for maintenance. The hangars also should be air-conditioned since the Spirit’s windows don’t open and hot climates can cook cockpit electronics.
The brand new Raider may also get latest hangars to accommodate its size and complexity, Warden said.
Nevertheless, with the Raider’s prolonged range, ‘it won’t must be based in-theater,” Austin said. “It won’t need logistical support to carry any goal in danger.”
A final noticeable difference was within the debut itself. While each went public in Palmdale, the B-2 was rolled outdoors in 1988 amid much public fanfare. Given advances in surveillance satellites and cameras, the Raider was just partially exposed, keeping its sensitive propulsion systems and sensors under the hangar and protected against overhead eyes.
“The magic of the platform,” Warden said, “is what you do not see.”
