Summary and 4 important points about the B-21 bomber that you need to know: The U.S. Air Force’s next-generation B-21 Raider stealth bomber is estimated to cost around $750 million a unit, making it potentially cheaper than the B-2 Spirit it will replace.
– Designed to ensure US air superiority, the B-21 will be the most advanced bomber of its kind, with a smaller size and improved stealth capabilities.
– With global tensions rising, the timely introduction of the Raider is critical, especially as Beijing and Moscow develop their own next-generation bombers.
– Concerns remain that China could produce more bombers than the US, potentially challenging American air supremacy.
B-21 Raider: The cheap stealth bomber
If reports are accurate, the U.S. Air Force’s next-generation B-21 stealth bomber won’t cost a fortune when it enters service. The upcoming platform, which will replace the Air Force’s aging B-1B Lancer and B-2 Spirit bombers, is expected to cost about $750 million apiece.
If that figure estimated by GlobalData is correct, the Raiders will actually be cheaper than the Spirit bombers they are replacing. The bomber’s lower cost will be especially important considering the Air Force is simultaneously developing its Next Generation Air Dominance fighter jet. While the Raider’s budget will help solidify support for the B-21 program, the aircraft’s timely introduction is what’s most important. Tensions around the world continue to escalate, with Beijing and Moscow both pursuing their own next-generation bomber platforms.
The B-21 Raider – What we know
Like all U.S. bombers before it, the B-21 was designed to ensure America’s enduring air power capability and to cement U.S. air superiority over adversaries for another generation. The B-21 is named after the Doolittle Raiders of World War II, whose innovation and daring are known to have changed the course of the conflict. In 1942, the Raiders became legendary when they launched B-25 Mitchell bombers from the flight deck of the USS. hornet before aircraft carriers were actually designed to launch aircraft.
The Air Force launched the long-range bomber program in 2011. Manufacturer Northrop Grumman won the development contract a few years later, beating out Lockheed Martin and Boeing. According to a 2016 Government Accountability Office report on the program, Northrop was chosen for its design prototype due to its lower cost. The bomber was officially designated B-21 that same year. In 2018, the program completed its critical design review and the Air Force selected Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota as the site for the bomber and its training unit.
Once introduced, the bomber will certainly be the most modern aircraft of its kind. It will be used alongside the Boeing B-52J Stratofortress.
“The B-21 Raider program is proceeding as planned and flight testing continues at Northrop Grumman’s production facility at Edwards Air Force Base, California,” the Air Force said in a press release. “The B-21 will have an open architecture to integrate new technologies and respond to future threats across the mission spectrum. This will significantly improve mission effectiveness and joint interoperability in advanced threat environments and strengthen U.S. deterrence and strategic advantage.”
A senior Air Force officer recently repeated this rhetoric at a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“We’re in the flight test program, the flight test program is progressing well,” Andrew Hunter, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, said during the hearing. “It’s doing exactly what flight test programs are supposed to do, which is help us learn the unique characteristics of this platform, and do it in a very, very effective way.”
Most of the aircraft’s specifications and capabilities are top secret, but intelligence and Northrop have revealed limited information. According to released footage of the bomber, the Raider is expected to be much smaller than its predecessor, the Spirit. Due to its smaller size, the B-21 could have about half the B-2’s 60,000-pound payload capacity. In addition, a recent report from Sandboxx News suggested that the bomber’s wingspan could be about 15% shorter than the Spirit’s, meaning the new bomber will be harder to detect on radar.
With the B-21 now expected to cost much less than the B-2, the Air Force could potentially procure more than the planned 100 aircraft. Some analysts fear that even though the Raider is superior in capability to its Chinese counterpart, the Xi’an H-20 bomber could be quantitatively superior. Beijing could produce double or triple the number of B-21s, which would certainly hamper the Air Force in a potential conflict.
About the author: Maya Carlin
Maya CarlinA national security writer for The National Interest, she is an analyst at the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has been featured in numerous publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin.
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