The stealthiest new bomber is unveiled in the dark

As seemed fitting for the stealthiest bomber ever designed, America’s B-21 Raider was rolled out for the first time from its 200ft-wide hangar at Palmdale, California about 20 minutes after dusk had fallen. The Raider was making its debut on the public stage but it was sufficiently dark for hostile prying eyes in space to have to peer through the gloom to get first sighting of the exotically-shaped bomber. Lloyd Austin, US defence secretary, and assorted Pentagon heavyweights had gathered for the long-awaited moment at 5pm on Friday (1am UK time). Photographers and camera crews were corralled into an area from where only authorised glimpses of the “flying-wing” bomber could be snatched. The $550 million aircraft was created in secrecy in Northrop Grumman’s “skunkworks” at Palmdale, designed with stealth in mind, and has yet to fly. When it does take off for the first time, perhaps early next year, it will head to Edwards air force base in California, and every plane spotter, friendly and unfriendly, will try to pinpoint its flight. The first US stealth bomber programme in three decades began in 2015 when the contract was awarded to Northrop Grumman. The US has led the way in stealth technology for military aircraft, but China and Russia are catching up. China’s H-20 stealth bomber and Russia’s Tupolev PAK DA, codenamed Poslannik, both look like they come from the same family as the American B-2 Spirit bomber, in service since 1997, with the familiar flying-wing shape. “The B-21 is bound to be significantly more stealthy than the B-2 but also, crucially, it will be easier to maintain,” Douglas Barrie, aerospace expert at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, said. “As part of the development process the aim was to make maintenance less onerous,” he said. Barrie believes a number of classified projects have found their way into the B-21 programme, including developing an “uninhabited” version. Northop Grumman was contracted to design a pilot-flown and unmanned version of the Raider. “For all fighter aircraft and bombers the future is about getting the balance right between stealth and speed,” Barrie said. “The B-21 is subsonic although it will be at the high end of subsonic [close to Mach 1 or 761 mph] and the reason for this is that you have to make a trade-off, stealth for speed,” he said. “If an aircraft flies at supersonic speeds, twice the speed of sound, then other factors come into play, such as the surface heat of the aircraft frame and the cost of fuel. If it glows in the dark it can more easily be spotted. For the B-21 the key was to have a very low radar sgnature,” Barrie said. The first American military aircraft built with stealth technology – shape, size , contours and materials all developed to evade enemy radar – was the F-117 Nighthawk which first flew in 1981 and was retired in 2008. The new bomber was rolled out on Friday in front of the VIPs next to an array of other aircraft including an F-35 joint strike fighter, an F/A-18, a B-2 bomber and a B-25 Mitchell. The B-21 Raider was named after the Doolittle Raiders, a squadron of B-25 Mitchells which flew the first raid on Tokyo after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941. The raid was led by Lieutenant-Colonel James “Jimmy” Doolittle.