US stealth bombers away!

Development of a new US stealth bomber is progressing faster than expected with five of the exotically-shaped aircraft now in the final stages of assembly. Few details have emerged of the highly classified programme to replace the B-2 Spirit bomber which represented a quantum leap in aircraft design when it first entered service in 1997. The long-range “flying wing” B-21 Raider which is being built at the US Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, is modelled on the B-2. But the air force has revealed only tempting glimpses of what the new stealth bomber will look like. The rapid progress on the B-21 has been revealed by Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s secretary of the air force. His confirmation that five of the test aircraft are nearly completed took aviation experts by surprise. Previously only two had been confirmed as nearing final assembly. Under current planning the B-21 will be ready for its first flight in the spring or summer of next year and operational by the mid-2020s. The B-21, like the B-2, will be part of America’s airborne nuclear deterrent but will have many other roles including a long-range conventional strike capability. The B-2 has been used in all the conflicts since the Kosovo campaign in 1999 in a conventional bombing capacity. Although both the B-2 and the B-52 Stratofortress bomber will continue to be updated to allow these aircraft to fly for many more years, the arrival of the B-21 Raider will provide the US with a technology superiority unmatched by either of the two “great power” rivals, China and Russia. China is working on its own strategic stealth bomber, known as H-20. But the US has the advantage of having developed and flown in combat the world’s first stealth bomber, the B-2. The B-21 has been designed with next-generation stealth technology to give the aircraft as invisible a presence as possible to enemy radar. It is also expected that the B-21 will be smaller than the B-2, to meet the demand for invisibility. The new stealth bomber which is being developed by Northrop Grumman will cost around $600 million each. The air force hopes to buy 145 of the bombers. Only 21 B-2s were built. It is possible that some of the planned B-21s will be unmanned versions, or as the US Air Force describes it, bombers with a “pilot-optional” capability. This option was included in the original requirements set by the air force.