US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin seems mighty proud. the B-21 is proof of how dynamic and diverse American industry is. “It’s that kind of progress that makes us great, and that kind of progress doesn’t just happen,” Austin wrote on Twitter. The tweet is accompanied by an image showing for the first time the new stealth aircraft that the US Air Force and manufacturer Northrup Grumman unveiled on Friday in Palmdale, California. The first new bomber in almost three decades.
For a long time, the US military kept it a secret about how the B-21 would look good. So far it had only published graphics that gave a rough idea of the shape of the plane. In the elaborately staged presentation, however, the US Air Force continues to make an effort not to reveal too much about its new “backbone of the bomber fleet”. The Bloomberg news agency reports that the 600 invited guests had to hand in their mobile phones and that photos were only allowed from a distance of 23 meters from certain angles.
The new bomber is intended to replace its predecessors, the B-1 and B-2, which were produced in the 1980s. The world has changed a lot since then, Austin said at the presentation. the B-21 is American-style deterrence, he added. “She exemplifies America’s determination to defend the republic we all love. She is proof of our deterrence strategy – with the ability to underpin it anytime, anywhere.”
However, the defense minister does reveal a few technical details: the bomber can be piloted and flown remotely, and can carry both conventional and long-range nuclear weapons. The aircraft has an unmatched range and even the “most sophisticated flight warning systems” would not detect the stealth bomber, Austin said.
With this bomber, the USA would like to set an example, especially in the direction of China, which in 2016 with the Xian H-20 presented a stealth aircraft that is expected to complete its first test flight in 2023.
Production and development of the bombers run in parallel, which is not without risk
Stealth aircraft use various techniques to evade radar systems, for example by cooling exhaust jets and making them less easily detectable by infrared detectors. Due to their angular surface, other aircraft types manage that search signals from flight monitoring systems are not sent back to the receiver.
One B-21 should cost 700 million dollars, a total of 100 of which are to be produced for the US Air Force. According to the Ministry of Defense, however, they should only be ready for use in a few years because development is not yet fully completed. However, it is still in production. This is not entirely without risk, as a look at the past shows. At the F-35Fighter aircraft, for example, after various mistakes in development, it was found that production would have been better waited a few more years. Instead of 2010, the aircraft was only ready in 2015.