NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The U.S. Air Force’s next stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider, is conducting engine runs and stays on the right track for its first flight this 12 months, officials from the service and manufacturer Northrop Grumman said at a conference this week.
The Raider, which the Air Force unveiled in a highly publicized ceremony in Palmdale, California, in December, is within the midst of an in depth series of ground tests for several systems, officials said on the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference in Maryland. The testing is required before the aircraft can fly for the primary time.
The Air Force intends this recent highly classified bomber, which in a couple of decade will replace the B-1 Lancer and B-2 Spirit, to be a big recent weapon in its arsenal to discourage adversaries comparable to China from acts of aggression. It has significant range and advanced stealth capabilities the Air Force hopes will allow it to slide undetected into enemy territory to perform penetrating strike missions. The service views it because the “backbone” of its future bomber force.
Air Force Global Strike Command head Gen. Thomas Bussiere said in a Tuesday panel that the Air Force and Northrop Grumman are conducting engine runs to check the B-21′s propulsion systems at Plant 42 in Palmdale, California.
In an interview with Defense News on Wednesday, Tom Jones, president of Northrop Grumman’s aeronautics systems unit, declined to say when the engine runs began or what further tests must occur before the primary flight can happen, citing security concerns.
Engine runs are performed with the B-21 restrained in a dock, Jones said, and are supposed to make sure the engines are working accurately and responding to the bomber’s throttles. But other prep work done on the Raider in recent months, Jones added, included activating its systems, checking to make sure its control actuation systems work, and ensuring doors and landing gears open or extend properly.
“We’ve made a considerable dent within the work scope that should get done in ground check, and we’re very confident we’re going to make the flight this 12 months,” Jones said.
The B-21 team also conducted troubleshooting reviews of the bomber’s fuel systems, William Bailey, director of the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office that oversees the B-21, said in a Wednesday panel. The digital tools used to examine the bomber’s fuel infrastructure allowed it to maneuver to the engine run phase in lower than five days, he added.
Jones said that on any recent aircraft’s development, such checks are crucial to making sure the fuel moves around to different places as intended.
Even under the most effective of circumstances, Jones explained, the method might be time-consuming. But when something is faulty, technicians should get down into hard-to-reach nooks and crannies of the plane to locate the issue and fix it.
“Getting that right is a giant deal on any aircraft,” Jones said. “But on a flying wing [such as the B-21], it’s critical to stability.”
Jones said Northrop Grumman has found and stuck things that should be adjusted or that were installed incorrectly on the Raider during tests comparable to engine runs, but that those discoveries are a part of the conventional strategy of fine-tuning a completely recent aircraft.
He added that investments the corporate made in digital models and software simulations paid off by helping catch issues and fix them faster, including during fuel checks. And the undeniable fact that functional fuel checks were in a position to happen in only five days showed the B-21′s underlying software is solid, he said.
That software testing is now complete, and only ground tests of its hardware stays, which Jones said is a reversal from how recent airplane tests typically work. “Every aircraft that’s ever been made, the airplane has been waiting for the software — a minimum of those which have software,” he explained.
In his panel, Bailey joked that the B-21′s software engineers “smack talk” the hardware team, “saying: ‘Would you please hurry up? We’re done.’ ”
The scheduled first flight will take the primary bomber to Edwards Air Force Base in California for much more extensive flight tests. It’s taken longer for the B-21 to achieve its first flight than its predecessor, the B-2, which had its first flight eight months after its November 1988 rollout.
Jones said the increased complexity of the B-21, including greater than 30 years of advancements in technology, led to the longer schedule. But constructing this primary test B-21 as a production-representative aircraft as a substitute of a “bespoke” experimental model — while making things more complicated — can pay off down the road by making it easier to shift into production and leverage economies of scale, he said. For instance, the initial B-21 has the mission systems and low-observable stealth coatings all production bombers can have.
“It took somewhat little bit of beyond regular time, [but] it’s going to pay dividends,” Jones said.
In March, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall sounded a note of caution in regards to the B-21′s first flight, saying it had slipped just a few months but was throughout the baseline schedule.
On the AFA conference this week, Air Force officials comparable to Kendall, acquisition chief Andrew Hunter and Bussiere expressed satisfaction with the B-21 program. Kendall said he’s hopeful the primary flight will occur this 12 months, “absent any unexpected surprises.”
“But surprises do occur in acquisition programs,” Kendall added.
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.