At 6:51 a.m. on Friday, November 9, the U.S. Air Force’s advanced recent flying-wing B-21 Raider stealth bomber lifted off the bottom for the primary time.
Ever because the Pentagon awarded a contract for a ‘Long Range Strategic Bomber’ to Northrop Grumman in 2015, employees on the secretive Air Force-owned Plant 42 facility within the Mojave Desert have been quietly constructing six prototype stealth bombers intended to enable the Air Force to deliver each nuclear and traditional attacks across the globe. The lead aircraft was finally unveiled to the general public on December 2, 2022, revealing a flying wing profile just like the B-2 Spirit bomber it’s meant to exchange.
Now, lower than a 12 months later, the Raider has taken flight for the very first time. Photos and video footage posted by freelance aviation photographer Matt Hartman show the stealth bomber flying near Plant 42 on Friday with an escorting F-16 flying at its side.
The bomber’s three ‘tricycle’ two-wheel landing gears are lowered, with two hexagonal landing gear bay doors open under the fuselage, and one arrow-shaped door under the nose. An orange-painted pitot tube was visibly mounted left of the nose gear for gathering air speed and air pressure data for flight tests.
Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek subsequently confirmed to multiple media outlets that the B-21 “is in flight testing.”
The Raider is a subsonic bomber with a crew of two and enormous internal fuel capability, which could be prolonged routinely by in-flight refueling for intercontinental-range missions. The Raider was intended to be optionally able to uncrewed operations as a drone, but now, it appears that evidently functionality shall be phased in later than manned operations (if it ever is).
Somewhat smaller and with a ‘cleaner’ rear-aspect than the B-2, the B-21 is believed to have a good smaller radar cross-section and be optimized for higher altitude operations as hinted by its lighter-colored camouflage scheme. The Raider is designed for all-aspect stealth from any angle so it may well penetrate deep into hostile airspace and remain difficult to detect by radar from the side and behind—not only when scanned from the front. Its stealth can also be purportedly effective against each high-band targeting radars and low-band radars that sometimes are sometimes in a position to detect activity of non-flying-wing stealth fighters.
Since its unveiling, the B-21 team had been steadily working as much as the primary flight of the lead aircraft, starting with the primary power-up of the aircraft’s systems, and in September, static tests of its turbofan engines, that are based on F135 engine utilized by F-35 stealth fighters. Finally, the B-21 was seen rolling along the runway in taxi tests late in October, which generally herald an imminent first flight.
Following the primary flight in November, the B-21 will eventually fly to Edwards Air Force Base (just 12 miles away) where it would proceed sustained flight tests conducted by the 412th Test Wing as a part of the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase.
Should testing proceed on schedule—not something one should take with no consideration—the Raider may enter production and operational service within the mid-2020s, step by step replacing by 2040 the Air Force’s 20 B-2 Spirit stealth bombers and 45 B-1 Lancer supersonic bombers. Nevertheless, around 75 older, but more cost-efficient B-52 bombers will remain to function missile trucks carrying long-distance missiles.
Chronologically, the B-21 will debut in service at Ellsworth Air Force base in South Dakota, home to the 28th Bomb Wing (a B-1 unit); then Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, home to 509th Bomb Wing, the Air Force’s only B-2 wing; and eventually Dyess Air Force Base in Texas, home to 7th Bomb Wing, the service’s other B-1 wing.
The B-21 plays a central role to the Pentagon’s plans to keep up an edge over Russia and China despite their development of advanced air defense and land-attack missiles. And accordingly, it would be costly, estimated at $692 million per plane in 2022 dollars.
To be fair, that’s significantly lower than the B-2 the Raider is supposed to exchange when you think about inflation; and the B-21 is designed to be much inexpensive to keep up and operate. Despite some delays, development of the B-21 has proceeded with far less drama, delays and price overruns than notoriously afflicted the F-35 stealth jet and B-2 Spirit.
Admittedly, operating costs ultimately outstrip procurement costs, and by that metric, the minimum fleet of 100 B-21 Raiders is projected to cost $203 billion to obtain and sustain over 30 years. Air Force officials, nonetheless, have repeatedly stated they see a necessity for 145-175 B-21s, and a few hawks argue a fleet size exceeding 200 is warranted.
Why the Raider isn’t only a nuclear bomber
The Raider is making its first flight at a time through which much (arguably, most) of the present arms control regime between the U.S. and Russia of the last 4 a long time has evaporated, a large-scale land war rages in Europe resulting from an unprovoked invasion by Moscow, and tensions with China are high because it expands its historically much smaller nuclear arsenal and mulls the potential of an invasion of Taiwan.
These all make the B-21’s high-end warfighting capabilities seem distinctly more relevant today than a decade ago, when the Pentagon’s day-to-day operations were often preoccupied with fighting insurgents within the Middle East and Afghanistan.
In fact, the B-21’s application as a nuclear bomber will receive much scrutiny, wherein it’s considered a component of a broader Long Range Strike system also including the AGM-181 LRSO stealth nuclear cruise missile, and the shadowy RQ-180 long-range stealth drone (which allegedly shares the B-2 and B-21’s flying wing profile).
However the Air Force plans to make use of the B-21 in wider range of roles, and more extensively for conventional warfare, than it has with its small B-2 fleet. That flexibility shall be facilitated by open-architecture computers allowing easier integration of latest capabilities (weapons, jammers, sensors, etc.) without requiring depot-level block modernizations—supposedly in one-tenth the time needed for a B-2 according to an Air Force general.
While the Pentagon is procuring many small, short-range F-35 stealth jets, it sees many uses for a platform that’s each stealthy (and thus can operate relatively safely near enemy air defense and fighters) and can still fly very far, for a lot of hours carrying a potentially large payload. That’s partly due to fears the airfields and carrier decks relied upon by short-range stealth fighters could also be over-exposed to strikes by cruise and ballistic missiles, particularly those amassed by China. A B-21, nonetheless, could conduct missions from more distant, safer bases in Hawaii or Diego Garcia, and even the continental United States (though with reduced efficiency).
In a non-nuclear conflict over Taiwan, for instance, one in every of the B-21’s chief missions would likely involve locating and sinking invasion ships. The Air Force has also suggested it expects the B-21 to function a forward reconnaissance and battle command post managing operations and attacks by other aircraft including those of other countries, and combat drones controlled via the B-21 itself, which could presumably undertake riskier missions than manned aircraft.
In a way, which means Raiders could function vastly more survivable alternatives to airliner-based E-3 and E-7 airborne early-warning jets, recently retired E-8 JSTARS command posts, and RC-135 reconnaissance jets, none of which might approach hostile modern air defenses and fighters with much safety.
But translating these ambitious recent operating concepts into reality must await one other day. For now, the B-21’s first flight heralds many more months of testing to make sure the Raider flies as safely and reliably as predicted by computer models, discover whatever unexpected kinks inevitably crop up and devise solutions to them. This process can sometimes involves substantial unexpected delays, as occur with Boeing’s T-7 Red Hawk jet trainers resulting from unsatisfactory ejection seat trials prior to flight testing.
A tailless flying wing design just like the B-21 requires particularly extensive intervention from its fly-by-wire flight control computer for stable flight—corrections that typically receive fine-tuning and iteration based on flight tests. Thus, much work lies ahead as test pilots step by step put the lead Raider—and eventually its five sister aircraft) through its paces and work out obligatory modifications to software (ideally!) or hardware, paving the way in which for added Raiders to be in-built the low-rate initial production phase.
How easily that process goes may affect what number of Raiders Congress ultimately chooses to purchase. Regardless, the newly airborne Raider seems on the right track to occupy a serious role in U.S. national security strategy for a long time to return.