Air Force B-21 Stealth Bomber Completes New “Power-On” Test, On-Track For First Flight This Year

By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

The emerging B-21 is rapidly progressing and expected to make history and “take-to-the-sky” before the end of the year,  a development likely to usher in a new, paradigm-changing era in stealth air attack. 

Preparations, conceptual development and testing in preparation for the first flight have been underway for quite some time at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and Northrop data confirmed months ago that as many as six B-21s have already been built. 

While most of the detail regarding B-21 technologies have remained “black” for obvious security reasons, senior Air Force leaders have said a number of key things related to its mission scope. The service plans to build a lower-cost “unmanned” variant of the B-21 to leverage the most cutting edge technologies enabling greater autonomy. This lowers risk and also potentially widens the operational area in which a B-21 can operate as an unmanned platform can fly in extremely high-risk environments.  The manned B-21 aircraft will also likely control “loyal wingman” nearby unmanned platforms from the cockpit as well as operate as a next-generation aerial “sensor node” able to acquire, process and transmit time sensitive targeting and combat data across a multi-domain force in real time. 

The first flight timing for later this year, announced several times by both Northrop Grumman and the Air Force, has taken another key step forward with the service’s recent completion of a “power-on” test, cited in Air Force Magazine. 

Some of the B-21s mission scope was referenced in a general way by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last December at the formal unveiling of the first B-21. 

“You know, the B-21 looks imposing. But what’s under the frame and the space-age coatings is even more impressive,” Austin told an audience.