Air Force Pursues B-21 Design Review, Builds New “Generation” Stealth

Northrop Grumman image

By Kris Osborn – Managing Editor – Warrior Maven

The Air Force is preparing for a substantial technical “critical design review” of its next-generation B-21 Raider bomber, an aircraft said by developers to mark a new “generation” in stealth technology able to elude the most advanced air defenses in the world.

The review, described by Air Force officials as a key step prior to formal construction of the aircraft, will assess design specs, technology plans, computing power and weapons integration for the new bomber – a platform which service developers say will advance stealth technology itself to new, unprecedented dimensions of technological sophistication.

“The B-21 program has completed preliminary design review. The next step is critical design review. The Air Force remains confident in the B-21’s progress and in delivering this new capability as planned in the mid-2020s,” senior Air Force public affairs director Anne Stefanek, told Warrior Maven.

Critical reviews of the emerging B-21 design are essential to engineering a platform able to accommodate the most advanced current and anticipated future stealth properties – which include stealth coating and configuration, radar cross section reduction and heat signature suppression technologies, among other things.

A new generation of stealth technology is being pursued with a sense of urgency, in light of rapid global modernization of new Russian and Chinese-built air defense technologies; advances in computer processing, digital networking technology and targeting systems now enable air defenses to detect even stealth aircraft with much greater effectiveness.

Russian built S-300 and S-400 air defense weapons, believed by many to be among the best in the world, are able to use digital technology to network “nodes” to one another to pass tracking and targeting data across wide swaths of terrain. New air defenses also use advanced command and control technology to detect aircraft across a much wider spectrum of frequencies than previous systems could.