(Washington, D.C.) As the new Air Force B-21 bursts onto the scene as a new generation of stealth bomber to drive the force decades into the future, one lesser known yet equally impactful element of its development is that it will also be able to fly and operate as a drone. Indeed, unmanned mission capability has been woven into the engineering plan for the bomber for many years now, as it is something that can give Air Force commanders a new sphere of operational possibilities.
In a recent Air Force article explaining that the future bomber force will consist primarily of new B-21s and upgraded B-52s, the service provides a somewhat familiar yet quite significant description of the B-21 mission.
“The B-21 Raider will be a component of a larger family of systems for conventional Long Range Strike, including Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, electronic attack, communication and other capabilities. It will be nuclear capable and designed to accommodate manned or unmanned operations. Additionally, it will be able to employ a broad mix of stand-off and direct-attack munitions,” .
What does it mean for the B-21 to be a drone? Completely unmanned and operated autonomously to a large degree. Certainly the algorithms and advanced autonomy exist to sufficient degrees of sophistication and complexity such that a flight path can be maintained, maneuvers can be put into effect, targeting data can be upgraded, navigational detail can be integrated and, with human supervision, bombs could even be dropped.
“The B-21 is being designed with open systems architecture to reduce integration risk and enable competition for future modernization efforts to allow for the aircraft to evolve as the threat environment changes,” the Air Force report says.
The B-21 is, according to senior Air Force developers, expected to operate with an ability to hold any target at risk, anywhere in the world, anytime, a possibility which, if true, would not necessarily require unmanned missions. However, certainly drone-like or unmanned operations can reduce risk should there be a need for stand-in attacks within heavily defended areas.
New kinds of sensing technologies, fortified by AI-capable computer processing, can quickly integrate new target information, organize it in relation to established mission objectives and make crucial adjustments without needing human intervention. Of course humans could still make decisions regarding the potential use of lethal force, yet advanced autonomy can enable the aircraft to perform an entirely new dimension of mission objective independently in a way that can improve efficiency, speed up a decision cycle and respond to new intelligence information in real time.
