The U.S. Air Force’s New B-21 Stealth Bomber Is Only One Year Away

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By David Axe,The National Interest

The U.S. Air Force’s new B-21 stealth bomber is scheduled to make its first public appearance in December 2021. But there’s a lot of work to do before the plane can debut.

The U.S. Air Force in 2015 awarded Northrop Grumman a $23-billion contract to develop the new bomber as a partial replacement for the service’s existing fleet of around 160 B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers.

More than four years later, work is well underway on the first B-21 test plane, John Tirpak reported at Air Force magazine. Northrop is building the bomber at a secretive facility in Palmdale, California that previously manufactured Global Hawk spy drones.

“We’re ready to start actually building parts,” Randall Walden, head of the U.S. Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office, which oversees B-21 development effort, told Tirpak.

Many aspects of the B-21’s design remain classified. The Air Force has released a crude artist’s impression of the plane that depicts a flying-wing design that’s similar to the B-2’s design but lacks the older bomber’s serrated “dogtooth” trailing edge.

Northrop added the dogtooth edge to improve the B-2’s low-level performance. The B-21, however, is designed to operate mostly at high altitude, so it doesn’t need the serration.