By Jim Morris, Warrior Vice President, News
The US Air Force recently celebrated its 77th birthday by releasing video of the first pre-production B-21 Raider stealth bomber.
It shows the plane flying and landing at Edwards Air Force Base flying and landing at Edwards Air Force in southern California. According to Northrop Grumman, the B-21’s manufacturer, testing is moving ahead a rapid rate, with flights sometimes being conducted twice a week.
“Overall, I am pleased to see the performance of our test jet,” said Northrop B-21 test pilot Chris “Hoss” Moss. “The handling qualities are better than expected coming out of the simulated environment – validating the accuracy of the digital models the team has developed and analyzed over many years.”
Nothing in the video appears to be a surprise. There was a good view of the B-21’s swing-up auxiliary intake doors, which allow more air to be injested in to the engines for takeoffs and landings. The plane also appears to be narrower and shorter than the B-2 stealth bomber.
The B-21 is believed to be the stealthiest plane ever built. The engine inlets are woven into the rounded fuselage-wing-body structure in a way that is flatter and less angular than the B-2. A flatter aircraft has few of the protruding structures or angles off which radar “pings” could bounce off.
The B-21 will replace both the B-1 and B-2. Northrop says that only ten percent of the US bomber force is capable of penetrating advanced air defenses, and that the B-21 will make up for that. The Air Force intends to buy at least 100 of the new bombers. Northrop began building production models of the B-21 after the plane took its first test flight last November.
By military standards, the B-21 is being built on a fast track. Some of that may have to do with the threat posed by China.
Last January, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) issued a research paper, saying that the B-21 could be a significant deterrent to China’s threat to Taiwan and to Beijing’s expansionism in the Indo-Pacific. The paper said cited China’s growing ballistic and cruise-missile inventory, and said that the B-21’s long-range strike capability could blunt that threat.
According to Air and Space Forces magazine, “there are no other US capabilities that can reach, penetrate and persist through the (Indo-Pacific) theater within hours, not days, weeks or months.”
Meanwhile, China is also building a new stealth bomber – the Xian H-20. It’s believed to have a range of more than 5,200 miles and a payload capacity of up to 45 tons. That suggests that the plane is not just a threat in the Indo-Pacific , but also would be capable of reaching targets in the US.
