The B-21 Raider is the Air Force's new high tech
stealth bomber.
It's designed from lessons learned from the
B-2 spirit, a flying wing design that costs
around $2.2 billion per aircraft.
Stealth comes with huge tactical and strategic
advantages, but not without a pretty big cost
of entry.
Design during the Cold War and delivered after
the fall of the Soviet Union. The change in
defense priorities meant that only a handful of
these bombers were ordered 21 in total.
This time around, the Air Force plans on buying
in bulk with roughly 100 b-21s planned and the
possibility for more on the table.
The B 21 looks very similar to the B-2
because the fundamentals of stealth and long range
penetrating air are built around the concept
of a flying wing. And that even goes back to
the Yb-49 jet when Jack Northrop actually created
some of the first flying wings.
The B-21 is also the first modernized element
of the so-called nuclear triad, land based nuclear
arm, intercontinental ballistic missiles or
ICBMs, submarines with nuclear tipped missiles
and bombers that can carry nuclear weapons
make up the triad.
If one leg of the triad is eliminated by
surprise, the others can still retaliate in the
event of a nuclear war.
This is the Northrop made bomber touting a space
age stealth coating.
It has the ability at some point to fly without
a pilot. It's designed to deliver conventional
and nuclear weapons.
The US bomber fleet is getting old.
If the Air Force is going to keep ahead of
the competition and the b-21 must rise to the
occasion.
Stealth is what separates the B-2 from
every other bomber.
The shape of the aircraft, combined with
radar absorbent materials, keep the radar
cross-section or what is detected by radar much
smaller than non stealthy aircraft.
The B-2 effectively shrinks the ability of
the enemy to see it, creating paths to targets
that otherwise would be much tougher to navigate.
The B2 can fly far up to 6000 miles without
refueling, stay undetected and hit
targets with precision.
And when I think about the mission statement,
United States Air Force Fly fight, win, air
power, anytime, anywhere, that's what the
B 21 is about.
The B2 is dependent on computer systems to
calculate its fly by wire system and to keep
the flying wing design stable. In 2008, one of
the expensive aircraft crashed in Guam during
takeoff after a sensor was compromised by
moisture, which led to a cascade of errors by the
computers needed to fly the plane.
We have a handful of B-2s. The B-2 program
started in 1976.
So the stealth technology, the the
avionics, the logistics, the cost to support
that program, simply put, are outdated.
In December 2022, a B-2 spirit was damaged during
an emergency landing.
Not much is known about what this means for the
aircraft in question, but it could end up being
costly for the Air Force. This is one more
reason the Air Force is aiming for triple digit
production numbers for the B-21.
It would decrease the impact on the Air Force
if an aircraft was lost due to accidents or
combat.
The Air Force has been contemplating how to
replace the B 2, B 1 and B-52 bombers for decades.
The B-1B Lancer is a supersonic bomber that is
treaty prohibited from carrying nuclear weapons.
It's also maintenance intensive and getting
older. And the B-52 has been in service since the
dawn of the nuclear age.
It's likely they will be in service for over 80
years before the last one is retired.
They will most likely serve alongside the B-21
as a non stealthy counterpart.
Believe it or not, the B-52, which has been
around for a very long time and will likely keep
flying past its century Mark is going to continue
flying right alongside the B 21 Raider in large
part because it's just really economical and
easy to update. So the future of America's
bomber force will actually be its oldest
bomber and the most advanced and modern
stealth bomber the world has ever seen.
The B-2 is not an inexpensive aircraft to
operate. Each flight hour costs around
$150,000, with modern logistics and lessons
learned from operating the spirit.
The Air Force is hoping to drop that number for
the B-21.
We've taken a lot of advantage of the digital
environment that's now available, coming off of
a lot of commercial advancements, but then
applying them in a weapon system environment
to design the aircraft more efficiently, to
design it with a lot more precision and design
a lot more functionality and adaptability into its
into its architecture.
In 2021, China tested a fractional orbital
bombardment system.
Not much is known about it, but it could give
China the capability of hitting targets worldwide
in a rapid way that also evades defenses.
Which begs the question is investing in stealth
bombers prudent in the age of hypersonics?
So you spend $550 Million on one B 21 rider that
can fly for the next 50 years and continue to
deliver munitions.
Or you can spend that same amount on five
hypersonic missiles, which you can only use
five times.
One other concern is that the United States could
cut off the purchase order, which would
increase the unit cost.
Other weapons programs, such as the F-22 Raptor
and the B-2 Spirit, have had planned production
numbers, which would have spread out the cost
of the program, but then they were reduced to a
handful of purchases.
The B-21 may end up costing $753 million per
copy, but the price could fluctuate depending
on how many are ordered.
But even that figure will only hold true if we do
end up buying 100 or more like we intend.
So the B 21 could be much more affordable if
we ultimately order 100 or 120.
Our adversaries defenses have increased
tremendously since the advent of the B two.
Again, starting in 1976.
Chinese and Russian air defense systems, the
S400, the S500 are highly capable.
They're extremely dangerous.
As the threat evolves, we're going to be able to
evolve with not only the airplane itself, but the
mission systems that go in it to write us advance
capability because we want to stay ahead of the
threat. And that's that's the goal.
It also represents a big savings over using non
stealth platforms for these same missions
because they're not as survivable if you lose 30
B 52 is to conduct a mission, even though the
B 52 is a cheaper aircraft, you still lost
a ton of money and time.
The B 21, which is probably going to be the
healthiest aircraft ever to fly when it enters
Service cannot just deliver ordnance, but it
can also collect intelligence to let us
know what things are happening on the
battlefield, what sorts of defenses the enemy
might be fielding, and where exactly they are.
It's the first part of the nuclear triad to be
modernized. I've been inside missile silos and
I've been on B 52.
These are essentially living museums.
It's important that our nuclear triad that's
provided security for decades now be
modernized.
The B 21 is built to be adaptable.
It uses an open architecture so that it
can quickly adopt new systems such as weapons
built years from now.
We have that open, open architecture and we have
developed software in such a way that allows us
to evolve that software much more rapidly on the
order of days and weeks rather than months and
years, as was the case in the B-2, where we were
able to add capability, the B2.
It just takes a little more time.
And certainly we've evolved on that program
to the almost to the present state of the art.
But now the B 21 has got that built into its
architecture. So it will be much more robust in
the long term. And it is built around the the
dimension of affordability as a
fundamental.
The B 21 theoretically may eventually even get a
bomber wingman that's got similar capabilities,
but was designed specifically to operate
without a crew on board.
The Air Force first announced that and then
backpedaled on it because the cost was
looking to be too high.
But as time progresses, we may find that that's
cheaper to field than more crude bombers.
So we may see a resurgence in that
concept to.