It's the world's first 6th generation aircraft, a remarkable feat of engineering and manufacturing
that promises to strike any target, anywhere in the world. It's the B-21 Raider, and on
December 2nd, 2022, the United States officially revealed its next strategic bomber to the world
On November 23rd, 1988, the United States Air Force officially revealed the world's
first stealth bomber. While the F-117 had already been flying for years prior to this,
the B-2 was a seismic shift in aircraft design and capability. This bomber cut an
impressive and intimidating figure as it rolled out of its classified hangar. Unlike the F-117,
the B-2 was a sleek, almost organic looking aircraft with a fraction the radar return of
the Nighthawk, its advanced, radar deflecting design made possible by dramatic improvements
in computing. Advances in radar absorbing materials also made the B-2 significantly
stealthier than the F-117, and thanks to a tailless design its classified radar cross
section is known to be smaller than even the younger, more agile F-22.
At its official reveal ceremony, Air Force Secretary Edward C. Aldridge Jr. commented,
“We are not just rolling out America's newest strategic bomber, we are ushering in a new age
of strategic deterrence.” The B-2 was an aircraft built specifically to fight the
most terrible of wars, an airplane designed for the apocalypse itself, with a mission to
penetrate deep into Soviet territory and destroy Soviet nuclear missiles and command posts before
they could be fired at the United States and its allies. In the words of Secretary Aldridge, “It
is America's enduring hope and prayer that this magnificent aircraft will never fly in anger.”
The B-2 would in fact fly in anger, though thankfully it never undertook the very
mission it was designed for. Now, nearly forty years later, the B-2 is passing the
torch. But the B-21 isn't just an upgrade from the venerable B-2 stealth bomber,
an aircraft that remains in a league completely of its own, it’s a seismic shift in airpower.
Details on the B-21 are highly classified, but some capabilities of the aircraft are
known or can be extrapolated from analysis of air force requests over the years as the B-21
took shape. The name, Raider, comes from the famous Doolittle raid in World War II. Shortly
after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States was rallying for war but morale was
severely impacted by the stunning surprise attack that crippled the Pacific fleet. In
order to raise fighting spirits, the United States launched a top secret raid against Japan itself.
The raid was fraught with incredible risk, and there were many that opposed it from conception.
It required 16 B-25 Mitchell medium bombers to be retrofitted for launch from an aircraft carrier,
meaning that a great deal of their self-defense equipment and other pieces of hardware had to be
scrapped to make the planes light enough to launch from the limited deck space. The planes would in
effect be almost defenseless against Japanese fighters, and carry only a small payload- a
purely symbolic gesture that would have no effect on Japan's warfighting capability.
But the greatest risk was the loss of the USS Hornet, one of the Navy's few
aircraft carriers and a critically needed resource to defend against further Japanese
attack in the Pacific. In order to get close enough to launch the 16 bombers,
the Hornet would have to get very close to the Japanese islands, putting the entire task force
at serious risk. However, despite causing only moderate damage in Tokyo and surrounding areas,
the Doolittle raid caused US fighting spirit to soar, while demoralizing
Japanese citizens who realized the US Navy could hold their home islands at threat.
The B-21 Raider takes inspiration from the Doolittle raid in one specific area:
the ability to hold any target anywhere in the world at threat. And at its unveiling ceremony,
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin, specifically hinted at
one of the B-21's most significant capabilities.
While the B-2 remains a daunting threat to any nation's air defense network,
it has one glaring achille's heel- the aircraft requires logistical support to penetrate deep into
enemy territory. It's unrefueled range is just over 6,000 nautical miles (11,000 km), likely
less than that when it’s loaded with heavy ordnance. This is fine for penetrating into
Soviet airspace over the north pole from bases in Alaska, but a significant problem
for America's biggest modern strategic challenge- deterring Chinese aggression in the South Pacific.
In defense of Taiwan, the United States would have to fly the B-2 from airfields
well outside the range of Chinese ballistic missiles. Air fields in Japan and South Korea
are all under threat from Chinese short and medium range ballistic missiles,
while Guam is under threat from China's longest range ballistic missiles. Realistically,
the B-2 would only be able to fly from friendly air fields in Australia or more likely,
the continental United States itself. This is not unprecendented, as the B-2 undertook
many bombing missions against Iraq's military from inside the continental US in the past.
But herein lies the B-2's vulnerability- the aircraft requires in-air refueling to
accomplish these tasks. While the US air force is well equipped for this mission,
with the largest tanker fleet in the world, the tankers themselves are a dead giveaway to any
enemy with long-range detection capabilities. While the B-2 may be extremely difficult to
spot on radar, its tanker supports are not, and a sophisticated opponent such as China could likely
predict the general flight path of a B-2 with careful monitoring of US tankers in case of war.
The B-21 is set to change all of that. While giving no specific details on range or
capabilities, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin specifically mentioned at the reveal ceremony
that the B-21 can hold any target anywhere in the world at threat with no logistical
support. This is a significant capability, and strongly hints that the B-21 will be able to
fly from 'safe' US air fields far outside the range of enemy ballistic missiles to strike at
targets without giving up its presence by requiring direct tanker support en-route.
It's believed that the aircraft will achieve this incredible capability by fielding much better
engines than its predecessor, with specific comments by Secretary Austin that the B-21's
engines were “extremely efficient”. This would go in hand with reports over the last five years that
the B-21 was having setbacks due to engine design, with manufacturer Pratt & Whittney
raising specific issues with the design team on air intake. In order to maximize stealth and
defeat enemy infrared weapons and sensors, stealth bombers place their air intakes on the dorsal side
of the aircraft rather than the ventral like a traditional aircraft. The engine cowlings
themselves also need to be very specifically designed to minimize any possibility of radar
waves being bounced off and back to a receiver. Indeed if you look at the intakes of the engines
on the B-21, you can see how much smaller they are in comparison to the B-2 (use previous photo
of B-21 and B-2, punch in- even if you lose resolution- on the cockpit and engine intakes).
But stealth means less air flow which means less efficiency, and this becomes a critical concern
when the aircraft is believed to fly in excess of 60,000 feet. Flying an estimated 10,000 feet
higher than the B-2 makes the B-21 harder to spot, harder for missiles to maneuver for a hit, and
more efficient to fly, as it experiences much less air resistance due to the thinning atmosphere,
which in turn means much greater range. But a thin atmosphere also means less oxygen for combustion,
which normally necessitates larger air intakes. How the B-21 managed to solve this
paradox remains unknown, but the US SecDef was confident in boldly proclaiming the B-21 would
be able to hit anywhere in the world without obvious logistical support. What this likely
translates to is that the B-21 will indeed be able to strike targets from air fields outside
the range of China's ballistic missiles, but will likely need to link up with a tanker on the leg
back home- at which point the mission will be accomplished, so stealth is no longer important.
Speaking of stealth, the B-21 is set to change the stealth game as we know it. Here details
are so classified that if we knew specifics our Challenge guy's next challenge would be
surviving Guantanamo Bay. However, while the US will likely never reveal any details on the
B-21's stealth features- indeed in nearly forty years it hasn't shared so much as a
sentence on the B-2's own characteristics- what we do know is that the new bomber
enjoys almost four decades of advancements in materials science and computing over the B-2.
The stealth coating on the skin of America's stealth aircraft have all been evolving over
the years. Not content to with the progres they made so far, US defense firms have continued to
advance materials science to provide ever more capable stealth coatings for the US stealth
fleet. The B-2 of today is significantly stealthier than when it first took flight,
but without rebuilding each airframe from scratch its fundamental upper limit
on stealth capabilities has a hard ceiling due to the very materials it is built from
and how they are manufactured. It's believed that today's stealth materials on the B-2 can
absorb up to 90% of electromagnetic energy- and the B-21 may be able to surpass that.
SecDef Austin was confident in the B-21's stealth, remarking that even the most sophisticated air
defense systems would struggle to threaten the Raider. However, they may not have to if the
aircraft is simply too expensive to even fly more than select missions, and this might just
be the most revolutionary feature of the B-21- it's cheap. Well, cheap compared to the B-2.
The US military has refused to comment on the cost of each B-21 as it prepares to begin procurement
starting in the mid 2020s. However, the aircraft has a 'must not exceed' price of around $600
million, meaning that the Air Force has set a very hard limit on just how much it'll pay Northrop
Grumman for each airframe. By comparison, after adjusting for inflation and R&D, the B-2 today
would cost a whopping $4 billion per airframe- a lot of capability for an absolutely insane price.
Like the B-2, the US Air Force plans to buy over 100 of these aircraft. However,
unlike the B-2 the air force actually means it this time. The B-2, like the F-22, was a victim of
its own success- the aircraft was so capable that after the collapse of the Soviet Union there was
simply no need for it, thus the Air Force slashed its order down to just under two dozen air frames.
Today though, the threat of war with China in the Pacific is not just likely, but almost certain,
and the US once more has great need for a large fleet of very sophisticated aircraft.
China has adopted a strategic doctrine of anti-access/area denial, with the express
purpose of not defeating the US military, but simply making the cost to operate within the
sphere of China's regional strategic goals too high to bear. Legacy bombers such as the
B-52 and B-1 Lancer are simply too vulnerable to Chinese air defenses, and America's fleet
of B-2s are too few in number to effectively deter China. That's why the US Air Force wants
a significant quantity of B-21s- at least a 100 of them- in order to create a credible deterrent.
Purchasing the aircraft in such a large quantity will make the B-21 far more affordable than the
B-2 ever was, allowing for economy of scale to kick in. For anyone unfamiliar with the concept,
economy of scale means that it's cheaper to build large amounts of a good rather than
small quantities, as production processes become more refined and efficient over
time and development costs are spread out over a large number of purchases. This was
the original dream of the B-2, until the Soviet Union made the mistake of allowing
its eastern block allies to start wearing Levi jeans and watch Knight Rider (use photo
https://www.joblo.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/knight-rider-tv-series.jpg), leading to the entire
communist experiment collapsing in on itself a few years later.
The B-2 is an absolute princess, costing the US Air Force a truly criminal amount of money to
operate and maintain. The aircraft is so delicate that it needs its own specialized air conditioned
hangar when deployed outside of the United States, and while details remain classified, it's believed
that just to get it off the ground the Air Force has to give it the “You is kind, you is important”
speech from The Help (use image B-2 linked in Trello card, yes it's low resolution that's fine).
The B-21 is designed to be far more robust and capable, with Secretary Austin promising that
the aircraft is “the most maintainable bomber ever built”. US Air Force mechanics would be right to
be skeptical of the claim, as stealth aircraft are notoriously delicate and require intensive
and costly maintenance to operate. This is largely due to the special stealth coating, with
current stealth fighters limited to only short supersonic sprints under threat of burning off
their stealth coatings. Advancements in stealth coatings though make the B-21 much more robust,
and indeed there are rumors of a brand new stealth coating developed recently that is not only cheap,
but much easier to apply to aircraft even when deployed in austere conditions.
The B-21's greatest strength however may come from its adaptability.
Starting in the early 2000s, the United States military identified a key deficiency in its
weapons acquisitions programs. Simply put, technology was evolving so fast
that by the time a weapon system went from initial proposal to operational status- a
process that could take decades for things such as aircraft- many of the elements of
said weapon system would be obsolete or significantly behind current tech. This
would leave US forces vulnerable to enemy systems more recently acquired than its own,
and is a fundamental reason why the F-22 is being retired so early.
To solve this problem the US adopted an open architecture design philosophy, which meant that
future combat systems would need to be designed in away that individual components could be replaced
over the system's lifetime. The F-22 for example has many avionics that are quickly falling behind,
but due to the way the aircraft was designed, it's either impossible or simply too expensive
to replace them with modern systems. The B-21 averts this problem by being built from
the ground up with open architecture in mind, allowing the stealth bomber to remain extremely
relevant for decades to come and overcoming a huge limiting factor of the current B-2 bomber.
This is not the only modern warfighting doctrine that the B-21 was built to adopt however. To
combat future threats, the US has evolved its Cold War era AirLand battle doctrine to
All-Domain operations. The old AirLand battle doctrine combined air assets with ground forces
to conduct deep, penetrating strikes directly at the enemy's rear areas and command posts,
throwing enemy forces into disarray which could be exploited by aggressive
ground forces. Designed to counter Soviet doctrine of fielding overwhelming numbers,
AirLand battle exploited the heavy top-down command structure of the
Soviet Union to sever units off from higher command, and proved to be one of the most
decisive military doctrines in history when the US military and its partners dismembered
Iraq's massive military in Desert Storm at a truly negligible cost to friendly forces.
All-Domain battle is the natural evolution of AirLand battle and proposes that US forces
operate across all domains simultaneously to create conundrums for the enemy and exploit
the opportunities they present. By engaging an enemy across land, air, sea, sub-sea, space,
and cyberspace, enemy forces are forced to defend against all domains simultaneously,
likely leading to defeats in at least one which can be quickly and savagely exploited.
The B-21 is designed to seamlessly integrate into future battle plans by being a multi-role
platform- a capability which no previous bomber has ever matched. Not only is the B-21 capable
of performing strategic bombing in heavily contested battle spaces, but the aircraft
can also be used as an intelligence gathering platform. To create a more robust battle network,
the B-21 can also act as a battle management tool, creating resiliency for US forces as US
assets are increasingly attrited in combat operations. The bomber will even be able to
guide other aircraft or ground force's weapons to their targets, essentially acting like a
forward observer from behind enemy lines- a daunting proposition for any adversary.
The Raider also has the capability of integrating directly with allied forces,
meaning that it won't just be guiding US weapons to targets, but those of its allies and partners
as well. This is a truly formidable capability given that the true strength of the United States
military is not its own might, but the fact that no matter where in the world it fights,
it's going to bring a lot more friends to that fight than any adversary. Integrating those forces
however has always been a challenge, and the B-21 promises to not just be lethal on its own,
but greatly enhance the lethality of America's allies and partners.
Like in 1988, it’s America's sincerest hope that the B-21 never fly in anger. The greatest value
that the United States could gain from this astonishing feat of engineering is not the
destruction that it can wreak on enemy forces, but preventing a conflict from ever arising in
the first place. In the words of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, “We are again making it
plain to any potential foe- the risks and costs of aggression far outweigh any conceivable gain.”
Now go check out Why Does the B-2 Stealth Bomber Cost $2 Billion,
or click this other video instead.