Northrop Grumman, Falls Church, Va., has released this artist’s rendering of its B-21 stealth bomber, selected last year by the United States Air Force as the Long Range Strike Bomber of the 21st century. It is expected to fly at high subsonic speeds and to be powered by four turbofan engines. The program recently entered the Engineering and Manufacturing Development phase, and the Air Force plans to field the initial capability of the aircraft in mid-2020s.
Northrop Grumman built the flying wing B-2 Spirit bomber fleet (which consists of only 21 aircraft) 25 years ago, and has maintained and upgraded the aircraft ever since. The company also recently built the X-47B flying-wing naval unmanned combat aircraft demonstrators.
The Long Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) is intended to be a heavy-payload stealth aircraft capable of carrying thermonuclear weapons, with the first aircraft planned for the mid-2020s. The Air Force plans to purchase 80 to 100 aircraft at a cost of $550 million each.
At the 2016 Air Warfare Symposium last month in Orlando, the LRS-B was formally designated as the B-21, the 21st century’s first bomber. It is a fifth-generation global precision attack platform that will give the United States networked sensor-shoot capability for faster response and greater accuracy than ever possible before. The head of the U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command expects that 100 B-21 bombers would be the minimum ordered, and he envisions some 175 to 200 bombers in service. Initial operating capability is expected to be reached in the mid-2020s.
The U.S. Air Force current bomber fleet of B-1Bs, B-52s, and B-2s average 34 years old, and the new B-21 is expected to replace all but the Northrop B-2A through the mid-2030s. It will supplement the B-2 fleet and could allow the Air Force to retire its fleet of B-52s. These bombers first flew in 1952, and the B-52 is on track to become the first aircraft to operate for more than 100 years. The Air Force goal is 175 to 200 bombers, of which at least 100 will be the B-21 plus the 21 B-2 aircraft.
