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The United States Air Force’s newest stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider, has reportedly completed structural integrity trials and is progressing to a fatigue testing campaign.
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The Department of the Air Force leaders and industry partners provided updates on the B-21 Raider during a panel discussion at the Air and Space Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference late last month.
The B-21 program has a production goal of a minimum of 100 aircraft and the highly survivable stealth bomber aircraft is expected to replace the B-1 Lancer and B-2 Spirit bombers to become the backbone of the US Air Force’s flexible global strike capability (delivering a mix of conventional and nuclear munitions).
“We’re really starting to strike up quite a cadence [and] generate two flight test flights in a given week,” said panellist Thomas Jones, Northrop Grumman aeronautics systems sector president.
“When we started this journey, we made a vow that we were going to design this system to be a daily flyer.
“It’s been a phenomenal year of progress and we hope to continue that through the next year.”
The B-21 has already completed its static test used to evaluate the structural integrity of the aircraft and now moves to a fatigue testing campaign.
“We are the free world’s only bomber force. We’re probably not going to see a decreased demand signal from our regional combatant commands on bomber task forces,” Air Force Global Strike Command Commander General Thomas Bussiere said.
“That demand signal, in my opinion, is only going to go up in the years ahead. As we transition from legacy to new, the B-21 fleet will provide great comfort to our allies and should provide great pause to any potential adversary.
“Nobody on the planet can do what we’re doing right now. Nobody on the planet can build an exquisite, technologically-advanced platform like the B-21, and quite frankly, nobody on the planet can hold at risk what we can hold at risk at a time and place of our choosing.”
The B-21 program is preparing for the delivery of aircraft to Ellsworth Air Force Base (AFB), South Dakota, with Ellsworth AFB expected to be the first B-21 main operating base and location of the formal training unit.
In addition, the United States Air Force has announced the second and third basing locations for the B-21 will be Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri and Dyess Air Force Base in Texas.
“We’re very clear as a team what the priorities are day after day,” Department of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office director William Bailey said.
“That collaboration between operators and acquirers has been a key component of this success … that has got to be a consideration [in Great Power Competition].
“Agility and flexibility, they can’t just be buzz words. These are the kind of things that you need to be able to demonstrate over time. Why? Because it’s going to be changing on you, and we’ve had the benefit of employing a lot of those strategies on this program.”
