WASHINGTON -- America's newest nuclear stealth bomber made its public debut after years of secret development and as part of the Pentagon's answer to rising concerns over a future conflict with China.
The B-21 Raider is the first new American bomber aircraft in more than 30 years. Almost every aspect of the program is classified.
Ahead of its unveiling Friday at an Air Force facility in Palmdale, Calif., only artists' renderings of the warplane had been released. Those few images reveal that the Raider resembles the black nuclear stealth bomber it will eventually replace, the B-2 Spirit.
As evening fell, a tightly controlled ceremony started with a flyover of the three bombers still in service: the B-52 Stratofortress, the B-1 Lancer and the B-2 Spirit. Then the hangar doors slowly opened and the B-21 was towed partially out of the building.
"This isn't just another airplane," Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said. "It's the embodiment of America's determination to defend the republic that we all love."
The bomber is part of the Pentagon's efforts to modernize all three legs of its nuclear triad, which includes silo-launched nuclear ballistic missiles and submarine-launched warheads, as it shifts from the counterterrorism campaigns of recent decades to meet China's rapid military modernization.
China is on track to have 1,500 nuclear weapons by 2035, and its gains in hypersonics, cyber warfare, space capabilities and other areas present "the most consequential and systemic challenge to U.S. national security and the free and open international system," the Pentagon announced this week in its annual China report.
"We needed a new bomber for the 21st Century that would allow us to take on much more complicated threats, like the threats that we fear we would one day face from China, Russia," said Deborah Lee James, the Air Force secretary when the Raider contract was announced in 2015. "The B-21 is more survivable and can take on these much more difficult threats."
While the Raider may resemble the B-2, once you get inside, the similarities stop, said Kathy Warden, chief executive of Northrop Grumman Corp., which is building the bomber.
Changes include advanced materials used in coatings to make the bomber harder to detect, Austin said.
"Fifty years of advances in low-observable technology have gone into this aircraft," Austin said. "Even the most sophisticated air defense systems will struggle to detect a B-21 in the sky."
Other advances likely include new ways to control electronic emissions, enabling the bomber to spoof adversary radars and disguise itself as another object, and use of new propulsion technologies, several defense analysts said.
In a fact sheet, Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Va., reported that it is using "new manufacturing techniques and materials to ensure the B-21 will defeat the anti-access, area-denial systems it will face."
Warden could not discuss specifics of those technologies but said the bomber will be more stealthy.
"You'll hear it, but you really won't see it," Warden said.
STEALTH PRICETAG
Six B-21 Raiders are in production. The Air Force plans to build 100 that can deploy either nuclear weapons or conventional bombs and can be used with or without a human crew.
The Air Force and Northrop also point to the Raider's relatively quick development: The bomber went from contract award to debut in seven years. Other new fighter and ship programs have taken decades.
The cost of the bombers is unknown. The Air Force previously put the price for a buy of 100 aircraft at an average cost of $550 million each in 2010 dollars -- roughly $753 million today -- but it's unclear how much the Air Force is actually spending.
The fact that the price is not public troubles government watchdogs.
"It might be a big challenge for us to do our normal analysis of a major program like this," said Dan Grazier, a senior defense policy fellow at the Project on Government Oversight. "It's easy to say that the B-21 is still on schedule before it actually flies. Because it's only when one of these programs goes into the actual testing phase when real problems are discovered. And so that's the point when schedules really start to slip and costs really start to rise."
The Raider will not make its first flight until 2023. However, using advanced computing, Warden said, Northrop Grumman has been testing the Raider's performance using a digital twin, a virtual replica of the one being unveiled.
The B-21 Raider, which takes its name from the 1942 Doolittle Raid over Tokyo, will be slightly smaller than the B-2 to increase its range, Warden said.
Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota will house the bomber's first training program and squadron, though the bombers are also expected to be stationed at bases in Texas and Missouri.
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., has led the state's bid to host the bomber program. In a statement, he called the B-21 "the most advanced weapon system ever developed by our country to defend ourselves and our allies."
The new Raider will also get new hangars to accommodate the size and complexity of the bomber, Warden said.