(Tribune News Service) — The B-21 Raiders will be revealed later this year and the project is on time and on budget, U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, R- S.D., has announced.
Rounds was the sole elected official in a visit to the B-21 Raider production facility in Palmdale, California. Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor on the B-21 program.
Russia, if you have some pictures, we’d really appreciate them… 
I remember when Edwards AirForce Base’s Facebook page was talking about the aircraft being test flown there over a decade ago, blew my mind at the lack of OPSEC
Wasn’t there a USAF ad showing essentially what sinister posted, only while flying? This was a couple of years ago.
Meanwhile: gas, diesel and natural gas are sky high, food prices are crazy and gonna be higher, we are in a recession and probably headed to a depression, and a big old goober is POTUS. Glad the air f**ks are getting a new plane. I’m sure we will be selling them to frenemies shortly.
There was a few official Air Force artists renderings but no actual photos released.
Links to pics.
https://breakingdefense.com/2020/08/air-force-flight-tests-b-21-avionics-program-on-right-track/
https://www.northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/air/b-21-raider/
If I had to guess, it’s going to be a slightly smaller B-2 wing shape, significantly redesigned trailing edges, engine intakes and exhaust, much, much cleaner fuselage with all the lessons learned from the B-2, F-22 and F-35 cooked in.
It’s gonna be the stealthiest thing ever built by man and if it’s total true capabilities were known to us I’d bet you a case of whatever your drinking it’d knock our socks off.
Youve read my mind. Priorities…we aint got em.
Price controls and Obamacare… yeah baby!
I say we load em all up with homeless and illegals. Drop their asses over Central Russia, China and Iran.
Win-win!
Cry more, and cry harder.
This project has been in the works since at least 2014. The B-1 fleet is being held together with bailing wire, and cannibalized parts. The B-2 airframes are getting tired too. B-52’s can no longer operate in contested air space. So we either want a capable strategic bomber or we don’t. GWOT is essentially over. China and other peer or near peer adversaries are our threat and we’ve been quite lax in developing and fielding weapons to compete in that space if needed.
I’m not a big fan of the current leaders in this country, hell I’m not a big fan of the US Air Force generally speaking. Having been involved in one of our most recent nation building debacles (Iraq) I’m also no big fan of trying to be the world police.
That said, I’m also not a mouth breathing Rand Paul/Ron Paul scrotum licker who thinks we can bury our heads in the sand and pretend like the world is a friendly place. So we need a capable military, and in the current environment one that can project force over large distances in contested areas. So that means the Air Force, and Navy need more funding. Hurts to say as a Marine, but it’s the situation we are currently in.
Not crying, I’m bit**ing. There’s a difference. I understand what you’re saying. If these are a need maybe we shouldn’t have wasted so much money on the F35 debacle (just to name one mil-ind complex f-up).
Also China is no where near peer. That’s a mil-ind scary story to get bigger budgets.
The DOD under Trump was directed to consider Russia and China as competitors, with Iran, North Korea, and non-state Muslim actors completing an axis of bad guys. The DOD responded with Air-Sea Battle doctrine which has morphed into beating our toughest problem – China and its land-based area denial / anti-access capabilities in the South China Sea, all the way to our bases in Korea, Japan, and Guam – maybe even to Hawaii, Alaska, and Washington State.
A long-range Stealth penetrating B-21 carrying the Long-Range Stealth Tomahawk Replacement is something the Chinese can’t counter yet.
“Near peer” in current military term of art does not mean that they are close to being peers, it just means that they fight with conventional armies, Air force and sometimes navy similar to what we would do.
As opposed to asymmetrical warfare with indigenous forces, etc. No tanks, no fighter aircraft, no long range missiles, etc.
In terms of conventional military capabilities only, we have no near peer adversaries. What makes them a threat is their nuclear weapons.
Russia has shown the world what its conventional forces can do. China has no comparable military combat experience to draw from. When was the last time Chinamart forces were deployed against anything other than Chinese citizens?
Honestly, the threat is still there and adequate - what Russia is struggling from is an abject lack of understanding expeditionary logistics, and they’re still grinding out a win with effectively limited at-home cost since they’re still shipping out billions in oil/natgas to China and EU nations.
China has been working this problem for a lot longer, and the force laydown picture isn’t as rosy for our side overall, and once again this is China, absorbing really high casualty number in order to ‘reunite’ Taiwan has always been in the books, the real trigger for that is going to be an economic downturn which forces the CCP into needing a scapegoat for any semblance of upward mobility in quality of life their emerging middle class has been experiencing to stop hard in its tracks, at which point that becomes the form of economic stimulus that might become the most attractive.
In that operations space, B21 is realistically the only strategic bombing capability to hit inland targets reliably, and the inventory of standoff munitions we have might be vast, but is not going to be enough to actually deliver a knockout blow like we’ve become accustomed to against smaller powers who have been neglecting military technology over having to maintain egregiously large standing armies - China can do both, and they’re not incapable of learning (importantly they’re able to learn, and ready to sustain the costs of learning the hard way if need be - that’s what’ makes them scary).
We underestimate China at great risk.
Generally, a good rule of thumb is “take your worst screaming nightmare and double it”–if you’re ready for that you can handle anything less. We underestimated Canada in 1812, we underestimated Japan all the way up to Pearl Harbor, we underestimated Vietnam and most of all we underestimated the Soviets’ effort and skill in infiltrating, undermining and subverting us from within.