What Is The B-21, America’s Next Stealth Bomber?

On December 2, 2022, the U.S. Air Force officially unveiled its new bomber: the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider. Painted in bone white, built in a flying wing design, the B-21 was touted as the world’s first sixth-generation warplane. That means, in principle, it will be the most advanced plane in the world when it starts being deployed, though that’s still a ways off.

The last time America introduced a new bomber into its fleet, the Cold War wasn’t even over yet. That means its current strategic assets — the Rockwell B-1 Lancer supersonic bomber, the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, and the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress subsonic unstealthy bomber — are getting pretty old. The B-52, in particular, is the grizzled ancient of the bunch: the last one was made in 1962. Yes, these planes are still flying, and yes, they still carry nuclear weapons.

So if you think that the U.S. should probably get itself something else to carry nukes in, well, the Pentagon had the same thought way back in 2010, awarding the contract to Northrop Grumman in 2015. By late 2025, two prototypes were flying. But while it may be the latest and greatest in aviation technology, it does look like it had to make some tradeoffs along the way. What that means for its specific mission profile, and how the Air Force will think about its future bomber mix, is still in the air.

The B-21 Raider is so named because it will be America’s first bomber of the 21st century and pays tribute to the Doolittle Raid, the very first counterstrike on Japan after Pearl Harbor. At first glance, it may look a lot like the B-2; it’s a flying wing, essentially a giant chevron slicing through the air. It’s not a coincidence that Northrop Grumman designed both planes. The company looks like it took everything it learned from the older bomber and applied it to this one.

One effect of that is that the B-21 is actually quite a bit smaller than its Cold War uncle. The B-21 has a wingspan of only 132 feet, down 40 feet from its predecessor. It’s also much shorter and has about half the empty weight. It is a stealth plane, which makes sense given its familial resemblance. Past that, though, little is publicly known. It’s also still in flight testing, so things like a top speed and altitude are still being worked out.

However, unlike earlier bombers, the B-21 was intentionally designed with an open systems architecture, meaning it will be much easier to swap out elements for future upgrades. So what the B-21 can and can’t do will change over the course of its life, and its tech specs will actually change. Sounds like a pretty great plane that will only keep getting better! But it does have one limit that just might keep it from replacing the B-2.

Fighter jets like the Navy’s F/A-18 can execute small bombing strikes; you may have seen a movie about this. By contrast, the job of America’s three heavy bombers is to unleash enough ordnance to devastate an entire area, such as a large military installation. And if the worst ever happens, the B-2 and B-52 (though not, by treaty, the B-1) can deploy nuclear bombs. The B-21’s solemn duty is to cover both mission types into the 21st century.

But as mentioned above, the B-21 is quite a bit smaller and lighter than the B-2. While that’s good, it comes with a penalty: the B-21’s max takeoff weight is only 180,000 pounds and its payload is only 20,000 pounds, both about half what the B-2 can do. For reference, the bunker buster bombs that B-2s dropped on Iran’s nuclear facilities are 30,000 pounds each, too heavy for the B-21 to even carry.

Does that mean the B-21 is worse than the plane it’s supposedly replacing? Depends on how you look at it. For one thing, the Air Force hasn’t publicized any plans for its future bomber mix, so it’s entirely possible that B-2s will just keep on flying even once the B-21s are deployed. The real trick is that the B-21 is much more than just a plane — it’s a platform for a potential new range of aircraft.

The B-21 will have a crew of two, a pilot and a mission commander. Or then again, maybe it will have a crew of zero. The bomber is being designed with the intention of both manned and unmanned operations; for the latter, some sort of future AI will take over and do the flying. The plane is, then, a testing ground for weapons automation, and the lessons learned there might be applied to other planes as well.

More than that, the B-21 design may get used directly in other aircraft, what Northrop Grumman calls “a larger family of systems that will deliver intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic attack and multi-domain networking capabilities.” This almost certainly includes the never-actually-confirmed RQ-180, which is (if it’s real, which it probably is) a stealth recon drone that looks suspiciously like a certain sixth-gen bomber. If that’s out there, it’s not hard to imagine other applications of the design: perhaps an electronic warfare variant, or a “loyal wingman” drone variant to fly alongside fighter jets.

In fact, the B-21 itself is designed to be integrated with loyal wingman drones. So it may well act as a kind of flying headquarters for drone operations, all undetectable to radar, potentially all flown by AI. Welcome to the future.

If you’ve ever read anything about the Pentagon, you’re probably familiar with its favorite thing: cost overruns. So the B-21’s greatest trick may be that it’s actually — no, this is not a typo — under budget. By $2 billion, no less! For once, your taxpayer dollars won’t get blown on some hyperinflated promise that blew past its initial cost projections.

What’s more, Northrop Grumman claims that even after the plane is already purchased, its operating costs will be lower than the B-2. Time will tell, but if that holds, that means the B-21 Raider will provide next-level stealth and a cut-rate price. That, in turn, means the Air Force could field more of them. As far as deterrence goes, a vast fleet of undetectable heavy bombers is about as scary as it gets. Let’s hope the B-21 does more work preventing conflicts from ever starting in the first place than being sent to finish them.