PALMDALE: After years of secret development, America's newest nuclear stealth bomber made its debut on Friday as part of the Pentagon's response to rising concerns about a future conflict with China.

The B-21 Raider is America's first new bomber aircraft in more than 30 years. Almost every aspect of the program has been labelled.

In a tightly controlled ceremony as evening fell over the Air Force's Plant 42 in Palmdale, the public got its first glimpse of the Raider. It began with a flyover of the three remaining bombers: the B-52 Stratofortress, the B-1 Lancer, and the B-2 Spirit. The hangar doors were slowly opened, and the B-21 was partially towed out of the building.

"This isn't just another plane," said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. "It embodies America's determination to defend the republic that we all cherish."

The B-21 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 and space capabilities present “the most consequential and systemic challenge to U.S. national security and the free and open international system,” the Pentagon said this week in its annual China report.

The B-21 Raider bomber will be harder to detect than the B-2, Air Force officials say. Northrop Grumman Corp. is building the bomber for the Air Force. "We needed a new bomber that would allow us to take on much more complicated threats," the official says.

The Air Force plans to build 100 Raiders that can deploy either nuclear weapons or conventional bombs. Northrop Grumman's Raider bomber went from contract award to debut in seven years. Other advances likely include new ways to control electronic emissions and propulsion technologies, analysts say.

Other 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, so the bomber could spoof adversary radars and disguise itself as another object, and use of new propulsion technologies, several defense analysts said.

“It is incredibly low observability,” Warden said. “You’ll hear it, but you really won’t see it.”

Six 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. Both 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 at an average cost of $550 million each in 2010 dollars — roughly $753 million today — but it’s unclear how much is actually being spent. The total will depend on how many bombers the Pentagon buys.

“We will soon fly this aircraft, test it, and then move it into production. And we will build the bomber force in numbers suited to the strategic environment ahead,” Austin said.

The undisclosed cost troubles government watchdogs

The B-21 Raider takes its name from the 1942 Doolittle Raid over Tokyo. It will be slightly smaller than the B-2 to increase its range, Northrop

Grumman's Warden says. It won't make its first flight until 2023.

The Northrop Grumman-built B-2 Spirit bomber will be based at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota. The base will house the first training program and squadron for the new aircraft. The bombers are also expected to be stationed at bases in Texas and Missouri. In 2001, they flew 44 hours straight to drop the first bombs in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks.

The new Raider will also get new hangars to accommodate its size and complexity, Warden said. While both went public in Palmdale, the B-2 was rolled outdoors in 1988 amid much public fanfare. Given advances in surveillance satellites and cameras, the Raider was just partially exposed, keeping its propulsion systems and sensors under the hangar.