Spectacle Sans Substance
On 02 December 2022, the United States Air Force rolled out its new, long-range, intercontinental, stealth, strategic bomber during a nighttime ceremony contrived to obfuscate details of the aircraft’s design and capabilities.
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The event, which coincided serendipitously with a new report on Chinese military capabilities, provided a dramatic backdrop against which senior Pentagon officials proclaimed the new bomber—Northrop Grumman’s B-21—the cornerstone of American deterrence capability for decades to come.
Notwithstanding stratospheric pomp, talents of brass, riots of fruit salad, a lightshow worthy of a Pink Floyd concert, and a score lifted from Hans Zimmer’s fever dreams, the rollout provided little new information about the B-21 or the program by which it was developed. Neither the bomber’s planned production-rate nor even the number of engines by which it is powered were disclosed.
Enigmatically veiled in a vast tarpaulin, aircraft 00001 was rolled from a hangar at Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale, California plant. The tarpaulin’s removal elicited peals of applause from a sounder of ostensible dignitaries, members of the press, and some two-thousand Northrop Grumman workers herded thither to betoken the American middle class. The revealed aircraft—a dusky flying-wing evocative of its B-2 Spirit forebear—confronted the assemblage with a deep keel; eccentric cockpit windows evocative of eyes; and diminutive engine-inlets to the starboard and port sides of the aircraft’s longitudinal axis. The B-21 appeared less massive than the B-2, but its wingspan seemed nearly as wide—and possibly of a different sweep. Clearly evident, however, was the B-21’s utter absence of angular airframe features, and the connotative advantage in stealth it likely holds over its elder stablemate.
A senior Northrop Grumman official later confirmed the B-21 will be “a lot stealthier” than the B-2 and feature improvements in maintainability and reliability conducive to its operating continuously in full stealth mode. By contrast, the B-2’s low-observable surfaces require many hundreds of man-hours of maintenance between missions. The B-21 further improves on the B-2 by eliminating the “special tape” that covers the latter’s airframe seams and panel lines, the Northrop Grumman official concluded.
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United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III thanked Northrop Grumman and its employees for “getting this big job done,” enthusing: “This is a proud day for the Air Force and the country.”
“The B-21 looks imposing,” Austin remarked, “but what’s under the frame and space-age coatings is even more impressive.”
Secretary Austin went on to confide that the B-21 will have longer range than any other bomber, stating: “It won’t need to be based in theater. It won’t need logistical support to hold any target at risk.” Austin added: “Fifty-years of low-observability technology have gone into this aircraft, and even the most sophisticated air defense systems will struggle to detect the B-21.”
Speaking with the press prior to the rollout, United States Air Force Chief of Staff General Charles Q. Brown Jr. described the B-21 as a “high cycle aircraft,” indicating it will fly frequent sorties with minimal maintenance intervals between. Brown posited the B-21’s digital design will facilitate a speedy test program.
That the B-21 was rolled out well in advance of its planned mid-2023 first flight speaks to the imminence of ground-test activities—such as engine runs and taxi tests—during which the aircraft will be exposed to public view.