Flight testing of the Air Force’s B-21 Raider stealth bomber is moving along swimmingly, officials report, giving a rare, and small, update on the highly classified program.
“We’re really starting to strike up quite a cadence. We’re actually able to generate two test flights, sometimes, within a week, which, if you think about how far ahead we are, that’s great,” said Tom Jones, president of Northrop’s Aeronautics Systems. “I think we’re well on the way to delivering a kind of asset that can be that daily flyer for U.S. warfighters out there.”
The company has three aircraft “in various configurations” in flight test right now, Jones said Wednesday at the Air & Space Forces Association’s annual Air, Space & Cyber conference. Two of them are being used for ground testing and one for flight testing.
“I don’t want to jinx myself, but we’ve had more issues with test fixtures and training of our test personnel than we actually have with the test article, which, again, is a pretty good place to be at this point,” Jones said.
The program also completed a static test on a ground-based test article used to prove out the structure of the aircraft, according to William Bailey, director of the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office.
Meanwhile, Northrop has already started building production aircraft. The company received the greenlight for low-rate initial production after the B-21 took its first flight in November.
The Air Force plans to buy at least 100 B-21s to replace its B-1 and B-2 bombers. Once the Raider enters service, it will first go to Ellsworth Air Force Base. The service recently announced the second and third operating bases for B-21s: Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri and Dyess Air Force Base in Texas.
Demand for the service’s bomber task forces is only going to increase as B-21 comes online in the years ahead, Air Force Global Strike Commander Gen. Thomas Bussiere said Wednesday.
“As we transition from the B-1 and the B-2 to the B-21, and we transition from the B-52H to the B-52J model, there’s a realization that we’re probably not going to see a decreased demand signal from our regional combatant commands on bomber task forces,” Bussiere said. “As we transition from the legacy to new, the B-21 will provide great comfort to our allies and should provide great pause for a potential adversary.”
The service released a new image and video of the B-21 flying and landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
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