Friday saw the first strategic stealth bomber unveiled by the US Air Force in thirty years. The B-21 Raider hasn’t taken flight yet despite having an estimated cost of more than $500 million.
A presentation of the Northrop Grumman bomber, which can transport both conventional and nuclear missiles, took place at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. High-ranking Pentagon representatives, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, attended the ceremony.
The B-21 Raider, according to Austin, “embodies America’s will to preserve the republic that we all cherish,” and “This is deterrence the American way.”
The US needs a new bomber, according to then-Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James, “that would allow us to take on far more difficult threats, like the ones that we think we may one day face from China and Russia,” she said when the Raider deal was first announced in 2015.
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In 2023, the stealth bomber is anticipated to fly for the first time. The US Air Force had intended for a 2019 launch date for the aircraft, but it was eventually postponed to December 2021 and then mid-2022.
Originally estimated to cost $550 million each, inflation over time caused the price to rise to $692 million. The Air Force intends to purchase at least 100 of the aircraft overall. According to a Bloomberg article from 2021, the whole cost of supporting the B-21 program’s development, acquisition, and operation will probably cost taxpayers at least $203 billion over the course of 30 years.
However, US Congressman Adam Smith, who serves as the leader of the House Armed Services Committee, stated in April 2022 that the Air Force appears to have “learned the lessons” from the F-35 programme, which gained notoriety for significantly going over budget. By 2036, annual cost overruns for the whole military might approach $6 billion, the Government Accountability Office projected in 2021.
