The Air Force will be unveiling the B-21 Raider, a high-tech stealth bomber, on Friday evening at Northrop Grumman’s location in Palmdale, California.
Friday’s event, which Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will be attending, will mark the first time the world’s first sixth-generation aircraft will be visible to the public. The newest American bomber in over 30 years, many questions remain about the B-21 Raider as nearly every aspect of its development is classified.
PENTAGON REPORT DETAILS CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY’S PLANS FOR MILITARY EXPANSION
“The B-21 Raider will be the backbone of the U.S. bomber fleet and pivotal to supporting our nation’s strategic deterrence strategy,” Northrop’s website about the B-21 Raider reads. “In addition to its advanced long-range precision strike capabilities that will afford Combatant Commanders the ability to hold any target, anywhere in the world at risk, it has also been designed as the lead component of a larger family of systems that will deliver intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic attack and multi-domain networking capabilities.”
Specifically, this aircraft will allow U.S. forces to penetrate enemy air defenses across the world, which Northrop reports that “approximately 90% of the nation’s current bomber fleet is incapable of doing.”
The Air Force has announced its intention to acquire 100 B-21 Raiders, though only six are in various stages of final assembly. The preferred basing location for the first B-21 is at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota while the alternative is Dyess Air Force Base in Texas.
“We needed a new bomber for the 21st century that would allow us to take on much more complicated threats, like the threats that we fear we would one day face from China, Russia. The B-21 is more survivable and can take on these much more difficult threats,” said then-Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James after the Raider contract was revealed in 2015.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The aircraft got its name in honor of the Doolittle Raid in World War II, when 80 airmen and 16 B-25 Mitchell medium bombers, led by Lt. Col. James “Jimmy” Doolittle, conducted an air raid on Tokyo in 1942.
