(DefenseNews) The Dec. 2 rollout of the B-21 Raider will mark the world’s first glimpse at a bomber that manufacturer Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Air Force see as a generational leap in aircraft technology and development.
The B-21 — the Air Force’s first new bomber in more than three decades — will be advanced enough to qualify as a sixth-generation aircraft, Tom Jones, president of Northrop Grumman’s Aeronautics Systems unit, said in a Nov. 22 interview with Defense News.
The technology used in the B-21′s testing — and the Air Force’s decision to conduct its flight tests with a production-representative aircraft instead of an experimental model — could provide a path forward for more rapid, less risky aircraft acquisitions in the future, Jones added.
He explained that the B-21′s advancements in stealth capabilities, use of open-systems architecture, and inclusion of Joint All-Domain Command and Control technologies to share data across platforms will make it “the first of the sixth-gen systems.” JADC2 is the Pentagon’s effort to connect sensors to shooters across domains of warfare.
On Dec. 2, we’ll unveil the world’s first sixth-generation aircraft. Stay tuned for your first look at the B-21 Raider. https://t.co/y5TJ8wOkY8 pic.twitter.com/SEWbsmVZR3
— Northrop Grumman (@northropgrumman) October 20, 2022
The debut of this B-21 — numbered 001 and referred to as T1, for the first flight test aircraft — at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, will mark the beginning of a major phase in the bomber’s development. Since the spring, Northrop Grumman has continued with the first bomber’s testing, final assembly, and application of coatings and paint to get it ready for the public.
Jones said that over the next few months, the first B-21 will undergo additional testing to ensure it’s ready for its first flight. That’s to include powering systems on and off, running its engines, performing taxiing test runs, and other standard integration tests.
The first flight of the B-21 will be to Edwards Air Force Base in California, where further flight tests will take place. The date of that flight is not yet scheduled; Northrop said a date will be based on the results of the ground tests but does expect it to take place sometime in 2023, a few months after the rollout.
Jones hopes the B-21 model of using a production representative aircraft — one that is essentially identical to the eventual production aircraft — for test flights will pave the way for faster acquisitions in the future.
In an October announcement about the B-21 rollout, Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter touted the Air Force’s decision early on to make the flight-test aircraft production representative, saying that it “is paying dividends as we look towards first flight.”
