The U.S. Air Pressure has confirmed that Northrop Grumman’s plane plant in Palmdale, California, will be capable of accommodate an expanded scale of manufacturing for pre-production variants of the B-21 Raider strategic bomber. The work load can even be shared with “some Tier 1 provider places,” an Air Pressure spokesman added. Known as Plant 42, the ability is operated as a element of Edwards Air Pressure Base, and was beforehand used for the serial manufacturing of the RQ-4 World Hawk lengthy vary reconnaissance drone and the B-2 Spirit strategic bomber. The 2026 finances request for the B-21 program rose to $10.3 billion, with the plane anticipated to enter service within the early 2030s after vital delays. This system has gained rising urgency as China’s defence sector has made progress in direction of fielding a number of lessons of stealth bomber, together with one first seen in mid-June that’s bigger than the B-21.
The present state of the American strategic bomber fleet has made bringing the B-21 into service a excessive precedence for the U.S. Air Pressure, because the B-2 and B-1B fleets have each contracted sharply, the previous resulting from accident and the latter to age. The ageing B-52H fleet has in the meantime seen plans to modernise delayed very significantly. Points with the B-52J improve program together with multi-billion greenback price overruns have fuelled hypothesis that the Air Pressure may terminate this system, and reinvest funds in fielding a bigger B-21 fleet. Though B-21 is at present anticipated to be produced at charges of 7-8 plane per yr, which Plant 42 is reported to have the ability to accommodate, the numerous probably of a significant improve to the variety of plane deliberate for procurement could lead the Air Pressure and Northrop Grumman to contemplate both enlargement of manufacturing services, or establishing manufacturing at a second location.
In October 2024 Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Warden acknowledged she believed that the opportunity of expanded B-21 orders was “precisely what the Air Pressure is .” Secretary of the Air Pressure Frank Kendall added that he had “been open about trying on the numerous choices they’ve for rising their pressure measurement, and has talked particularly about NGAD [sixth generation fighter], and we all know that B-21 is within the combine, as properly.” Extra just lately on Could 20 Air Pressure Chief of Employees Basic David Allvin acknowledged that if the B-52 modernisation program “goes worse than we hope, then we would want extra” funds for B-21s, including that he would “take all I can get with the funding,” for stealth bomber procurements. The B-21 supplied an “unimaginable functionality,” he added, highlighting that this system has gone “fairly properly” thus far in flight testing. Calls to broaden B-21 manufacturing to 145 and even 200 plane have been made by a number of sources up to now, though the viability of stealthy penetration bombers in opposition to new generations of quick enhancing air defences has been more and more introduced into query.
