Coming soon: The official rollout of the secretive
B-21
Oct 20, 04:53 PM
The B-21 Raider, the Air Force's next stealth bomber, will be shown to
the public for the first time in Palmdale, California on Dec. 2. (Northrop
Grumman)
WASHINGTON — Mark your calendar. The Air Force’s
next stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider, will be revealed to the
public in California on Dec. 2.
Northrop
Grumman, the company building the B-21, announced the date in a tweet
Thursday.
The rollout will take place at Northrop Grumman’s
facility in Palmdale, California. The company said in September that six test
bombers were in various stages of final assembly there.
But the company and the Air Force have shared few
details of the rollout. Northrop Grumman’s announcement included a short video
that showed a shrouded B-21 being illuminated with floodlights, and the date.
The Air Force did not have an immediate comment on
the announcement.
This will be the first public unveiling of a new
Air Force bomber in 34 years, since the B-2 Spirit’s debut in November 1988.
The first B-21 finished its initial ground
tests in May, which included stress tests to verify the bomber’s structural
integrity. Other tests and steps in the process that followed have included
powering up the bomber, testing its subsystems and applying coatings and paint.
The first flight
of the B-21 will come in 2023, a few months after the
rollout. Northrop Grumman said in September the timing of that flight “will be
based on ground test outcomes.”
That B-21 will fly from Plant 42 at Palmdale to
Edwards Air Force Base in California next year, where formal flight tests will
take place.
Andrew Hunter, the Air Force’s assistant secretary
for acquisition, technology and logistics, in September announced the
approximate timing of the B-21 rollout at the Air and Space Forces
Association’s Air Space Cyber conference, saying he expected it in the first
week of December.
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