B-21 Raider

As we enter the final days of September, here are the top stories from last week as well as the stories that we’re investigating this week.

The United States Air Force has just announced that they have chosen the B-21 Raider as their next-generation strategic bomber. This aircraft is aimed to replace the aging B-52 Stratofortress and B-1 Lancer fleet and will be a significant part of American air warfare for years to come. The B-21 Raider is still in development, […]

A new B-21 Raider heavy bomber is now being built at Northrop Grumman’s Air Force Plant 41 located in Palmdale, California as confirmed by Air Force Maj. Gen. Jason R. Armagost.

Deploying these stealth bombers right next to Russia sends a strong message to adversaries and demonstrates the Air Force’s superiority.

Maintainers wait with bated breath for the B-1 to clear the runway. They have crossed fingers, rubbed crucifixes, and shook chicken bones.

The B-21 Raider can shift power in the Pacific by allowing the U.S. to counter China’s hypersonic missiles and giving it diplomatic leverage.

The Air Force’s future is both moving forward and tied to the past. The bombers of the future have already been decided: they are the B-21 Raider, which is currently under development, and the venerable B-52 Stratofortress, a holdover from the Cold War, the airframes of which are older than the pilots flying them.  The […]

On June 18, 1981, Lockheed’s F-117 Nighthawk took to the skies for the first time, forever changing the way warfare in the skies plays out. After decades of competing to field to the fastest or most powerful aerial platforms, the F-117 represented a transition away from brute force and toward technological supremacy. With a top speed […]

America’s B-1B Lancer, sometimes called “The Bone,” is our nation’s only supersonic heavy payload bomber. With a top speed of around Mach 1.25, the bomber can keep pace with many fighters, and thanks to its swing-wing design, the massive aircraft can maneuver a bit like a fighter as well — at least, as much like […]

Northrop Grumman’s B-21 bomber program has, in many ways, proven to be quite stealthy already. As development has progressed in recent years, Air Force officials have paraded out the same artist’s rendering of the aircraft to accompany statements about its progress, offering little in the way of details beyond the fact that it is indeed […]

Back in 1975, Lockheed’s legendary Skunk Works started tooling around with the Experimental Survivable Testbed (XST) program, also known as Project Harvey. Harvey soon led to the Hopeless Diamond, a shape developed using computers that experts agreed would offer the smallest radar return possible under their current computational restrictions. The Hopeless Diamond led to Have […]

Back in 1975, Lockheed’s legendary Skunk Works started tooling around with the Experimental Survivable Testbed (XST) program, also known as Project Harvey. Harvey soon led to the Hopeless Diamond, a shape developed using computers that experts agreed would offer the smallest radar return possible under their current computational restrictions. The Hopeless Diamond led to Have […]