Pentagon debuts its new stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Pentagon debuts its new stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider

By TARA COPP
December 2, 2022

WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s newest nuclear stealth bomber is making its public debut after years of secret development and as part of the Pentagon’s answer to rising concerns over a future conflict with China.

The B-21 Raider is the first new American bomber aircraft in more than 30 years. Almost every aspect of the program is classified. Ahead of its unveiling Friday at an Air Force facility in Palmdale, California, only artists’ renderings of the warplane have been released. Those few images reveal that the Raider resembles the black nuclear stealth bomber it will eventually replace, the B-2 Spirit.

The bomber is part of the Pentagon’s efforts to modernize all three legs of its nuclear triad, which includes silo-launched nuclear ballistic missiles and submarine-launched warheads, as it shifts from the counterterrorism campaigns of recent decades to meet China’s rapid military modernization.

-snip-

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/technology-china-business-air-force-palmdale-761db1dae42616181a2cc63966f43554

[marble falls]

1. Ooooh, look! Here comes another one, juuust like the other one ...

... we're all Bozo's on the national defense bus.

How much infrastructure do we have to ignore to pay for this crap?

[4Q2u2]

2. We only had to

Keep a couple million people poor and marginalized for that.

[AndyS]

3. I've always thought that the way to approach

stealth would be to build a couple of mock ups, park them on the airfield at Skunkworks so the spy sattelites could see them and then have a couple of NSA chase planes fly a course as if they were escourting the "new" bomber. Chase plane pilots could chat back and fourth as if evaluating it's performance. Fly close enough to Russia so the chase planes could be picked up on radar, but absolutely NO bomber! Ya' know, just mess with them a bit.

[Chainfire]

4. It is a shame that so much of the creative abilities and fortunes of men are invested in

the search for a foolproof way to destroy mankind. It is who we are and what we do.