Northrop Grumman B-21A Raider (LRS-B)

Unless the Air Force are developing something else in the Black World that we do not know about, and won't be revealed for a number of years. That is maybe why the number of B-21s is being kept low. We will never know for sure.
 
It’s probably in the thread somewhere but has an “airframes per year” number come up for the B-21?

Once you get to 100 if the plane is “doing well” as a catch all description of “production to operations”, it seems a no brainer to keep building 10+/year until there is a replacement.
 
Josh_TN said:
While I would not be surprised if the B-21 had some kind of air to air capability for self defense, I cannot imagine that it would ever be used with an A2A focused payload. Firing an AAM is going to mark the aircraft’s position with a road flare for every launch event, heavily negating its stealth and putting a pricy, limited inventory asset at increased risk. Air to ground missiles would have a similar effect, but presumably the entire payload would be launched all once for an air to ground engagement. Glide munitions would not have a large IR event when released and are probably preferable.
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I think it's just dependent on the situation, but I'd assume the best use case would be with long-range missiles instead of AMRAAMs or anything of the sort. Even if the Raider flies at high altitudes, the simple fact that it's slow as fuck would require A2A truck load-outs to be spec'd for range.

More sensibly, there will probably be CUDA/AMRAAM-type missiles carried in the bay for self-defense on ground attack/ISR missions.
 
Maybe a MALI-type loitering A2A munition with cruise missile range and a rocket-boosted Pitbull stage? I mean, I can dream.
 
Wild speculation time: I think the USAF-s chief operating principle is maximizing the amount of enemy targets it can attack while spending the minimum amount of money. That gave rise to the 'cost onion' which basically describes what sort of weapon you need to engage a target successfully. At the top of the cost chart sit the long range cruise missiles, below them the medium range ones, and somewhere at the bottom are the unpowered glide bombs. That's why stealth matters - the closer you can get to the target without being endangered, the more 'bang' you can get for your buck.
The fact that the B-21 will only get procured in modest numbers can mean a couple of things off the top of my head:
  • The plane is more expensive to maintain/procure than anticipated
  • Anti-stealth technology is more developed than anticipated
  • UCAVs can do most of the job of the B-21 for less money
  • Modern manufacturing/technology breakthroughs mean that cruise missiles can be made much cheaper than previously thought
It's so weird to think that some aircraft can move from 'workhorse' to 'novelty' status just by the development of seemingly unrelated technologies. Meanwhile, other planes (namely the teen series fighters) are seemingly immune to such disruption.
 

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