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During Air Force Chief of Staff Charles Q. Brown's speech at this year's Air & Space Forces Association's mega conference outside of Washington, D.C., the soon-to-be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs dropped two new images of the B-21 Raider. While the stealth bomber was rolled out in December of last year, it remains cloaked in secrecy. Brown, the top Air Force uniformed officer, didn't specifically reference the images in his presentation. Up until today, only one angle of the full aircraft has been seen by the public — head-on — and in a very controlled environment at the bomber's unveiling....

The United States on Friday (Dec 2) unveiled the B-21 Raider, a high-tech stealth bomber that can carry nuclear and conventional weapons and is designed to be able to fly without a crew on board. The slickly choreographed ceremony at B-21 manufacturer Northrop Grumman's facility in Palmdale, California, opened with the US national anthem as older bombers roared over a crowd that included top US officials. Dramatic music played and lights flashed as the doors of a hangar holding the new aircraft slowly opened, and the crowd applauded as the cloth covering it was pulled away to reveal a sleek...

China's newest supersonic stealth bomber -- which doubles the country's strike range and completes its nuclear triad -- could be ready for rollout later this year but Beijing has purportedly been weighing the step and what it could mean for escalating regional tensions brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. The highly-hyped Xian H-20 puts Australia, Japan, and the Korean peninsula all within shot and could spell trouble for the United States down the line. "If the H-20 does have the range and passable stealth characteristics attributed to it, it could alter the strategic calculus between the United States and China...

With the U.S. Air Force revealing concept art and a designation for its shadowy Northrop Grumman B-21 Long Range Strike-Bomber (LRS-B) last week, there are many details that we can now glean about the new warplane. First and foremost, the new B-21 looks very similar to its B-2 Spirit predecessor. In fact, the new aircraft look startlingly similar to the original Advanced Strategic Penetration Aircraft (ASPA) and the later Advanced Technology Bomber concept from the 1980s that ultimately resulted in the B-2. But the Spirit was redesigned late in the game to operate at low altitudes after Dr. Paul Kaminski's-current...

Northrop Grumman Corp has won a five-year contract valued at up to $9.9 billion from the U.S. Air Force to modernize and support the B-2 stealth bomber, the Pentagon announced on Tuesday. The Air Force is going to make sure everyone’s favorite bat-winged bomber stays stealth through 2058. The B-2 Spirit will be included in upcoming modernization planning being conducted by the Pentagon. Northrop Grumman has a contract with the Pentagon to complete a massive upgrade on the nuclear bomber. Its $9.9 billion contract will include new computer processors, avionics, radar warning receivers and communications gear, the defense website military.com...

Photographs circulating online this week raise the prospect that the twin-engine Hongzha-6K may not be the only plane the Chinese are preparing to field. Grainy images show a B-2-like bomber taxiing down a runway on what it is purportedly Chinese soil. They were posted on the Chinese website Tiexue with speculation that it's yet another new advanced stealth bomber for the Beijing's rapidly-advancing military. The post already has received interest abroad. Tim Robinson, the editor in chief of "Aerospace," the top publication for the Royal Aeronautical Society in London, posted the link on Twitter on Monday, questioning whether the photos...

Top Secret Tombs: The Classified Stealth Aircraft Burial Grounds of Area 51 Top secret aircraft, even those that have been publicly disclosed, remain mysterious long after emerging from the black world. When – and if – secret planes are declassified, they’re treated differently from other military aircraft, and the specifics of their hardware may remain under wraps for decades. While some ultimately go to museums, others are placed into storage well away from prying eyes, awaiting a fate that may take years to arrive. One such fate that has befallen crashed, retired or failed projects over the decades is burial....

America's new long-range bomber program is "underway," will involve somewhere between 80 and 100 planes and will be delivered sometime in the mid-2020's. "And that's about all we're saying," Air Force Secretary Mike Donley told reporters. It's been known for some time that the bombers will not fly alone but will be part of a family of systems that may include UAVs and other systems. The really interesting part of all this is the secrecy and why it's so dark. It would seem to indicate several things: that the U.S. does not want potential competitors such as China or Russia...

Hunched over, her eyes fixed downward, Tanya Hart inches across the vast wing of the B-2 stealth bomber one small step at a time, looking for any nicks or hairline scratches in the freshly repainted surface. Even a tiny blemish could make the B-2 as visible on radar screens as a giant flying tin can. Hart, 50, is the last line of defense for what may be the world's most expensive paint job. "This isn't a job where you can afford to mess up," said Hart, a "surface technician" for Northrop Grumman Corp., which built the bombers and is now...

More than 240 Airmen assigned to the 393rd Bomb Squadron, Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., arrived on Andersen recently to support the deployment of B-2 Spirit aircraft as part of the continuous bomber presence here. The Airmen and aircraft replaced the service members and the B-52 Stratofortresses deployed from the 20th Bomb Squadron, Barksdale AFB, La. Andersen AFB has had bombers present on its runway since 2004, the year the CBP mission began. The B-2's stealth characteristics give it the unique ability to penetrate an enemy's most sophisticated defenses and threaten its most valued and heavily defended targets. The bomber's...

The $2-billion question in development of a new bomber is whether a major black-world demonstration program is already underway, with Northrop Grumman as the contractor. This hypothesis makes sense of a series of clues that have appeared since 2005. In that year, Scott Winship, program manager for Northrop Grumman’s X-47 unmanned combat aircraft system (UCAS), mentioned that the company—responding to a U.S. Air Force interest in a bigger version of the then-ongoing Joint UCAS project—had proposed an X-47C with very long endurance, a 10,000-lb.-plus weapon load and a 172-ft. wingspan, the same as a B-2. The idea was to match...

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently indicated the U.S. Air Force is likely going to receive funding set aside for a new long-range bomber, according to media reports. In April, Gates cut several high-profile projects, which led to Air Force officials being disappointed that funding for the bomber could have vanished. However, the bomber program is expected to receive at least $1 billion, with the number expected to significantly increase in the years to come. "We are probably going to proceed with a long-range strike initiative coming out of the Quadrennial Defense Review and various other reviews going on," Gates...

Russia’s new strategic bomber will use stealth technologies and is expected to enter service in 2025-2030, the commander of Russia’s strategic aviation said on Tuesday. According to Maj. Gen. Anatoly Zhikharev, the stealth technology will make "the new aircraft difficult to detect by radar, although it is impossible to make airplanes of this type completely invisible.” "However, new technologies and materials will help reduce the possibility of detection,” Zhikarev said, adding that the new airplane was expected to enter service in 2025-2030. The new strategic bomber will replace the Tu-95MC Bear and Tu-160 Blackjack strategic bombers, and Tu-22M3 Backfire long-range...

Northrop Grumman has moved the U.S. Air Force a critical step closer to being able to drop a from the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. 30,000 pound penetrator weapon On April 28, an Air Force team, a Northrop Grumman-led aircraft contractor team and a Boeing-led weapon contractor team verified that the equipment required to integrate the new Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) on the B-2 -- the hardware that holds the MOP inside the weapons bay, the weapon itself, and the hardware used by the aircrew to command and release the weapon -- will fit together properly inside the aircraft. Northrop Grumman...

    Stealthy ... Brit Jon with B2 bomber        Exclusive   RAF pilot is one hell of a guy     By JOHN KAY Published: Today     AN RAF Top Gun known as “Killers” has been recruited to fly the world’s deadliest aircraft for the elite US Grim Reapers squadron.   13th bomb squadron ... badge of the elite Grim Reapers  Squadron Leader Jon Killerby pilots the £1billion state-of-the-art Stealth Spirit B2 bomber. The former Tornado ace, 34, is based with the 13th Bomb Squadron in Missouri, US. His flying overalls sport the squadron’s badge...

Apparently caused by humidity in its sensors.Video

Tape of the Crash that happend a few months ago in Guam (B-2)http://gawker.com/tag/clip/?i=5014346&t=first-ever-stealth-bomber-crash-caught-on-tape

PALMDALE - Northrop Grumman Corp. will begin formal development of a new satellite communications system for the B-2 stealth bomber under Air Force approval, which was announced Wednesday. The new system ultimately will allow the bomber to send and receive battlefield information up to 100 times faster than today. The upgrades will be installed at the company's facility at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, where the bombers were built and where major maintenance and modification work continues. The system will use extremely high frequency, or EHF, satellite communication. The current system uses ultra high frequency, or UHF. "Upgrading the...

Preparations are well under way for the Valley's premier aviation event - the Edwards Air Force Base Open House and Air Show. The free two-day event is set for Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 28 and 29, at the base that has been home to flight testing nearly every aircraft in the Air Force inventory - past, present and future. That heritage is reflected in the event's theme - "The Edwards' Edge: Making History, Reaching New Heights." This year's festivities also will honor the 60th anniversary of the Air Force, one of the first official events to do so. Headlining the...

PALMDALE: Northrop Grumman Corporation has completed an upgrade of the U.S. Air Force's B-2 stealth bomber that allows the aircraft to deliver five times its previous capacity of independently targeted, “smart'' (GPS-guided) weapons. Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor for the B-2, which remains the only long-range, large payload aircraft that can penetrate deep into protected airspace. Combined with superior airspace control provided by the F-22 Raptor and global mobility provided by tanker aircraft, the B-2 ensures an effective U.S. response to threats anywhere in the world. The SBRA upgrade program enhances the B-2's ability to respond to current and...