On Friday, Pentagon unveiled its new B-21 Raider nuclear stealth bomber, the first new American bomber aircraft in over 30 years.
“We needed a new bomber for the 21st Century that would allow us to take on much more complicated threats, like the threats that we fear we would one day face from China, Russia.”
– Deborah Lee James, the Air Force Secretary said when the Raider contract was announced in 2015
The B-21 is part of Pentagon’s efforts to modernize its nuclear capabilities, which includes silo-launched nuclear ballistic missiles and submarine-launched warheads.
Currently six raiders are in production, and the US Air Force plans to build around 100. The cost of the bombers is unknown, but an early estimate was around $753 million each.
