The Pentagon has increased a price cap for its acquisitions of its first 21 B-21 raider stealth bombers, after cost overruns led the program’s primary contractor Northrop Grumman to take significant financial losses on these aircraft previously reported at $1.56 billion. These 21 aircraft will be manufactured across five low rate initial production lots. The first 40 bombers are intended to maintain an Average Procurement Unit Cost of $550 million each in 2010 dollars, with costs being controlled strictly due to prior very serious overruns affecting all of the United States’ other post-Cold War combat aircraft programs – with the F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters being the most extreme cases. This increased support for issuing fixed price contracts to Northrop Grumman for the B-21. Officials at the firm, which produced the B-21’s predecessor the B-2 Spirit, have nevertheless warned that inflation and supply chain disruptions have significantly increased the cost of the 21 low rate initial production aircraft.
The preceding B-2 bomber was also notorious for its extreme cost overruns, both for procurement and over its lifetime, with the aircraft costing the Department of Defence over $2 billion each. B-21s will notably be smaller and shorter ranged than B-2s, which is expected to contribute to making a larger fleet more affordable, with the older bombers seeing just 20 serial production airframes built. The Pentagon is set to procure over 100 B-21s, with calls having been made from security experts for an increase to over 200. A rival program, the Chinese H-20 bomber, is currently being pursued and expected to see the first prototype aircraft unveiled before the end of 2024. The B-21 and B-2 are highly valued for their unique ability to deliver gravity bombs against defended targets, where non-stealth bombers such as the B-52 rely on delivery of missiles due to a lack of survivability when operating closer to enemy defences. Delivering of gravity bombs not only allows several times as much explosive payload to be delivered per sortie, but is also the only means for allows heavier classes of bomb, such as GBU-57 penetrative bombs, to be delivered.