A billion-dollar plane has taken off in the US

Costs as much as a Su-35 air regiment

In the United States, at the secret Edwards Air Force Base, the new Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider strategic bomber made its first flight. This is one of the most expensive projects in military aviation. The Pentagon is going to purchase these aircraft at a price of almost $1 billion. An experimental aircraft, of course, costs even more. If we consider that the price of the Russian Su-35S is about $50 million, then the American “Raider” costs as much as 20 fighters. Experts appreciated the American novelty.

Northrop Grumman Corporation is still on schedule. She promised the B-21’s first flight before the end of the year, and here it is. The B-21, designed according to the “flying wing” design, belongs to the 5th generation aircraft.

The US Air Force expects to receive its first B-21s by 2025. The Pentagon has ordered 145 of these aircraft. The cost of one is $800 million. For comparison, the price of one 5th generation F-35 fighter is about $100 million.

The former head of the Ilyushin company, Alexey Rogozin, said that six prototypes are participating in the tests. According to him, the final price of the B-21 could rise significantly. He recalled that when the US Air Force ordered bombers in the 1980s, it planned to buy 132 aircraft at a cost of about $500 million per aircraft. But in the end, only 21 bombers were built at $2 billion apiece.

Military expert Ilya Kramnik, assessing the B-21, noted that it is interesting primarily not for its role in the nuclear triad, as a carrier of nuclear weapons. “Here it will not fundamentally change anything, except for some increase in the stability of the aviation component,” the expert noted.

According to him, the new aircraft is interesting primarily as a carrier of conventional weapons, including hypersonic ARWW missiles, which are still in the testing stage, but may appear in the United States. According to Kramnik, such a carrier, made using low radar signature technology, can provide “an extensive range of capabilities in promising regional conflicts, especially when integrated into a single combat command and control network.”

The stealth aircraft can penetrate air defenses and use specific anti-bunker bombs GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator.

“If we talk about scenarios of possible local conflicts with American participation,” Kramnik noted, “then for countries with a fleet, the use of Quickstrike-type guided mines to block naval bases, as well as narrow passages and straits, may be quite unpleasant. With the JDAM-ER kit, the deployment distance increases beyond 90 km, the release of such products from a stealthy vehicle at such a distance is difficult to detect and this can be a lousy surprise.”

At the same time, experts note, the long-promised fifth-generation Russian bomber, known as the PAK DA – a promising long-range aviation complex – has not yet been presented even in mock-up form. “Our most modern Tu-160 first took to the air more than 40 years ago. We need to catch up,” concluded Fighterbomber.