Second B-21 Raider Completes First Flight, Accelerating Test Campaign for Sixth-Generation Bomber

A second B-21 Raider completed its first flight in California Thursday, the Air Force announced, marking a key step that officials say will accelerate testing of the service’s first new long-range bomber in more than three decades.

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said the arrival of the second test aircraft “gains substantial momentum” for the flight test program and enables the service to begin integrating weapons and mission systems into the platform. Until now, testing had been concentrated mainly on performance verification, the service said.

Built by Northrop Grumman, the B-21 is described by Pentagon leaders as a sixth-generation aircraft designed to carry both nuclear and conventional weapons while penetrating advanced air defenses. The program, which began in the early 2010s under the Long Range Strike Bomber initiative, is intended to provide the Air Force with long-range strike and nuclear deterrence capabilities well into the future.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said the addition of a second test asset “accelerates the path to fielding” by allowing more work to be done in parallel during the test phase. Service officials have said the B-21 is expected to enter operational service in the early 2030s, though most details about the schedule remain classified.

The B-21’s flying-wing silhouette echoes the Cold War–era B-2 Spirit but was designed with cost and upgradeability in mind. Where the B-2’s per-aircraft price has been reported at roughly $2 billion, the B-21 has been engineered to cost about $800 million per aircraft and uses an open systems architecture intended to make future technological updates and mission-systems integration easier.

The Air Force plans to buy at least 100 B-21s to operate alongside a modernized fleet of 76 B-52J Stratofortresses, forming the backbone of the bomber force for decades, officials said. The service has emphasized the importance of the program as it faces increasingly sophisticated missile and air-defense developments in regions such as the Indo-Pacific.

Northrop Grumman leads the program with a network of suppliers across the United States that the company and Pentagon officials say supports thousands of jobs. The company publicly unveiled the aircraft for the first time in December 2022 at its Palmdale, California, facility, but most of the B-21’s capabilities remain classified and only a handful of images have been released.

The Air Force said the second B-21’s first flight took place near Edwards Air Force Base and that expanding the flight test fleet will allow engineers to move beyond initial performance checks to integrating weapons and mission systems into the platform. Officials have stressed the need to avoid the cost growth and schedule slippage that have affected other recent programs, and Pentagon leaders have framed timely fielding of the B-21 as critical to maintaining U.S. military advantage.

As testing expands, Defense Department officials said they will continue to limit public information about the program’s detailed capabilities and milestones. The Air Force has said only that the platform’s range, stealth and planned integration with other systems will expand commanders’ options for long-range strikes and deterrence. Program managers and service leaders have signaled urgency in bringing the capability to operational units while keeping the program on schedule and within projected costs.