On Tuesday, the United States Air Force (USAF) published two images of America's newest nuclear-capable stealth bomber at the 2023 Air and Space Forces Association Combat Symposium in Colorado.
The B-21 Raider made its first public appearance in early December during a well guarded event in California. The next-generation aircraft has been under covert development for some years and is the US's first new stealth bomber in more than three decades.
The newest model is part of the Pentagon's attempts to update all three legs of its nuclear trident, which includes silo-launched nuclear ballistic missiles and submarine-launched warheads, as it transitions from recent counterterrorism campaigns to confront China's fast military modernization.
At Tuesday's ceremony, Gen. Thomas A. Bussier, head of the USAF Global Strike Command, referred to the B-21 as the "future backbone of the bomber fleet," saying that the military branch will have 100 of the aircraft at their disposal by the mid-2020s.
The long-term bomber force structure plan of the United States Air Force aims to have at least 220 of the aircraft to replace earlier types, the B-1 Lancer and B-2 Spirit bombers.
At the ceremony on Tuesday, USAF Secretary Frank Kendall underlined the necessity for the aerospace military agency to "modernize and reshape" in order to "confront China and other emerging powers."
China is on track to have 1,500 nuclear weapons by 2035, and its advances in hypersonics, cyber warfare, and space capabilities pose "the most consequential and systemic challenge to US national security and the free and open international system," according to the Pentagon's annual China report released last year.
Nevertheless, Bussiere stated that the B-52 Stratofortress, the oldest model of all bombers, will be considerably updated in the next years in order to keep the aircraft operational until "at least 2050," adding that the aircraft "will be quite different."
Despite the fact that practically every component of the B-21 development is classified and little information has been made public, the bomber is "highly sophisticated" in comparison to similar variants already in service.
