Exclusive: wjhenn reports on the making of the B-21, the U.S. military's new stealth bomber.
n the predawn darkness of the western Mojave Desert, workers make their way across a parking lot toward a sprawling complex of factories, hangars and runways. Teams of armed military and civilian guards patrol the grounds leading to the 5,800-acre facility, which is ringed by an elaborate security system and monitored from space by orbiting reconnaissance satellites.
New employees are instructed on production methods at a training center before starting on active assembly lines.But the road from well-funded Pentagon war plans to deployable high-tech weaponry is littered with expensive failures. For nearly 40 years, the Air Force has been unable to purchase new planes on time, on budget, and in sufficient numbers. The last time the Air Force bought a bomber, in the 1980s, it wanted 132 planes at about $500 million per aircraft.
The B-21’s size, weight, range and payload remain undisclosed, but to the trained-eye it’s noticeably smaller than the B-2. Many of the plane’s technical details, however, will likely remain classified for as long as any of us are alive. The Air Force and Northrop have poured an untold fortune to prevent information from leaking out. Many suppliers remain unaware they are making parts for the B-21.
So far, the Air Force says, the B-21 is hitting all its projected targets, but it’s hard to independently discern the plane’s true costs. Yes, the bomber’s projected $692 million per plane price tag is below the planned costs that the Pentagon announced a decade ago. But the unclassified numbers—published under the Air Force’s procurement and “Research, Development, Test and Evaluation” budget lines—don’t tell the whole story.
The Pentagon’s most recent fighter-jet program, the F-35, has been beset with production delays and cost overruns for 21 years, with acquisition costs nearly doubling to $428 billion for 2,470 planes. Before that, the Air Force wanted 648 F-22 fighter jets for $149 million each. It received 188 at a price tag of more than $400 million per copy. With this track record, says William LaPlante, the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, the suspicion of the B-21’s true costs is understandable.
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