Editor’s note: Since the creation of this article, the B-21 conducted its first flight on September 11, 2025.
Another B-21 Raider soon will join the first of the next-generation stealth bombers on the flight line.
“We should see the second developmental test bird fly shortly,” United States Air Force Gen. Thomas Bussiere, head of Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC), told Air & Space Forces Magazine in a July 2025 interview.
Three Raiders are being tested — one in flight and two in instructional tests, according to a September 2024 story by the journal National Defense. The first Raider flew in November 2023 and is flying about twice a week at Edwards Air Force Base in California, according to Thomas Jones, president of manufacturer Northrop Grumman’s aeronautics division. The Air Force said in 2022 that at least six B-21s were in production, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine.
Bussiere told the magazine he is pleased with the progress of B-21 production and testing.
The total B-21 output was set at 100 warplanes in 2018, but the U.S. now faces a much different global security environment: Russia continues its war on Ukraine and both the Chinese Communist Party and North Korea are building up their nuclear arsenals. Those factors have influenced the drive for greater B-21 production capacity, which Bussiere told the magazine is a “great realization of the value and prominence of long-range strike and the ability to hold at risk anything on the planet at a time and place of our choosing. … [Such an understanding] coupled with a world environment that, quite frankly, everybody looks at and says, ‘we need more long-range strike, not less,’ and so that all comes together.”
Bussiere, along with U.S. Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton, the Commander of U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), have called for at least 145 Raiders. AFGSC is the air component of USSTRATCOM. The B-21 program was given a boost in the recent U.S. budget reconciliation bill, which allocated an additional $4.5 billion for production.
The Air Force and Northrop Grumman jointly analyzed how to increase the B-21 production rate, which has not been made public. One estimate puts it at about seven a year, according to the magazine. The funding increase “would enable the ramp rate to be a little bit steeper than the current flow,” said Bussiere, who added that the program still has the broad goal of “more than 100” Raiders, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine.
Bussiere, who has been nominated to be the Air Force’s vice chief of staff, said the B-21 was not designed as a “reach-for-the-stars” advance, but rather as a calculated blend of new stealth technologies with the goal of greater operational availability, the magazine said.
“The goal is to make the B-21 less maintenance-intensive than the [predecessor] B-2, which should lead to greater operational availability and lower costs. The B-2’s availability is also affected by its stealth characteristics, which usually require attention before the aircraft can fly again. The B-21 looks to eliminate that issue,” said The National Interest, an online journal, in a July 2025 report.
The B-21 is expected to reach its initial operational capability in 2027, with combat-ready units starting deployments by 2030, according to Air Force and Northrup Grumman officials.