Stealth Bomber Redux: Not Just an Airplane, the New B-21 Raider Is a System of Systems
Story by Philip Handleman • Yesterday 9:58 AM
Stealth Bomber Redux: Part 1 Beginnings: Jack Northrop and the Flying-Wing - The following is a multi-part series detailing the origins of the B-21 Raider stealth bomber from the YB-49 and earlier. This is part one.
In the mid-1970s, Northrop (later to become Northrop Grumman) and Lockheed (later to become Lockheed Martin) squared off against each other for a U.S. government contract to build the world’s first operational all-spectrum stealth aircraft. Both companies went to great lengths to usher in the low-observables technology that held the potential to dramatically transform the nature of air warfare by making planes all but invisible to radar. In the end, the nod went to Lockheed whose design, after refinements, entered the Air Force’s inventory in 1983 as the F-117 Nighthawk – what most people called simply the stealth fighter.
But Northrop had learned a lot and applied its knowledge to the Advanced Technology Bomber (ATB) competition that soon followed. In 1981, just three years after its stealth fighter proposal was rejected, Northrop beat out a Lockheed-led team to win the ATB contract, producing the boomerang-like B-2 Spirit, a first-of-its-kind stealth bomber. It was the ultimate evocation of the brainchild of company founder John K. “Jack” Northrop, who had pioneered the concept of a flying-wing going back to the 1920s.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/stealth-bomber-redux-not-just-an-airplane-the-new-b-21-raider-is-a-system-of-systems/ar-AA17ZOWD?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=8973575bf3ad4f8e9dfe3e5fb467e40c&ei=48
