I have been making fun of the B-21 bomber, under development by the defense firm of Northrup-Grumman, and its bumbling predecessors in uselessness, the B-1 and B-2, for years. Well, we now have gotten our first look at the newbie, shown above, and, wonder of wonders, it looks exactly like the B-2, also produced by Northrup-Grumman! A total coincidence, I’m sure!
Air and Space Forces Magazine tells us that when the B-21s start rolling off the assembly line in 2027 (don’t hold your breath), the Air Force “estimates” they’ll cost around $730 million each, adding up to $73 billion for a fleet of 100 planes. But that’s in, you know, theory. The Air Force expected to buy 100 B-2s as well, but costs kept mounting so rapidly that Congress called it quits at 21. and, according to a 1997 report from the Government Accounting Office, the total program cost for the B-2 worked out to $2.13 billion per plane. So, you know, hold onto your breath, and your wallet, and your butt, for this one.
Andrew Cockburn, at his painfully informative substack blog Spoils of War, provides more than a few painfully piquant details about our entire, grotesque strategic bomber program, those lumbering battleships of the skies, who have been entirely obsolete for decades, whose entirely unnecessary cost during that time probably runs in the neighborhood of half a trillion dollars. Among other things, we learn that, while the Air Force plans to “retire” both the 40-year-old B-1 and the 30-year-old B-2 in the next decade or so, the B-52s, which date from the 1950s, will keep flying until 2060! Yes, we will rely on a plane that will be more than 100 years old! Because its “replacements” were junk, built for no other purpose than to spend money! And the B-21 will probably “live” up to its name and waste more money than the B-1 and B-2 combined!
It's sad to think that the only possible means for reining in the ever-expanding, ever more wasteful defense budget—whose latest, most gruesome manifestation is well covered by William Hartung at Responsible Statecraft—is political pressure from us old folks if and when the Social Security and Medicare trust funds start to run out. Those brass hats at the Pentagon think they’re tough? I can tell you right now, no B-21 bomber can be a match for a horde of motorized wheel chairs! Those new babies can move! Hands off my Medicare, general! Hands off my Medicare!
Afterwords
The B-1 was so bad the Air Force wanted to get rid of it back in 2001, but Congress wouldn’t let that happen. The odds are about a billion to one that the B-21 is nothing more than a B-2 with new software because Congress didn’t want to end up spending $5 billion per plane (which could happen anyway), because stealth “architecture” doesn’t work, as the Air Force has discovered during the course of its multi-trillion dollar misadventures with the F-22 and F-35. All of these planes are money pit/“hanger queens” that spend so much time on the ground being fussed over that pilots never learn how to operate them effectively.
