New B-21 Raider jet rolled out in America

Features of B-21 raider: 

• The B-21 Raider will employ cutting-edge stealth technologies to carry out nuclear missions and long-range bombing.
• Each aircraft costing about $2 billion or Rs 1624 Crore to be built.
• The B-21 Raider will be a subsonic aircraft.
• Speed: Average of 563 miles per hour.
• The B-21 Raider, which takes its name from the 1942 Doolittle Raid over Tokyo, will be slightly smaller than the B-2 to increase its range.
• Other changes likely include advanced materials used in coatings to make the bomber harder to detect, new ways to control electronic emissions.
• So the bomber could spoof adversary radars and disguise itself as another object, and use of new propulsion technologies.
• Modernisation:
• The bomber is part of the Pentagon’s efforts to modernise all three legs of its nuclear triad, which includes silo-launched nuclear ballistic missiles and submarine-launched warheads, as it shifts from the counterterrorism campaigns of recent decades to meet China’s rapid military modernisation.
• The U.S Air Force plans to build 100 that can deploy either nuclear weapons or conventional bombs and can be used with or without a human crew.

Q1) How is B-21 better than B-2?

The new B-21 Raider bears a family resemblance to the B-2 Spirit, but the two bombers will differ substantially in size, and likely in their number of engines and payload. Critically, the B-21 will also be far more advanced in terms of low-observable technology.

Source: The Hindu

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