Correct Answer : United States
The United States on Friday(2nd Dec 2022) unveiled the B-21 Raider, a high-tech stealth bomber that can carry nuclear and conventional weapons and is designed to be able to fly without a crew on board.
* The slickly choreographed ceremony at B-21 manufacturer Northrop Grumman’s facility in Palmdale, California opened with the US national anthem as older bombers roared over a crowd that included top US officials.
* Dramatic music played and lights flashed as the doors of a hanger holding the new aircraft slowly opened, and the crowd applauded as the cloth covering it was pulled away to reveal a sleek grey bomber that is on track to cost nearly $700 million per plane.
* “The B-21 Raider is the first strategic bomber in more than three decades. It is a testament to America’s enduring advantages in ingenuity and innovation,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in remarks at the ceremony.
* Many specifics of the aircraft are being kept under wraps, but the plane will offer significant advances over existing bombers in the US fleet, which Austin highlighted in his remarks.
* He hailed its range — “no other long-range bomber can match its efficiency” — and its durability, saying it is “designed to be the most maintainable bomber ever built.”
* Like the F-22 and F-35 warplanes, the B-21 features stealth technology, which minimizes an aircraft’s signature through both its shape and the materials it is constructed from, making it harder for adversaries to detect.
* “Fifty years of advances in low-observable technology have gone into this aircraft,” Austin said. “Even the most sophisticated air defense systems will struggle to detect the B-21 in the sky.”
* The plane is also built with an “open system architecture,” which allows for the incorporation of “new weapons that haven’t even been invented yet,” he said.
* Amy Nelson, a fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank, told
AFP ahead of the unveiling that the
B-21 is
“designed to evolve.”
Source : The Defense Post
