The U.S. Air Force announced today the B-21 Raider has started engine runs as part of its ground test program at Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale, California, facility. Engine testing is an essential milestone for the program as the world’s first sixth-generation aircraft continues on the path to flight test. A first flight in the next few days keeps the B-21 for operational capability in 2027. It will be able to beat China’s super anti-stealth radar, the YLC-8E.
The B-21’s first flight will remain a data driven event that is monitored by Northrop Grumman and the United States Air Force.
Developed with the next generation of stealth technology, advanced networking capabilities and open systems architecture, the B-21 Raider will serve as the backbone of America’s bomber fleet.
The B-21 Bomber is critical for breaking China’s Anti-Access/Area Denial air defenses. They make it extremely dangerous for the US Navy and planes to get within a thousand miles of China in war. Anti-Access/Area Denial air defenses means that China’s has built so many long and short range anti-ship missiles, anti-aircraft missiles and so much detection radar that they out-range US missiles on US ships.
Key to China’s defense is the YLC-8E anti-stealth radar system. It can detect and track aircraft from over 310 miles away and missile threats from over 700 km away. The YLC-8E is designed to operate in mid to high altitudes and mid to long ranges. It uses UHF-Band 3D long-range surveillance radar. The YLC-8E was developed by the Chinese state-owned CETC. YLC-8E is a super radar that can detect American aircraft F-22 and F-35.
The YLC- 8E Anti Stealth Radar system, this radar system is a UHF band 3D surveillance radar with high antenna’s.
These radars cover UHF, L, S and C bands and have the basic characteristics of 4th Generation intelligence radar, such as fully digital and advance technology system. YLC-8E is the flagship of Chinese stealth radar.
YLC-8E is a new generation of surveillance radar with excellent anti stealth ability, high maneuverability, strong anti-interference ability, high reliability, and good maintainability. It is responsible for mid to high altitude, mid to long range air surveillance and guidance tasks, achieving search, tracking, and guidance of targets.
The B-21 maxes out all aspects of stealth to reduce the effective range of radars like YLC-8E. The B-21 is not just hard to detect from the front like the F-22 and F-35 but from all directions. The B-21 reduces detection ranges for the high frequency and other parts of the radar spectrum.
The B-21 helps resolve the issue that Area denial send Chinese missiles hitting and threatening targets past Guam. This includes bases in the Philippines, Japan etc… The B-21 is super long-range 7000-9000 miles. They can base out of Australia and Hawaii (5000 miles) with one refueling. China has hundreds of DF-26 and DF-21 launchers and missiles. This will lake a long time to degrade. China also has extensive bunker and tunnel systems for protecting radar and missiles. The B-21 is not a magic wand that solves everything instantly but being able to put a lot of missiles and bombs on a lot of targets speeds up making Area denial far less effective.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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The B-21 will be completely untouchable. China is all about quantity over quality, that’s not going to do them any good in the long term. They can keep stealing and copying our designs, but without the know-how, pilot experience and advanced avionics that the US has they’re just cannon fodder in any major conflict.
China will “mysteriously” end up with a near exact clone, like they did with our F-35. They have to many people bought and paid for in America.
And clone will be shot right out of the sky as well… Ccp are a bunch of copy cats…
True keep our tech secrets secret death to any spy’s or traitor
Stealth this, Stealth that. Forget GAS. The movie “WAR GAMES”, JOSHUA. By the time you get jets, whether manned or unmanned it will be “PANDEMONIUM “. Infiltration is key to all this science, math, statistics, etc… The key is AI if you want to defeat the enemy.
I love the preconception that a war with China would boil down to a missile duel for control of the South China Sea. I think the real “action” would be in the Persian Gulf and a handful of other choke points for international trade, where the U.S. Navy would blockade Chinese imports of food, food inputs (fertilizer) and oil. The CCP can neither feed or fuel itself, and relies for its livelihood on selling its goods to other nations. The vast bulk of this trade takes place on sea lanes entirely controlled by the U.S. Navy. In event of war, China’s chief opponent would be a distant wall of haze gray ships that its forces would never even see, let alone defeat. They put so much effort into trying to control their own shores because it’s the only battle they realistically CAN prepare for.
Well it looks like you are an expert in everything,a kind reminder, Russia is right there ,landbridge, everything can be imported food fuel fertilizer nothing comes from Australia USA New Zealand
Excellent points and well thought out. There are a few other things we can do to “choke” China , first we need to clean up Washington DC and get back to being respected and feared in the world. I have never seen a more corrupt administration in 60 years of my life . First we do OUR own homework and clean up the swamp, uh oh 😅 😬 lol
There is a fundamental disadvantage the B-21 has compared to the B-2, which is the physical size affecting radar returns at various frequencies. It turns out a big stealth bomber may be better than a small one, at least for lower frequencies apparently. Note that’s for single radar sites, and not fancier bistatic/multistatic systems with distributed receivers necessarily.
Seems to me that a RADAR, no matter whether stealth-detecting or ‘regular’ is an awefully easy-to-target unit to hit with a supersonic missile. Supposing, of course, that the missile is virtually undetectable (not-so-hard these days), and that the stealth RADAR does eventually catch the incoming bomb’s trajectory.
Incoming stealth missiles — by their nature — are pretty darn hard to strike down. They can be VERY small. Have the RADAR cross section of a small bird or big bee. Whizzing along with anti-reflective (RADAR and LIDAR band) paint jobs, their only job is to home in on the RADAR beams themselves.
Remember, RADAR beams — even for the finest RADARs out there — have to be FAR brighter than the reflections from objects they’re tracking. Basically, only the tiniest itsy-bitsy-bit of the outgoing beam actually reflects back. Now … as physics would have it, the reflected bit also is Doppler shifted, which these days is decoded pretty trivially into a velocity vector. When our supersonic missile is only a few dozen klicks away, its seen, it’s decoded, and the last 30 seconds of its path become painfully obvious to the observers.
I don’t think one’s going to move that big ol’ honking ‘stealth’ RADAR in 30 seconds. See the hydraulic lifters underneath for steadying the thing like a rock? Those alone would take some time to get the boys on the ground to run around lifting the whole dang thing up. In those precious 30 seconds, Hêll hath a Beeline on The RADAR. (Obviously, they’d shut it off fast, first. Keep it from squawking so loudly and brightly. The missile would be on a projected intercept for all but the last 5 seconds. In that short while, it’d most likely either use AI targeting, or, its own millimeter-wäve close-range RADAR and ‘smart’ targeting looking for suitable objects to blow to smithereens.)
Thing is … the SAM (Chinese) anti-Stealth RADAR would be a juicy-juicy target. They what, might have 25 of them operational in-theatre at any moment? Send a hundred super-soaker missiles, and knock down as many as possible. Multiple target too … the chaos factor alone would have other installations as sitting ducks. A sudden all-out concerted anti-RADAR attack would have a ‘popcorn’ effect, where popping one installation would hot-up the others. Which would make less cool-and-calm (and surviving) decisions. Pop, pop, pop!!!
Thing is, even ‘total wipe out’ isn’t necessary, either. Those big synthetic aperture arrays as silly-sensitive to having bits-and-holes chucked at them. Their accuracy depends critically on the wavelet antennæ having sub-millimeter positional accuracy. Holes and dents ruin that accuracy.
So. Hit the RADAR installations, all at once and mercilessly.
PS: There also would be a LOT of value in not totally blinding the Chicoms’ RADAR either. Left with sufficient eyes to see everything happening, but insufficient to properly triangulate and range all the at-sea and above-ocean marine and air traffic, the effect of still seeing their opponent’s Trojan Horses would have marked suppressive value. In the short-to-medium term.
⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅
The issue is you have to first get enough assets close enough to blow up a lot of radars and get through a lot of missiles. The Area denial is that there are a lot of missiles landing out past Guam. This includes bases in the Philippines, Japan etc… The B21 is super long range 7000-9000 miles. They can base out of Australia and Hawaii (5000 miles) with one refueling
Lots of countries can track F22s or F35s, not easily but they can. Targeting them however is extremely difficult even if they are detected.
Everything you think you can do to a peer enemy, the enemy can do to you.
Are you suggesting the creation of an ultra long distance hybrid HARM missile supported by dummy drones of a similar size and speed as an effective antiRADAR strategy?!!
Keep in mind there is a big difference between detecting and targeting. The Chinse may know a stealth aircraft is out there, but can’t locate it precisely enough to shoot a missle at it. If they sent fighters up, an F22 or F35 will most likely see them first and shoot them down.
True, but odds are they wouldn’t send fighters, but use Surface-to-Air missiles.
I love aviation, especially cool military ones, so I’m looking forward to seeing some video footage of this slick beast cruising in the skies.
Being able to see a F-22 or F-35 on radar is one thing but being able to track them long enough to complete a kill chain with a surface to air missile and successfully take out a F-22 or F-35 is highly unlikely so the most likely way to take one out would probably be with another fighter at close range which I don’t think there’s another fighter with better stealth or performance to actually neutralize either the F-22 or F-35 certainly nothing China has now or in development considering they seem to only know how to copy and or steal other countries weapon systems and tactics which they are kinda good at but one thing they are far behind other militaries at is actually coming up with original weapons or tactics which makes them predictable with a very small threat to surprise an enemy force with weapons systems or tactics that they haven’t seen before.