Air Force Contemplating B-21-Like Aircraft for Air-to-Air Combat

The Air Force is studying whether a large flying wing-type stealth aircraft armed with dozens of air-to-air missiles could be an element of its future air superiority force, sources told Air & Space Forces Magazine. The aircraft could be based on the Northrop Grumman B-21, but the concept is at an early stage and other contractors could potentially have a shot at the work due to Northrop’s limited B-21 production capacity.

The concept would involve crewed fighters like the stealthy F-22, F-35, and F-47—as well as, potentially, uncrewed Collaborative Combat Aircraft—detecting and designating airborne targets, which the ultra-stealthy large missileer would then shoot.

“There are other ways of achieving ‘affordable mass’ than darkening the skies with CCAs,” a senior Air Force official, said, adding, “we haven’t talked about all our ideas in public.”     

The official said the missileer concept is being discussed seriously as one way to overcome China’s numerical advantage in a Taiwan scenario. In such a conflict, China, with bases nearby, could put hundreds of fourth- and fifth-generation fighters up over Taiwan without air refueling, while U.S. fighters would be near the end of their range and have limited “shots” to take against the Chinese aircraft. China is also likely to deploy a significant number of old, third-generation aircraft configured as uncrewed drones to “soak up” and potentially exhaust U.S. air-to-air missile stocks in the opening stages of such a conflict, officials said.

At a recent high-level Air Force meeting, the question was posed to service leaders: “What is a fighter?”

“It’s a good question,” said one senior planning official. “I flew the F-15E. I dropped a lot of bombs in my career. Was I a bomber pilot? … We are beyond the point where we should be artificially assigning missions based on old concepts of what does what on the battlefield.”

The idea of the B-21 as a missileer came up in the late 2000s, when the program’s requirements were being laid out, according to a senior industry analyst who was involved with the project when it was known as the long-range strike bomber, or LRS-B. Air-to-air capability was not added to the B-21’s initial set of requirements, though, because of the very low number of airframes expected to built per year, versus the urgency with which they were considered necessary to start adding to the Air Force’s stealthy bomber fleet. It was also deemed a needless and potentially costly complication at the time, he said.

Back then, “there wasn’t a compelling argument,” for the B-21 to have an air-to-air capability, said a former top Air Force official.

However, for wargames conducted over this last summer pitting U.S. forces against China in the 2035 timeframe, U.S. Pacific Command requested that an air-to-air capable B-21 be included, though not as a dedicated air-to-air platform but for self-defense. A similar request came from Air Force Global Strike Command, so “I’m pretty sure that is envisioned, eventually, for the B-21, although the Air Force has not talked about that openly,” the analyst said.

One official, though, said there is “major pushback” from AFGSC on the idea of the B-21 as a missileer. That’s likely because “we already have a major bomber bathtub,” the analyst observed, meaning that the bomber force will dip below desired minimums before it bounces back as more B-21s are delivered.

A “mixed load” of weapons for the B-21 could be a good investment, said Mark Gunzinger, director of future aerospace concepts at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

“Would some amount of air-to-air weapons on board a generic penetrating bomber be of value to help counter threats?” he said. These weapons could include some for suppression of enemy air defenses, for example, and in this context, “perhaps air-to-air weapons would make sense as well.”

But bombers will be in limited supply for some time to come, Gunzinger said, and they need to be applied against the “highest value” targets.

“Only bombers can bring the mass,” he said. “And, factor in that we have an air-to-air munition shortfall. We have a huge shortfall in AMRAAMs,” the AIM-120 radar-guided dogfight missile, and its intended successor, the AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile, “is not going to be cheap. And frankly, the defense industry just doesn’t have the capacity to really crank out a lot of air-to-air weapons to rebuild our stockpiles, right?”

The Air Force placed a $3.5 billion order with Raytheon in July for a large but undisclosed number of AMRAAMs.

Gunzinger said his personal opinion about an air-to-air configured bomber, borne out in wargames, is that “we have more of a weapons shortfall” than a shortfall of platforms that can deliver them.

“That said, Is there utility in having that capability of bombers? Absolutely. We want our adversary to think, ‘hey, you know, this bomber coming at me could shoot me in the face.” he said. Having a large-scale, proven air-to-air capability on bombers would also keep an enemy guessing about what platforms might deliver what effects, he said, just as the Air Force has recently tested dropping land-attack cruise missiles in pallets out the back of cargo aircraft.

“You want to create uncertainty on the part of the adversary,” Gunzinger said, who should wonder, “is this just an air-to-ground platform? . ..We would like him to think that, yeah.”

Complicating the idea of B-21 missileer, though, is the fact that Northrop—by the Air Force’s design—has a limited production capacity for the bomber, said now to be about 7-8 per year in the 2020s and 10 per year in the early 2030s. Congress is providing $4.5 billion to increase that capacity, but the Air Force has not disclosed by how much. Sources said that the amount of money provided could “significantly” raise Northrop’s ramp capacity, to potentially 20 per year; a figure which happens to match the peak rate achieved on the B-1 and what was envisioned for the B-2, which was halted after only 20 were built.

While another contractor could theoretically step in to build a large, stealthy air-to-air platform, sources said that with the Air Force’s current budget crunch—having to fund a complete recapitalization of two thirds of the nuclear triad, the F-47, the F-35, new VC-25B “Air Force One,” Collaborative Combat Aircraft, and possibly more, not to mention readiness accounts—that starting a new platform is probably unlikely.

“Anything is possible,” said the analyst, but “there is nothing to prevent” using the B-21 as the basis for an air-to-air missileer, and it would undoubtedly be a cheaper option than starting up a new platform. He reiterated that the higher priority is bolstering the air-to-air missile stockpile. In wargames focused on the Pacific, he said, “you run out of AMRAAMs in seven to nine days.”

A former top USAF official said that an air-to-air B-21 is “not a crazy idea.”

“You could certainly do it,” he said, but unlike CCAs, bombers likely won’t be forward-deployed with fighters, but will operate from much further back at bases “that can handle bombers.”

“If you’re doing a strike package with fighters to do the type of thing we do at Nellis [Air Force Base, Nev.] all the time at Red Flag … you want all your assets synchronized to be there at the same time. So doing that with the bombers, which are likely to be based on further away, that becomes kind of problematic, right? You’re certainly not going to do it for defensive counter-air,” the official said.

An alternative might be LongShot, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency effort to develop a small, expendable aircraft to carry air-to-air missiles closer to the action before launching them. But “they’re a range extender, basically, for the air-to-air missiles, and they’re not reusable,” the former official said. While the idea “could be very cost-effective, it’s got to justify itself on its own merits. … That’s why, for now, the CCA makes more sense,” he said.

He agreed with the analyst that “there’s no reason why the only thing that does your counter-air has to be a fighter or a CCA; nothing wrong with taking a look at putting air-to-air weapons on the bombers or anything else, for that matter. Theoretically, you could put them on C-130s.” But study is needed “to see if there’s a benefit” to making some B-21s tailored to being missileers.

“I haven’t seen any analysis that convince me that we definitely want to do it, OK? But it’s not outrageous.”