Northrop Grumman expects to receive new U.S. Air Force contracts for its B-21 Raider stealth bomber program by the end of the year, the defense firm’s Chief Executive Officer Kathy Warden said Tuesday.
And Northrop continues to work with the Air Force on a potential agreement to accelerate production of the B-21, Warden said in an earnings call with investors.
The budget reconciliation bill Congress passed in July provides $4.5 billion to speed up production of the B-21. Warden said Northrop remains in active discussion with the Air Force on how to get that done, although the federal government shutdown has slowed those conversations.
If such a deal is struck, Warden said, Northrop plans to make more investments to increase its production rate. An acceleration of the B-21 program would mean higher revenue for Northrop in 2026, Warden said, but she declined to predict how much it could raise.
“The actual production rates, the timing, and ultimately the outcome of those negotiations with the Air Force would define what that financial profile looks like,” Warden said. “It’s too early for me to speculate on that.”
The Air Force plans to buy at least 100 B-21s to replace its aging and retiring fleets of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers and B-1 Lancers sometime in the 2030s. If the service chose to buy more than 100 B-21s, as it has been considering, Warden said that would be handled in a different negotiation process from the production acceleration discussions.
Warden said the program is on track to receive a contract for the third low-rate initial production lot of the B-21 and an advance procurement contract to begin acquiring components and resources to build the fifth lot in the fourth quarter of 2025.
The start of flight tests for the second B-21, which began in September, represents a “significant milestone” for the program, Warden said. It also marks the beginning of a new phase in B-21 flight testing, beyond general flight performance to integrating its weapons and mission systems, she said.
Multiple other B-21s are now in ground testing in preparation for their first flights, Warden said, which will validate their performance and minimize their risk.
In April, Northrop announced it had taken a $477 million loss on the B-21 program, which it attributed to a production process change meant to allow the company to build bombers faster.
Ken Crews, Northrop’s chief financial officer, said on Tuesday that producing the B-21’s engineering and manufacturing development flight test aircraft cost more than expected, which in turn increased Northrop’s anticipated cost of building the low-rate initial production bombers.
But a contract restructuring on the B-21 that reduced the company’s expected losses on the remaining low-rate initial production lots all but erased those higher costs, Crews said, and was essentially a wash.
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.
