Northrop Grumman received a second low-rate initial production contract on the B-21 bomber before the end of 2024, the company said, and it has held preliminary talks with the Air Force about accelerating the rate of production on the new bomber.
Executives also said Northrop is meeting milestones on the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program and suggested the company could compete for the Next-Generation Air Dominance program if it is re-opened.
Company president and chief executive officer Kathy Warden, speaking on a Jan. 30 earnings call, noted “an award for the second LRIP lot on B-21 in the fourth quarter.” She had telegraphed the award in an October 2024 earnings call but gave no details in either call about the number of aircraft the contract covers or its value. The Air Force has kept many details about the B-21 secret, to include financial details of its acquisition.
The Air Force has acknowledged there are at least six B-21s in some stage of production, and at least one has been in flight test since November 2023. The actual production rate on the aircraft is classified, although Air Force and Pentagon officials have suggested it is around seven per year. Former undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment William LaPlante—who was a key figure in structuring the 2015 contract when he was the Air Force acquisition executive—has said the rate was deliberately kept very low to protect the program from budget cuts.
However, Warden said Northrop and the Air Force have had preliminary discussions about potentially accelerating production.
Warden was asked if the aircraft would be priced like those already under contract or if there would be an “open negotiation” for additional bombers.
“We would work with the Air Force to look at when those units would come into the contract, and obviously we are accumulating more and more actual performance [data] to help inform discussions with them about the right pricing,” she said. “So it would be premature for me to comment on where we expect that to land, but it would be a discussion.”
The Air Force has sent mixed signals in recent months about whether it wants more B-21s. Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin has said that by the time the B-21 program reaches its currently planned total of 100 aircraft—sometime in the mid-2030s—there are likely to be new technologies the service would want to pursue instead.
However, former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, who stepped down Jan. 20, told Air & Space Forces Magazine in early January that accelerating the B-21, “If it could be afforded, would make some sense.” Kendall said the Air Force should “rebalance” its forces away from an excessive focus on short-range fighters and toward more long-range capabilities like the B-21.
Kendall said he had ‘talked to industry about the possibility of higher rates than we currently have planned,” but said that the contracts for the initial lots of aircraft—which have a fixed-price component to them—means “there’s only so much we can do” to accelerate the program in the next five years or so.
Warden has previously said that, due to aggressive pricing, there will be little if any profit on the B-21 in the early years, but that the company expects it to be a good financial performer beyond the initial lots.
She said the B-21 team is “driving efficiencies and implementing performance improvement initiatives” and as a result, “headwinds” on the program are milder than expected. For 2025, “we’re continuing to expand on B-21 but the team has opportunities, given those efficiencies, to continue to drive performance improvement and allow us to maintain that mid-to-high nine percent level returns.”
On the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program—which has suffered a massive, $40 billion overrun—Warden said the company is working through a restructuring process and meeting its obligations.
“We are working with the government on the restructure, but in the meantime, we are performing and meeting important milestones [on the] EMD contract. The government has said that they project the restructure will take 18 to 24 months, and we’re still very much in that window … even though they have paused work on some small infrastructure efforts in the command and launch segment,” Warden said, adding that the project will be more profitable in 2025.
Asked about the Next-Generation Air Dominance Program—the Air Force’s future air superiority platform, currently paused as the new administration considers its options—Warden said “we’re certainly watching that space, and as we have described before, we believe we are well positioned to offer sixth-generation aircraft based on our successful B-21 performance and experience to date.”
The Air Force was expected to award a contract for NGAD by the end of 2024, but Kendall punted that decision to the new administration, which he said should get to decide on the program because it will “own” it through its early development. Options for NGAD include proceeding as planned; switching to what Kendall called a cheaper “multirole” aircraft more tailored to managing drones, or something else. Those options may include re-opening the project for competition if the requirements are different enough from previously set ones.
Warden said the NGAD doesn’t figure into the company’s forecasts, “given the uncertainty of timing, particularly [on] the Air Force program,” where she said “we’re not a prime but we are a contributor to the program through mission systems.” Northrop is competing for the main element of the Navy’s counterpart F/A-XX, however, and is looking forward to an award in 2025.