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Air Force Names New Stealth Bomber After Heroic WWII Mission

U.S. Air Force/Handout via Reuters

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America’s newest and most advanced stealth bomber is called the B-21 Raider after the famous Doolittle Raids during World War II, Air Force officials announced Monday.

The Air Force paid homage to its roots as the dominant air power in the world by naming the B-21 after the first bombing mission to be launched from an aircraft carrier.

“From the earliest days of WW II, our bombers dominated the field,” Deborah Lee James, secretary of the Air Force, said at the Air Space Cyber 2016 conference Monday.

Two airmen submitted the winning name during a naming contest for the B-21, which was only available to Air Force personnel and their families. The proposals “captured the essence of the bomber force,” James said.

Retired Lt. Col. Richard Cole, who was a copilot with Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle during the famous WW II raids, announced the aircraft’s name. Cole, who turned 101 on Sept. 5, is the last surviving member of the Doolittle Raiders.

Doolittle led 16 B-25s on an aerial strike over Japan April 18, 1942, as retaliation for the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Eighty airmen volunteered for the operation, which commanders considered a suicide mission, and all but three survived.

The Air Force is trying to raise support for the B-21 Raiders as Congress continues to battle over military funding for the next fiscal year, and consider a stop-gap measure known as a continuing resolution to temporarily fund the government through the end of the year.

“A short-term (continuing resolution) is manageable … but, let me tell you, a long-term continuing resolution would be very damaging for the Air Force,” James said.

A continuing resolution would “cap the production of the KC-46, prevent us from devoting more funds to developing the B-21 next year, and delay about 50 construction projects,” James said at the conference.

The service’s ability to divest old capabilities and build new is paramount, and modernization remains a priority for the Air Force as it continues to play a major role defending against current and emerging threats.

“We have the oldest aircraft fleet we have ever had, 27 years old on average,” James said. “This absolutely needs to be a focus for us.”

Republican Sen. John McCain finally pushed to force the Air Force to reveal that each B-21 costs around $556 million this summer, and estimated that the total program will cost around $80 billion. The Government Accountability Office plans to release a declassified report with some contract details later this month, according to Bloomberg News.

The Air Force had long resisted releasing information on the B-21 program cost, saying that disclosing contract information would reveal critical capabilities and allow foreign governments to reverse-engineer the technology.

“It’s not secrecy, it’s classification to keep it from our enemies; I don’t want our enemies to reverse engineer,” Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida told Defense News in June.

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