The US Air Force and Northrop Grumman have broken ground on a new final assembly line for the B-21 Raider stealth bomber at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. The expansion adds more than 1 million square feet of facilities and follows an agreement earlier this year to raise annual B-21 production capacity by 25 percent.
The Department of the Air Force is applying $4.5 billion authorized and appropriated under fiscal year 2025 reconciliation legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill, to accelerate production of the approved 100-aircraft fleet. The first operational aircraft remains on track for delivery to Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota in 2027.
Northrop is also putting its own money into the programme’s industrial base: chief executive Kathy Warden disclosed a $2.5 billion company investment in additional B-21 production capacity on an April 2026 earnings call. Combined, the public appropriation and the contractor’s own capital make Plant 42 one of the largest current defence manufacturing builds in the United States.
The groundbreaking, held September 29 and announced October 8, is the construction start of a capacity decision taken in February. For the industrial base the significance is duration: a 100-aircraft minimum fleet, a funded rate increase and a new assembly line give suppliers a multi-decade production horizon rather than a prototype programme.