Who Made The B2 Stealth Bomber?

The B-2 bomber was the last American heavy bomber built in the 20th Century. While Boeing was the prime contractor with the B-52 and it bought Rockwell's B-1 building arm, it was Northrop-Grumman who built the B-2 Spirit bombers. The company built 21 of them. This includes a test bed, which took flight for the time on July 17, 1989, and was later converted to a production-equivalent unit. 

 The B-2 is unusual in several respects, starting with its shape. The B-2 is a flying wing aircraft, so unlike almost every other military aircraft, there is no fuselage with wings attached to it. The whole aircraft is part of the wing. Northrop-Grumman has in-depth experience with developing flying wing shaped aircraft going back to 1929. The company started exploring the flying wing shape as a bomber with the YB-35 and YB-49 programs, though these were propeller-driven aircraft and not jets like the B-2.  

In June 2025, six B-2 Spirits bombed nuclear enrichment facilities near Isfahan, Fordow, and Natanz, in northern Iraq. When commenting on the bombing, President Donald Trump stated that the government was going to buy new, upgraded B-2 bombers. He didn't give any details about how many bombers were being purchased or at what cost. When he said that, though, there were no public statements or government tenders for anything connected to building more B-2's. 

In terms of upgrading, though, there are programs for maintaining and modifying the B-2. These are handled under the B-2 System Program Office (SPO). While the aircraft were built by Northrop Grumman, under the SPO, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center for the B-2 at Wright Patterson AFB in Ohio and Tinker AFB in Oklahoma handles everything from software updates to installing new communications equipment to tweaking its radar cross section signature. The USAF states that the B-2s are being kept up to date until the new B-21 comes on line.

One reason why there are no publicly announced plans to build more B-2 bombers is that Northrup Grumman is developing a successor. The new bomber, called the B-21 Raider, follows the B-2's flying wing shape aircraft, and is also being built by Northrup-Grumman as the prime contractor. The new aircraft was introduced to the public in December 2022, and the first examples are already undergoing testing. Current plans call for over 100 B-21s to be built.

Like the Stealth bomber, the Raider will be nuclear-capable. The new aircraft will also be able to carry a range of munitions ranging from direct attack bombs such as laser-guided bombs as well as stand-off bombs that are released from much further away. One important difference between the B-2 and the B-21 that shows how air war has changed since the B-2 was first built is that the Raider will be designed with both crewed and uncrewed missions in mind.