![]() This may change as the aircraft matures, but at this time, it looks as if the era of locking stealth bomber operation into the dark of night will soon be over. As we noted many times before, the B-21’s very low observable capabilities and its far broader, more eclectic mission set, would likely see it be put to use during the day. The aircraft is indeed a very light gray color! This is critical.There were serious discussions of the B-2 having no windows to maximize LO even back in the 1980s when issues with the windscreen and its inner tintable (for sudden nuclear blasts) removable pane were prevalent. It will be interesting to learn more about how this feature came to be and just how far having no windows at all was pushed during the B-21’s design. The side small windows, which are curved as in the rendering, look as we originally posited, to likely be a low-observable compromise, with their shape minimizing the aspects that they can be seen by radar, especially from below. Beyond that, the visibility looks very poor out of the aircraft. This makes sense for aerial refueling procedures. In fact, it is remarkably small with visibility very much optimized for viewing upward and forward. The windscreen that looked so puzzling in renderings is a bit more normal looking in reality.Nor do they have serrated edges like the B-2’s. The aircraft’s nose wheel door is different from B-2’s in that it doesn’t feature a central, forward door, instead all associated doors open the side.It is a single truck design instead of the tandem dual truck design (two tires on each main gear instead of four) on the larger, heavier B-2. A great indicator of this is its landing gear. ![]() This is not surprising, we knew it would be a smaller flying wing design and one that would sacrifice some weapons payload. ![]()
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