Seven years after winning a U.S. Air Force contract to build a new bomber, Northrop Grumman is unveiling its B-21. The company has doubled its Antelope Valley workforce since winning the project in 2015.
After years of design work, competition and secrecy, the U.S. Air Force’s new B-21 bomber will finally be unveiled to the public.
The first of the stealthy, bat-winged jets will be revealed Friday at Northrop Grumman Corp.’s Palmdale facility, where at least 100 of the new bombers will be assembled. Employment at Northrop Grumman’s Antelope Valley sites has soared to more than 7,000 workers, double the population in 2015 when the company first won the bomber contract.
The assembly line represents a boost to Southern California’s flagging aerospace industry, which has declined from the heights reached during World War II, the space race and the Cold War. In recent years, Southern California’s aerospace resurgence has largely come from the commercial space sector, with the growth of Hawthorne-based SpaceX and various drone makers playing a large role.
But the region’s aircraft and defense contractor roots are still very much alive.
“The U.S. military is still choosing to build these very big, complicated bombers and other weapon platforms,” said Peter Westwick, a professor in USC’s history department and author of “Stealth: The Secret Contest to Invent Invisible Aircraft.” “As long as the U.S. military wants to build those, a lot of the expertise for that still resides in Southern California.
