Opinion: Do F-47s And B-21s Have A Place In Drone-Filled Skies?

The U.S. Air Force is investing billions in the Boeing F-47 and Northrop Grumman B-21, but are the wars in Ukraine and Iran showing us that stealth bombers and sixth-generation fighters are unnecessary? Are small numbers of exquisite weapons worth their investment in a battlespace filled with low-cost drones?

War tactics and technology change together in predictable ways. Looking at the patterns of the past can help us predict how they will evolve in the future.

The combatants in World War II, for example, could deliver powerful bombs, but they were very inaccurate, which meant an overwhelming number of weapons had to be dropped in the hopes of hitting a few targets. As technology advanced, the tactics changed.

After building thousands of Boeing B-17s, the U.S. built just 21 Northrop Grumman B-2s. Advances in technology led to the nearly invisible Lockheed Martin F-117 and B-2 with their accurate, lethal weapons, and the tactics shifted from quantity to quality.

“In some cases, a single aircraft and one precision-guided munition during the Gulf War achieved the same result as a 1,000-plane raid with over 9,000 bombs in World War II,” Lt. Gen. (ret.) David Deptula writes in his white paper “Effects-Based Operations: Change in the Nature of Warfare.” This was because Gulf War smart weapons were 300 times more accurate than the glide bombs dropped on Germany in 1943.

This limited purchase of a few very capable aircraft was a great strategy 30 years ago, but technology and tactics have come full circle since the B-2 became operational in 1997.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, no one expected the Ukrainian Army to hold out for long. Just like the Allies in World War II, however, the Ukrainians built their tactics around the available technology. As AW&ST Emerging Technologies Editor Garrett Reim has reported: “One-way attack drones, also known as loitering munitions, have become crucial in the Russia-Ukraine war. In January, Kyiv said drones accounted for more than 800,000 strikes on Russian targets in 2025—80% of all attacks” (AW&ST Feb. 23-March 8, p. 58).

Quantity over quality as a tactic is also being used by Iran. Iran could not protect its airspace from U.S. and Israeli fighters and bombers, so it launched thousands of attack drones and missiles in the first days of the war. In many cases, the U.S. used a $1 million missile to stop a $20,000 attack drone. This approach to defense is not sustainable. The million-dollar missiles are not just more expensive; they take longer to build than the attack drones they are destroying.

If the tactics in 2026 are shaping up to be a repeat of those used in 1943—fire an overwhelming number of weapons at your enemy and hope a few hit their target—it is terrifying to think about what could happen in the coming years. Today, technology is advancing at a much faster pace. What happens when the range, lethality and accuracy of inexpensive drones make a technological leap like that from the B-17 to B-21?

An ideal weapon system delivers the desired lethality exactly when and where the operator wants to deploy it while also being inexpensive and easy to mass-produce. Versions of today’s drones can satisfy some of these requirements. Industry is developing collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) that can deliver on accuracy and lethality but will not check the box for low cost or mass production. Meanwhile, physics constrains the lethality and range of small attack drones, which also have limited ability to carry complex sensors and avionics.

Should the Air Force thus cancel the F-47 and B-21 and ask Detroit to build thousands of drones instead of F-150 trucks? Absolutely not.

The F-47 and B-21 are the crown jewels of next-generation air dominance and strike capability, but they will also be components in a larger family of systems. Sixth-generation aircraft will be needed to gain air supremacy in contested airspace, but maybe the high-volume, lower-cost components of next-generation systems could also borrow stealth and sensors from these crown jewels.

What if another future mission of the B-21 is to launch swarms of attack drones that could loiter behind enemy defenses? These drones could then rely on sensors and jammers in the F-47 or their CCA. With the battlefield printing technology Reim described, this could check all the boxes of an ideal weapon system.

As technology continues to advance, sixth-generation aircraft will have an essential role in any future war. If we look at the historical pattern of warfare technology and tactics, it is clear we will need billion-dollar aircraft even in a sky full of drones.

Todd Tuthill is the managing partner at Rincon Aerospace.