New B-21 hangar heads to Missouri’s Whiteman Air Force Base

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has awarded Conti Federal Services a $74.8 million contract to build a new radio frequency and measurements hangar for the B-21 Raider stealth bomber at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri.

The facility will include space for one B-21 aircraft, along with supporting workshops, material storage, and administrative offices. Three companies bid on the project, which the Corps solicited online. Work is expected to be finished by September 25, 2029. The Army Corps’ Kansas City district is managing the contract, funded through fiscal 2026 military construction dollars.

The B-21 is the aircraft the Air Force is counting on to anchor its bomber fleet for decades to come. Built by Northrop Grumman as a nuclear-capable stealth bomber, it first flew in November 2023 and remains in low-rate initial production, with the Air Force and Northrop Grumman announcing an agreement in February 2026 to expand production capacity and speed up deliveries. The Air Force has said the B-21 is designed to penetrate the kind of heavily defended airspace that older bombers can no longer survive in, and the service confirmed in July 2026 that the aircraft will fly with a two-person crew. The program has continued hitting test milestones through 2026, including an aerial refueling demonstration with a KC-135 tanker in April.

Whiteman is set to become the B-21’s second main operating base, after the Air Force picked the installation over Dyess Air Force Base in Texas. Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota became the program’s first main operating base in 2021 and currently serves as the B-21’s formal training site; Air Force leadership visited Ellsworth in July 2026 to mark what the service called a historic milestone in that base’s B-21 facilities work. Whiteman already hosts the Air Force’s entire fleet of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, 19 aircraft in total, two of which have been lost in crashes over the years.

The B-21 is being built to gradually replace both the B-2 and the older B-1 Lancer, which the Air Force expects to begin retiring around 2031 and 2032 as it moves toward a two-bomber fleet alongside the B-52.

A radio frequency and measurements hangar is used to test an aircraft’s radar signature and electronic systems in a controlled environment, work that matters for a stealth bomber designed to evade enemy radar. Conti Federal has built several other B-21 support facilities at Ellsworth, including a $31.7 million fuel cell maintenance hangar awarded in October 2024, part of what the company has described as a broader, multi-year construction effort tied to the bomber’s rollout.