The US Government is set to shutdown in just hours after the Senate failed to pass a vital federal funding bill, meaning many services will stop and employees will go unpaid until a solution can be passed.
The Senate has failed to gain the 60 “yes” votes it needed to pass the bill in the US Senate leaving the government without funding.
The freeze will begin at midnight (EST) in Washington DC (5am GMT).
Matthew Donovan, the Under Secretary of the Air Force, on Thursday warned that if the US Government were to shutdown it could prove disastrous to the development of the B-21 Raider.
Congress has been considering a continuing resolution for a year, which would deny USAF the additional funding they requested for the B-21.
Mr Donovan said: “A long-term CR will limit execution of the engineering, manufacturing and development phase, the EMD phase, of the B-21.
“We would be limited to the FY17 funding level, which is far below the FY18 budget request. This will have the effect of postponing delivery of the critical strategic capability to the joint warfighter.”
The air force asked for £940million ($1.3billion) to work on and develop the B-21 in 2017, increasing that number to £1.4billion ($2billion) in 2018.
If Congress does in fact end up passing a year-long continuing resolution, the programme will be denied £505million ($700million).
Matthew Donovan said: “If we’re not able to ramp up on our schedule for the acquisition program baseline, of course, it’s going to have an impact on the other end. You can’t make up that time.”
Mr Donnovan went on to add that the B-21 program is periodically reviewed to see if more information can be revealed to the public.
At USAF’s request, the Senate Armed Services Committee classified many details about the programme, including its overall cost.
The initial estimated cost for a new strategic bomber, released by the USAF in 2010, was around £398 million ($550 million) per unit.
The USAF’s initial order was for 100 units, which would mean that the contract is worth £40billion ($55 billion).
A contract that naturally attracted a bidding war among big defence contractors, which was eventually won by Northrop Grumman.
The B-21 is meant to be a cutting-edge strategic bomber to complement the ageing B-1B Lancer and B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers.
The B-52, which entered service in 1955 and is the oldest plane still in service in the USAF, is in particular beginning to show its age.
The B-21 is meant to replace both the Lancer and Stratofortress by 2045.
Meanwhile, US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said on Friday: ”Our maintenance activities will pretty much shut down.
“Over 50 percent, altogether of my civilian workforce will be furloughed.
“We do a lot of intelligence operations around the world and they cost money, those obviously would stop.”