The B-21 is different in two important ways.
First, the B-21s stealth tech is derived from lessons learned from the F-35 program. The F-35 is a tactical fighter which the US and most of its allies are buying in very large numbers. They need to be stationed just about anywhere and can't require ridiculous maintenance to keep their skin from falling off. That would be impractical for a large fleet of aircraft. As such, a lot of work went into making the radar absorbent material used on the F-35 dramatically more durable. The B-21 gets to piggyback off of that and as a result it will be much more feasible to actually have a large fleet of them.
Second, there's a new cold war heating up with China. Anyone whose ever looked at the Pacific ocean might notice that it's kind of large. This makes range a major concern for combat aircraft. A medium stealth bomber with extreme range is essentially perfect for this environment because it can reach anywhere and is very hard to actually find once in flight. If you are a surface warship force, being hunted by a bunch of nearly undetectable aircraft which can be anywhere at anytime and can each carry more than a dozen large anti-ship missiles is going keep you up at night. The B-21 will likely end up being a very important piece in the US naval strategy in the pacific.
I wouldn't be surprised to see significantly more than 100 get built.
Oh, you can use them just as they were used - to do the things B-52, or hell, even B-29 could do. /snark
> being hunted by a bunch of nearly undetectable aircraft which can be anywhere at anytime and can each carry more than a dozen large anti-ship missiles
Now this is a question. My memory was rusty so I consulted Wikipedia and looks like there is not that many options.
SM6 is too weak and doesn't yet have AS capability, LRASM exists with a proper qualities (speed and payload) but is quite big even for B-1. And Tomahawk with no AS cap. and ... not fast.
So there is a question about "a dozen large anti-ship missiles" though it can be mitigated with a sheer numbers, which is probably the way it is designed.
> I wouldn't be surprised to see significantly more than 100 get built.
Depends on what would happen in tjhe world the next 10 years.
The security situation in the Pacific is also very unlikely to improve over the next 10 years.
1. I'm aware the F-35 development program itself was a boondoggle, but there are still building a ton of them right now.