(Reuters) – Northrop Grumman Corp, the third-largest U.S. weapons maker, played up its legacy of building advanced aircraft in its first ever Super Bowl advertisement, as it competes for a major new bomber contract.

The maker of the B-2 bomber is competing with a team made up of Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp, the No. 2 and No. 1 Pentagon suppliers, respectively, to build a new bomber for the U.S. Air Force.

Randy Belote, a spokesman for Northrop said the ad aired in just two markets: Washington and Dayton, Ohio, home to the Air Force’s aviation contracting arm, which is gearing up to pick a winning bidder to build a new aircraft that is slated to cost half a billion dollars. He declined to say how much the ad cost.

The ad, part of the company’s “national brand campaign,” shows a series of the company’s “flying wings,” including the YB-35 prototype from the 1940s, then the B-2 Spirit bomber developed in the 1980s and finally the X-47B unmanned system being developed for the Navy.

It ends with another flying wing shape draped in a sheet.

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