The company has beaten out a team of Lockheed Martin and Boeing for the $80 billion contract.
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“It’s not only that a few of this stuff has been wind-tunneled, or prototyped, or flown”, Air Force Assistant Secretary for Acquisition William LaPlante said last week.
Northrop Grumman is the developer of the Air Force’s current bomber, the B-2.
Pratt & Whitney spokesman Matthew Bates said the company “congratulates Northrop Grumman for their selection on this very important program” but declined “to comment on any other questions regarding the Long Range Strike Bomber program”.
Northrop Chief Executive Wes Bush said his company had “the resources in place to execute this important program, and we’re ready to get to work”, Bush said.
“The LRS-B is critical to national defense and is a top priority for the Air Force”, says Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James. The contract awarded on Tuesday is for 21 bombers.
It will also be very, very expensive – the Pentagon estimates that the total contract will cost $55bn, with a per bomber unit cost of over $500m for each.
The Air Force plans to award a lucrative contract Tuesday to develop and build a fleet of 80 to 100 long-range stealth bombers over the next decade, a massive military spending project that could help resuscitate Southern California’s beleaguered aerospace industry.
The contract has been closely watched for years for clues on what future capabilities the next stealth bomber might have.
Bunch said Air Force officials will “make ourselves available as early as Friday to debrief the offerer that was not selected”. Boeing has built most of the Air Force’s bombers, including the B-52. “Stealth, a payload capacity of approximately 20,000 pounds and a range of 4,000 to 5,000 nautical miles”, according to Mark Gunzinger, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, DC. He heads the Lexington Institute, which receives funding from major defense contractors.
But, the AP says, the Obama administration “has justified its support for a new long-range bomber by calling it vital to retaining USA military predominance”.
“The new long-range bomber will have the ability to launch from the US and strike any target around the globe to counter advancements in air defense systems by rival nations and emerging threats posed by potential adversaries”.
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The bomber, which is expected to be fielded in the 2020s, will have conventional and nuclear capabilities and is expected to be produced in manned and unmanned variants.
