The U.S. Air Force has awarded Northrop Grumman a contract to begin development of the closely guarded Long Range Strike-Bomber (LRS-B), a program expected to eventually cost a few $80 billion.
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The Boeing and Lockheed Martin team is disappointed by today’s announcement.
Northrop Grumman has won the $80 billion contract to build the Air Force’s next stealth bomber, the Pentagon announced Tuesday.
Carter will join Air Force Secretary Deborah James and Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh to unveil which company or team of companies will develop and build 100 of the new aircraft, a contract that could be worth around $50 billion. A few have dubbed it “B-3”, since it follows the B-2, which entered service in the late 1980s.
According to Reuters, Boeing plans to “rigorously deliberate” whether to protest the contract, with a decision likely within two weeks, the head of the company’s defense division said. Any protest by the team would be filed with the Government Accountability Office, which would have 100 days to uphold or deny the contract award.
The U.S. Air Force said in a press release that the LRS-B will be able to launch from the US and strike any target around the world.
The big contracts are divvied up now: Boeing has the KC-46 aerial refueling tanker, and Lockheed has the F-35.
Realistically speaking America desperately needs new bombers for its Air Force. And even after delivery, the planes remained the most expensive to operate in the Air Force; maintenance, including keeping the aircraft in special air-conditioned hangars to protect their “low-observable” skins, runs about .4 million per month, and the planes cost 5,000 an hour to fly.
The AP adds that a new bomber is a high priority for the Air Force, considering a few of the older bombers, the B-52s, have “far outlived their expected service”.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the bomber would be the “backbone” of the force’s fleet in the 21 century. “I want to say right now that our goal in the Air Force will be to beat these independent cost estimates through the application of “should cost” initiatives, which we have successfully used on other programs as part of DoD’s Better Buying Power 3.0 and our own Bending the Cost Curve initiatives”, James said. Based on approved requirements, the average procurement unit cost (APUC) per aircraft is required to be equal to or less than $550 million per aircraft in 2010 dollars across the fleet.
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The Air Force said Tuesday that Northrop Grumman will build the next generation stealth bomber.
