Pentagon officials said Tuesday that Northrop Grumman will build up to 100 new long-range stealth bombers for the Air Force, at a cost of $79 billion.
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But no one is saying whose engine will power the new bomber, whose design, capabilities and specifications are shrouded in mystery.
Pratt & Whitney could be a big victor, or a big loser, in the Pentagon’s decision to award ae multi-billion contract to Northrop Grumman to manufacture the nation’s next-generation US warplane, the Long-Range Strike Bomber.
The contract announced Tuesday is estimated to be worth about $80 billion in fiscal year 2016 dollars – about $23.5 billion for the development phase and $56.4 billion more to procure 100 aircraft. When operational, the new bombers will join the fleet of 20 B-2 stealth bombers, of which only 11 or 12 are available to deploy at any given time, the Air Force said last month.
Northrop Grumman built the B-2 bomber fleet, which was originally planned to include 132 planes but was scaled back to 21 at the end of the Cold War. The LRS-B will purportedly be created to have stealth capability, carry both conventional and nuclear weapons, and will, in all likelihood, be optionally manned.
According to a report on the Air Force’s website, the contract will paid out in two parts. The incentives minimize the contractor’s profit if they do not control cost and schedule appropriately.
245-w-36-(Sagar Meghani (SAH’-gur meh-GAH’-nee), AP national security correspondent, with Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James)-The Air Force has picked the victor of a massive contract to build its next-generation bomber. “We face a complex security environment”. Even with winning the contract, either Boeing or Lockheed Martin may consider an attempt to acquire it through acquiring Northrop Grumman. Though the “flyaway” cost of each aircraft (what it cost to actually manufacture and deliver each plane once development was done, excluding all the development costs) was advertised at $566 million per aircraft, the GAO reported the actual cost per aircraft (with the inclusion of software and spare parts) was $929 million.
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said the bomber, known commonly as the “B-3”, would serve as the “backbone of the Air Force’s future strike and deterrence capabilities”.
For such programs, the government requires an independent cost estimate, and that came in at $564 million a plane in current dollars. “We believe that our decision represents the best value for our nation”.
“If they have a period of time that they can submit that protest, and then if it were to go to the GAO there’s a 100-day timeframe for that, and we’ll monitor and we won’t stipulate or make any assumptions as to what the ramifications of that would be”, he said.
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“The program acquisition strategy has carefully integrated lessons learned from previous programs and considered all elements of life cycle costs in its design for affordability”, LaPlante added.
