By Marc Selinger
Defense Daily
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – The U.S. Air Force revealed Sept. 19 that the service’s new B-21 bomber will be named the “Raider” in honor of Jimmy Doolittle’s Raiders.
The Air Force picked “Raider” after holding a service-wide contest and reviewing more than 2,100 unique name submissions. Months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Doolittle’s Raiders launched a surprise bombing raid on Japan that helped boost American morale early in World War II.
“It was an audacious mission to avenge Pearl Harbor and all the American lives lost,” Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said. “Our greatest generation, the generation of World War II, secured our freedom for all of us, and we’ve been able to live our lives as a result.”
One of the Raiders, retired Lt. Col. Richard E. Cole, who recently celebrated his 101st birthday, announced the winning name at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference.
The Air Force tapped Northrop Grumman [NOC] in October to develop the new stealthy, deep-strike bomber, which the service plans to begin fielding in the mid-2020s. But James warned that a long-term continuing resolution, which Congress is considering to fund the federal government into 2017, would prevent the Air Force from devoting more funds to the B-21’s development next year.
Also at the conference, James announced that the service will try to speed up its portion of foreign military sales (FMS) by about 10 percent. Many allies have complained about the slowness of completing such transactions, she said.
The Air Force’s security cooperation officers will receive more training so “that they can help our international and industry partners better define requirements right from the beginning, which should reduce a lot of the back and forth that happens early on in FMS cases,” James said.
In addition, the most complex cases, such as those involving F-15s, will receive more attention from senior leaders. “These are the ones that tend to run into the most problems,” she said. “And when there’s a logjam, we’ll intervene personally. We’ll gauge to see if we can get it unstuck and unstuck promptly.”
