Boeing Co. has received a $250 million sole-source Air Force contract to prepare the planned nuclear-tipped Long-Range Standoff cruise missile to fly aboard the B-52H bomber, the Air Force announced Wednesday.
The Boeing work will mostly be done in Oklahoma City and is scheduled for completion by Dec. 31, 2024, according to the Air Force. Work covered includes “aircraft and missile carriage equipment development and modification, engineering, testing, software development, training, facilities, and support,” the announcement reads.
The Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center will manage the contract from its operating location at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
The Long-Range Standoff missile (LRSO) will replace the aging Air-Launched Cruise Missile beginning in the late 2020s, according to the Air Force’s current public plans. Raytheon and Lockheed are maturing competing designs for the missile under four-and-a-half-year contracts awarded in 2017 and worth about $900 million each.
The Air Force did not say how many B-52H bombers it would outfit to carry LRSO. The 2018 Nuclear Posture Reviews says the United States will for now maintain 46 nuclear-capable B-52H aircraft. The Air Force has said it plans to buy around 1,000 LRSO missiles.
The LRSO will carry the W80-4 warhead. The National Nuclear Security Administration last month began work on the final design for the weapon, the Sandia National Laboratories announced this week.
Last year, NNSA requested, and Congress approved, a massive year-over-year funding increase for the W80-4 modernization program run by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The boost was meant to match development of the W80-4, Livermore’s biggest weapons program, with development of the missile it will top.
The W80-4 has a budget of about $655 million in fiscal 2019, which is about 65 percent, or $255 million, more than the 2018 appropriation of roughly $400 million. The NNSA only expects that number to climb for the next few years. In its 2019 budget request last year, the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency estimated it would seek more than $710 million for W80-4 for 2020.
The NNSA has not yet released its detailed 2020 budget request. The agency said this week it will seek a top line of $16.5 billion for the budget year starting Oct. 1: about an 8-percent increase from the 2019 appropriation.
The LRSO is one of the two in-development nuclear delivery platforms in the Air Force’s portfolio. The service seeks roughly $710 million for the missile for fiscal 2020: over 7 percent, or about $50 million, more than the 2019 appropriation of about $665 million.
For its other key developmental delivery system, the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) intercontinental ballistic missile, the Air Force seeks about $570 million for 2020: over 35 percent, or roughly $155 million, more than the 2019 appropriation of roughly $415 million. The next-generation ICBM will replace the current fleet of Minuteman III silo-based missiles beginning in the late 2020s.
The Air Force’s intercontinental ballistic missile fleet carries W78 and W87 nuclear warheads.
The Air Force has also proposed about $3 billion for development of the B-21 Raider bomber: around 30 percent, above the 2019 appropriation of more than $2.25 billion. The planned aircraft, designed to replace B2 and B52 bombers, would carry LRSO in the future. The Air Force plans to field Initial versions of the B21 in the late 2020s.
As Nuke Procurements Ramp Up, Wilson Will Ramp Off
Ahead of some of the peak spending years of the ongoing, 30-year nuclear modernization and maintenance program started by the Barack Obama administration in 2016, Heather Wilson, President Donald Trump’s secretary of the Air Force, will resign effective May 31.
Wilson, a former U.S. representatives and executive at DOE’s Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, will become president of the University of Texas El Paso, pending appointment by the UT System Board of Regents.
Air Force Undersecretary Matt Donovan is expected to lead the service in an acting capacity after Wilson’s departure until a successor is found, according to one Pentagon official.
Vivienne Machi, staff reporter for NS&D Monitor affiliate publication Defense Daily, contributed to this story from the Pentagon.
