Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
4/10/2015
The Defense Department plans to compete individual upgrades for the long-range strike bomber (LRSB), Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Frank Kendall said during a Pentagon press briefing April 9. “I think we will have opportunity to compete technologies that can go into the bomber to a degree we would not have had on earlier or other programs before,” Kendall said. “I think the program office has done a good job with that.” While declining to go into specifics of the largely classified program, Kendall said modular designs and competition for future upgrades of LRSB is part of Better Buying Power, a DoD initiative aimed at strengthening the department’s buying power, improving industry productivity and providing a more affordable warfighter.
A Boeing-Lockheed Martin team is competing with Northrop Grumman for the LRSB contract, but other companies will be able to compete for different bits of sustainment and upgrades. “The design is structured so that we have the opportunity to insert technology refresh in a way in which we have not had the flexibility to do in the past,” Kendall said. “That was one of the things we asked for of the components. I can’t go much further on the bomber than that.” The Air Force plans to award the bomber contract this summer, and has established a flyaway cost—counting only production costs and tools of production— cap of $550 million per aircraft in 2010 dollars. Kendall said DoD will continue affordability caps through Better Buying Power, emphasizing “should-cost” procurement structures and promoting competition.
