Valerie Insinna
Defense Daily
11/20/2015
The Air Force’s current plan to buy anywhere from 80 to 100 Long Range Strike Bombers (LRSB) will not be sufficient to meet operational requirements, and double that number could be needed for a large scale conflict in which conventional and nuclear bombers are needed, a study by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies found.
Michael Moeller, the author of the study and formerly the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and programs, said the service needs a force of 150 to 200 bombers, which includes both the LRSB and the 20 B-2s procured in the 1990s.
“You need to have between 100 and 200 LRSBs operational, on the ramp by 2045" when the legacy B-1s and B-52s reach the end of their service lives, he said Wednesday during the rollout of the study.
In October, Northrop Grumman, which manufactured the B-2, was awarded the two-part LRSB contract, which includes a cost-plus incentive fee development contract as well as a fixed-price contract with incentives for reducing cost for 21 aircraft in five lots. Since then, its competitor—a team of Lockheed Martin and Boeing — has filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office.
The Air Force cannot continue to rely on its aging fleet of B-52 and B-1s, which have seen their survivability degraded as U.S. adversaries developed advanced air defenses capable of denying access to the older bomber fleet, Moeller said. By 2025, the average age of bomber fleet will be 50 years old.
"Our B-52s and B-1s will have a very difficult time surviving in a contested environment, and what we will face over the course of the next two decades is air operations in highly contested environments,” he said. “Only the B-2 serves as a true penetrating, survivable bomber."
Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), who chairs the House Armed Services Committee’s seapower and projection forces subcommittee, said that it will be critical for Congress to support the LRSB program during its early stages, when it will be most vulnerable.
“The nonrecurring development cost is going to be high and controversial,” he said. "The procurement costs in the early aircraft are going to be important. That’s why our committee is going to be looking very, very closely at this and scrutinizing this, because we can’t allow sticker shock to set in. We also can’t have a repeat of what happened with the B-2 when production was curtailed, because that ended up making them cost billions of dollars apiece."
Congressional support for the program could be critical in future years, when the Air Force ramps up its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter buy and starts procuring LRSB. Earlier this month, analysts indicated that the service may be stretched for resources to accommodate both planned acquisitions, leading to conflict.
The service has classified the bomber program to the extent that subcontractors cannot even be publicly announced. That could portend negative consequences down the road because lawmakers will not be able to fight to protect LRSB jobs in their districts, said Richard Aboulafia, Teal Group’s vice president of analysis.
Under the current contract, average unit flyaway cost is $511 million in 2010 dollars for a total of 100 LRSBs, according to William LaPlante, the Air Force’s chief weapons buyer. That translates to $564 million per bomber in fiscal year 2016 dollars.
