This evening after the stock market close, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced that Northrop Grumman had been chosen as the prime contractor to build the Long Range Strike-Bomber, which is Pentagonese for a new family of bombers capable of striking anywhere in the world and with the capabilities to penetrate modern air defenses.
The decision, originally expected months ago, is about as important as it gets for the future of the military, the defense industry, and indeed America’s role in the world. But, as our recent study of the bomber program indicates, the biggest challenges won’t be technological but bureaucratic, political and budgetary. The contract award marks the start of the hard choices, not the end.
Artist’s depiction of the Long Range Strike Bomber | US Air Force and Northrop Grumman.
To be sure, the win is a game-changer within the aerospace industry. Northrop Grumman built America’s last bomber, the B-2, but the last of those rolled off the line two decades ago amid tremendous controversy. One of the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, then-Rep. John Kasich, made a reputation for himself by banding together with one of the most liberal Democrats in the house, Rep. Ron Dellums, to terminate the B-2 program at just 21 of the planned 132 aircraft.
By winning the new bomber competition — for what will no doubt become known as the B-3 — Northrop Grumman claws its way back to become one of the two prime builders of military planes in the United States. Conversely, Boeing will be ever more reliant on its booming commercial airline business. Its partner in the losing bomber bid, Lockheed Martin, will remain the largest American defense company on the strength of the huge F-35 fighter program. The B-3 buy is expected to be at least $80 billion, but this decision is also likely to lead to further consolidation within the industry; indeed, Wall Street already had begun to envision the breakup of Northrop Grumman regardless of the outcome of the completion. The victory may only push up the price of the sale.
The B-3 project is critical not only for the Air Force but also for the overall defense posture of the United States. The service’s fleet of long-range bombers is small and aging; only the 20 remaining B-2s have the “stealthy” ability to evade modern air defenses. As the United States withdraws from forward bases in Europe, the Middle East, and even East Asia, the ability to project power from the continental United States will be in increasing demand. And it is likely that unmanned variants of the B-3 will soon follow the manned version. In a networked connection with the “fifth generation” F-22 and F-35, the distinction between what’s a “bomber” and what’s a “fighter” will become blurred.
In shaping the B-3 project, the Air Force has been ostentatiously conservative in formulating requirements for the aircraft. As our study suggests, the most difficult of those is likely to prove the challenge of keeping to the projected $550 million-per-copy price tag, a task made increasingly difficult by the constant reductions and unpredictability of defense budgets.
Moreover, the Air Force hopes to use streamlined and accelerated procurement rules to field the B-3 in a timely way. That’s a wonderful idea, but one which swims against a 50-year tide of centralization and sclerosis in the Defense Department, the executive branch writ large, and the Congress.
America’s new bomber might have the ability to defeat Chinese, Russian, and Iranian air defenses, but it remains to be seen whether it can defeat the American defense bureaucracy.
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