The long-range strike bomber will eventually replace all B-1s, B-2s and B-52s after it comes online, a senior Air Force official said Thursday.
“Eventually, it will replace—it will be ‘the’ long-range strike bomber for us at a point,” Maj. Gen. Richard Clark, commander of the 8th Air Force, said during a hearing of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. The remarks are the first time the Air Force has publicly stated that the LRSB will replace the entire existing bomber fleet. In a brief interview after the hearing, Clark told Defense Daily that all existing bombers—the B-1, B-2 and B-52—will “age out” during LRSB’s lifespan.
During the hearing, Clark said the Air Force is developing a “bomber roadmap” to prepare for the LRSB being the only bomber in the Air Force fleet. “So what it’s going to require is modernization and sustainment of the B-52 and the B-2, in particular, for the nuclear mission,” Clark said. “And we do have plans in place. The president’s budget does address those. Now it’s a matter of committing to the roadmap we developed to get to that next step for the LRSB.”
The Air Force plans to retire the B-1 in the 2030s, the B-52 in 2040 and the B-2 in about 2060.
While the Senate’s version of the Fiscal Year 2016 defense spending bill would give $4 million less than the Obama administration’s proposed $149 million for B-52 modifications, it would also match President Obama’s $1.2 billion request for LRSB, and would match the Pentagon’s FY 2016 requests of $5.9 million for B-52 post-production support, $74.5 million for B-52 squadrons, $272 million for the B-2 Defensive Management System, $32.5 million for B-2 modifications, $38.9 million for B-2 post-production support, and $108.2 million for B-2 squadrons.
The Air Force plans to procure 80-100 LRSBs at a unit flyaway cost of $550 million. The service has stated it expects to announce the winner of the contract, a duel between Northrop Grumman [NOC] and a Boeing [BA] -Lockheed Martin [LMT] team, by the end of the summer.