By Jen DiMascio
For the past three years, aerospace giants Boeing [BA]and Lockheed Martin [LMT]have flirted with the idea of teaming up to make the Air Force’s next-generation bomber aircraft. Over the last year, the two companies deepened the relationship, finalizing their agreement to work together, but the companies waited until last week to publicly reveal their partnership on what is likely to be the next major Air Force contract competition.
Service officials have said publicly they want a new bomber by 2018, but the Air Force is not likely to formally begin the competition until the details of the fiscal year 2010 budget become clear, said Darryl Davis, president of Boeing Advanced Systems, in a teleconference with reporters last week.
One criticism of the bomber program has been whether it has enough funding to fly, although service officials said in September that they had nearly solidified enough money in the 2010 budget (Defense Daily, Sept. 26).
The team is likely to face Nothrop Grumman [NOC] in the competition, which currently makes the B-2 Spirit bomber.
The announcement by Boeing and Lockheed Martin may or may not have an impact on shoring up support for the effort, company officials said, but it does demonstrate a commitment on the part of the contractors, they said.
“What it will do is it will provide the confidence to the Air Force that two major defense contractors have been working the problem,” said Frank Cappuccio, executive vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs and Strategic Planning office.
The companies plan to build on previous team-efforts like the F-22 Raptor and the Small Diameter Bomb. This partnership would be less like the F-22, in which Lockheed Martin was clearly the lead contractor and more integrated, Davis said, adding that work won’t be divided by items like the mission system, the propulsion system or airframe. “We’re leveraging the best of what both companies bring to bear,” he said.
The Boeing-Lockheed Martin team is “agnostic” about the approach that the Air Force will take on the bomber–whether it is manned, unmanned or optionally manned, Davis said.
“We are waiting for the Air Force to determine what is the requirement,” he said.
The Air Force has conducted an analysis of alternatives for the potential program, which is likely to drive requirements, he said.
Early ideas thus far have been a subsonic platform with a range of 2,000 to 3,000 miles.
In the meantime, Boeing and Lockheed Martin are working with their own technologies as well as government funded technologies that they can bring to the competition once the requirements are known.
Although many of the technologies are at a high readiness level already, the challenge will be configuring them into one system, as well as demonstrating the manufacturing capacity to produce them quickly, Davis said.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin will also be able to tap into a political base spread across the country. Boeing will conduct a large part of work on the bomber in St. Louis, Mo., where its Integrated Defense System operations are headquartered. It will also draw on expertise from Southern California and Puget Sound in Washington State, said Davis, who added that it is too early to speculate on where final assembly will take place.
Cappuccio also declined to answer where Lockheed Martin would base most of its work until after the request for proposals is released and the company has evaluated its plans. The team currently consists of employees of Lockheed Martin’s advanced development division called Skunk Works in Southern California, as well as personnel from Ft. Worth, Texas, and Georgia.