By Emelie Rutherford
The debut version of the Air Force’s next-generation bomber planned for 2018 will likely not be unmanned, the head of Air Combat Command said last week.
While follow-on increments of the bomber may be able to operate without pilots in the sky, the aircraft simply may not be far enough along in its development a decade from now for drone flight, Gen. John Corley, commander of Air Combat Command, said.
“To be able to give you that airplane in 2018 … I need to have a technology-readiness level, I need to have a manufacturing-readiness level, I need to have an integration- readiness level that I have confidence in, so that I can harvest what I learned out of 117s, F-22s, F-35s, B-2s, if you will, and import those technologies and those capabilities into this next-generation bomber that will take us down another level in terms of survivability and the ability to persist,” he said. “To be able to do that and do that by 2018 tells me … that I probably cannot make increment number-one unmanned.”
The Air Force is now hashing out the requirements for the next-generation bomber, a classified program for which details have been closely held. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne told lawmakers earlier this month the program will have both manned and unmanned versions.
Corley told Washington defense reporters at a breakfast last Thursday that he sees “an appetite towards unmanned aerial systems that is growing.” He pointed to benefits of making an aircraft like the next-generation bomber unmanned, including long dwell time and long endurance that allows for persistence in an environment.
He said that as adversaries have developed improved air defense systems and aircraft, it is his job to be able to do more than just penetrate their environments.
“As I look at a pesky problem for this next-generation bomber, this 2018 bomber, I need to be able to penetrate, I need to be able to persist, and I need to be able to hold targets at risk,” he said. “And target not just things fixed, but potentially things mobile, and things moving. So that’s where I find the focus needs to be on this platform.”
At the same time, he said, he’s facing a capability void that needs to be filled with a new bomber, as planned, in 2018.
“I need to be able to hand the president options, and the capability-void window, as far as all the intelligence estimates that I’m being handed right now, say that void, the front end of it, is happening about 2015, and it’s really going to be at full-flush by about 2020,” Corley said.
Calling himself “a realist,” Corley said the first increment of the new bomber by necessity likely will not be unmanned.
“It may be increment 1.3, it might be increment 1.5,” he said. “But increment number 1–I will continue to explore it–but to deliver on those capabilities with that technology-readiness level by 2018 probably means increment number 1 will be piloted. That doesn’t mean that I’m not putting in the hooks, the group A, the group B, the planning, to make it optionally manned.”
There is rampant skepticism among industry watchers about the new bomber emerging on time in 2018.
A March 7 Congressional Research Service report says the Air Force’s current plan for an interim bomber around 2018, and a follow-on craft with advances such as hypersonic flight in 2037, “might not be problematic for the Air Force.”
“The major difficulty will probably be the fiscal tradeoffs that will have to take place to fit this acquisition program into a crowded field,” says the report written by Anthony Murch. “The past is replete with examples of budgetary constraints resulting in drawn out or severely curtailed programs. If history repeats with the 2018 bomber, the Air Force might field its interim fix in the mid to late 2020s with far fewer bombers than planned.”