More B-21 aircraft could be procured if the Air Force succeeds in doubling its number of bomber squadrons over the next decade, but service officials are not yet ready to talk tails.
The Air Force’s proposal to increase its squadron numbers from 312 to 386 by the 2025-2030 timeframe would include five additional bomber squadrons, the biggest percentage increase in the service’s inventory, Secretary Heather Wilson said in a Sept. 17 speech at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber conference in National Harbor, Maryland. (Defense Daily, Sept. 17) The service currently operates nine bomber squadrons.
Gen. Timothy Ray, who recently assumed command of Air Force Global Strike Command, told reporters Sept. 18 at the conference that the breakdown of those squadrons “is not ready to be translated into tails.”
The service’s squadron increase assessment was developed using models and simulations, and came in response to congressional leaders asking what capabilities would be necessary to address all of the threats laid out in the fiscal year 2018 (FY’18) national defense strategy by 2030, Wilson said. But the service expects to conduct five more studies that will further detail the strategy, she added.
The proposal reflects the service’s required “ability to project that power,” Ray said. “You can do it with enough granularity without having to be specific to a given platform.
“This wasn’t a conversation about what the B-1 do, what can the B-52 do, what can the B-2 do,” he noted. “It’s a question of, broadly speaking, what do we need in terms of capabilities that the commanders out there are going to ask for.”
The bomber squadron numbers may not completely reflect the findings in Global Strike Command’s “bomber vector roadmap,” which was revealed this past January, he added.
“The bomber roadmap was done before this particular effort and they are not, I would say, synchronized yet,” he said.
Analysts said it’s likely that those new squadrons would be comprised of new B-21 Raider aircraft, as the Air Force has announced it will retire two of its strategic bomber fleets — the B-1 Lancer and the B-2 Spirit — by the 2030s. Northrop Grumman [NOC] is the prime contractor developing the next-generation heavy bomber.
Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis and of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., told reporters Sept. 20 that it would be “a safe assumption” that any additional bomber squadrons would be comprised of additional B-21s.
“I think it’s no secret that the Air Force has been saying for a while that they want to buy more than a hundred of the B-21 bombers and a hundred was the baseline on the program,” he said. “So I fully expect that when we see the final report, it’s going to call for a greater production, greater number of bombers in production.”
That being said, the Raider’s production numbers are likely already set since the aircraft is currently in development, he noted.
“If they’re going to buy more of them, they probably have to do most of that at the end of the production run, so that will take longer to get into the force structure,” he added.
Ray declined to offer any updates on the secretive B-21 program, but said he had recently completed his own review and is “very confident that we are doing very well in the program.”
Air Force leadership and industry supporters noted at the conference that bomber aircraft will play an increasingly important role in future battles against high-end threats.
“The current force of 157 bombers is not enough to meet America’s defense strategy,” said ret. Lt. Gen. David Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, during a Sept. 18 panel discussion titled, “Building the Future Bomber Force.” The institute that same day released a new report titled, “Building the Future Bomber Force America Needs: The Bomber Re-Vector” which calls for the Air Force to procure at least 180 B-21 aircraft and reconsider retiring the B-1 and B-2 fleets.
The authors advocate modernizing the B-1 and B-2 fleets until enough B-21s are procured. “This additive approach … builds the bomber inventory, closing the gap between demand and available assets in an era when range, responsiveness, payload, survivability, and versatility matter more than ever,” the report said. That could include improved radars and a broadened weapons arsenal for the B-1, while B-2s should receive integrated satellite communications, an expanded weapons carriage and upgraded radar processing, among other reforms, it added.
Deptula, who co-authored the report, said in the panel that “Air Force leaders should be careful not to prematurely retire aircraft they may need in the future.”
“To make retirement pronouncements today about decisions that will be made in the 2030s is simply counterproductive, because once an aircraft is labeled for retirement, what happens to modernization dollars? They dry up,” he added.
The Air Force for now appears dedicated to its plan to retire the B-1 and B-2 fleets by the 2030s. Ray noted that the bomber roadmap helped to assess the sustainability of those two platforms for the future force.
“Certainly the B-1 … [and] the B-2 has done a great job, but when you think through out to the 2050 dimension, it’s just not possible right now — when you think of the sustainment investment — to go beyond where we are in the mid-2030s,” he said.