A top Air Force official said yesterday that the service is examining both manned and unmanned next-generation long-range strike options to replace its aging bomber fleet.
“We are looking at both approaches,” Lt. Gen. David Deptula, the Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) told sister publication Defense Daily on the sidelines of an unmanned systems conference sponsored by National Defense University.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week told Reuters that the 2011 Defense Department spending request is likely to include funding for development of a new bomber. Gates suspended the effort in January, asking the Air Force to better flesh out its ideas before proceeding with development.
“We are probably going to proceed with a long-range strike initiative coming out of the Quadrennial Defense Review and various other reviews going on,” Gates said while traveling in Iraq. “We’re looking at a family of capabilities, both manned and unmanned.”
He said $1 billion would likely be devoted to the effort in its first year, with gradual increases thereafter.
Deptula confirmed yesterday that both manned and unmanned options are needed “depending on the situation.”
“If you just want to go from point A to point B in uncontested airspace and gather targeting data, an unmanned system can do the job,” he said. “We are looking at a variety of options.”
He said the service has not yet made any decisions about specific platforms.
The Pentagon’s top arms buyer, Ashton Carter, said in October that the new airplane will have to be both a bomber and a reconnaissance platform. Deptula has said that a new bomber will have to provide a much broader range capabilities than the legacy systems it is expected to replace. He has said that it will have to be a “long-range, ISR-strike platform.”