By Marina Malenic
A replacement for the Air Force’s aging bomber fleet is likely to cost the Pentagon at least $30 billion-$40 billion, one expert predicted yesterday.
“In total, a budget of $30-$40 billion would be an accomplishment; that’s probably possible,” said Barry Watts, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “People who oppose it would look me in the eye and say, no, it’s more like $50, $60, $70 billion, and we can’t afford it.”
Watts, who ran the Pentagon’s Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation from 2001-2002, said that number assumes stability of design requirements through the life of the program.
“If you get under $500 million (per unit), it would probably be quite an achievement,” he added. That number includes research and development plus production costs, he said.
Improvements upon the current B-2 design are likely to include stealth upgrades, better sensors and computational abilities, as well as improved software, Watts said. And given the dramatic advances in precision munitions technology over the past decade, he predicted that the next generation platform would carry only 15,000-20,000 pounds of ordnance instead of the up to 50,000 pounds carried by the B-2.
“You could therefore have a smaller engine and better fuel efficiency,” he said.
Northrop Grumman [NOC] recently began a B-2 radar modernization effort to stretch that platform’s service life until a replacement comes online (Defense Daily, Jan. 7).
Next-generation bomber plans will be reviewed as part of the Pentagon’s next Quadrennial Defense Review, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Congress last week (Defense Daily, Jan. 28).
“It is my intent to launch that [in February] and to do so in an accelerated way so that it can, if not shape the FY ’10 budget, have a dramatic impact on the FY ’11 budget,” he said.
Boeing [BA] and Lockheed Martin [LMT] have created a team to compete for the eagerly anticipated contract. Northrop Grumman, the incumbent on the B-2 program, is also expected to bid.
Watts said some initial R&D spending for the bomber may have been included in last year’s classified budget.
He also said the Boeing-Lockheed Martin teaming agreement is indicative of the weakness of the defense industrial base.
“Boeing by itself didn’t think it could design [a bomber],” Watts said. “And Lockheed has sort of said, ‘We’re no longer in this business, we just can’t afford it any more.'”
Companies are “very hard pressed to recruit top engineering grads from” the best universities, he added.
“There are lots of more interesting, more lucrative areas to go into these days,” Watts said.