The next generation of the Air Force’s long-range strike bomber should be capable of conducting intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance (ISR) in addition to delivering conventional and nuclear weapons, the chief of Strategic Command (STRATCOM) told reporters yesterday.
Gen. Robert Kehler said recent conflicts have shown there is a need for the platform to be ISR equipped.
“We realize that inherent in such a platform–and what we have seen over, now, the 10 years of Iraq and Afghanistan–is the value of being able to do both things on the platform,” he said. “Not only have it be a bomb-dropping platform and then have another ISR platform with it, but have a platform that can do both things: serve at some level as its own ISR, and then serve at some level as an ISR collector at large.”
“That value of being about to do that is high,” he said, while acknowledging that in a tough budget environment there will “have to be a balance here between capability and affordability” for the family of systems the Air Force wants to employ on the plane.
STRATCOM is responsible for the nation’s strategic nuclear deterrent that includes the ground-, sea- and air-based platforms known collectively the “triad” for delivering nuclear weapons.
The Air Force has begun design for the next generation bomber for replacing some of its aging fleet. The service sought $197 million in fiscal 2012 to begin development of the long-range, penetrating, optionally-manned, and nuclear-capable aircraft.
Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, told reporters last month that the new long-range bomber was the service’s top priority, along with the KC-46A aerial refueler and the Joint Strike Fighter (Defense Daily, Sept. 21). The Air Force plans to buy between 80 and 100 of the future aircraft and the first plane is slated to arrive in the mid-2020s.
Schwartz had said earlier this year that the platform will not be a “lone wolf” and the design would be modular to take into account other missions like ISR and electronic warfare (EW), as well as direct and stand-off munitions (Defense Daily, March 31).
Kehler flatly rejected the notion that the nuclear triad should be reduced by one component to a “dyad” because of the budget crunch. He argued that all three can be sustained, are needed to manage a capable nuclear deterrent, and provide the best structure under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia. New START went into effect earlier this year.
One of the “challenges with the budget” will be to ensure that the current triad fleet of ICBMs, strategic bombers and ballistic submarines are modernized and sustained until replacement platforms are ready.
“I will tell you that I continue to stand by a need for a triad,” he said. “Certainly, in the near term, I believe that we can sustain a triad.”