By Marina Malenic
The B-2 stealth bomber must be transformed into a standoff-capable platform in addition to its enduring mission as a penetrating bomber, the Air Force general in charge of nuclear operations said yesterday.
“You know, our standoff capability–we worry,” Maj. Gen. Donald Alston, the assistant Air Force chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration, said during a breakfast sponsored by the Air Force Association. “We’ve got a B-2 penetrator that will increasingly…find itself having to meet challenges in environments that we did not anticipate.”
Earlier this month, Ashton Carter, the Defense Department’s undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, said officials are reviewing the need for the new airplane, which he said is expected to be both a bomber and a reconnaissance platform (Defense Daily, Oct. 7).
Defense Secretary Robert Gates last month endorsed efforts to develop a new long-range strike platform, addressing the issue for the first time since asking the Air Force to go back to the drawing board on its next-generation bomber plans back in April (Defense Daily, Sept. 17).
Alston said that because the department has delayed development of the new bomber–which at one point was expected to enter the Air Force inventory in 2018–the B-2 will need significant upgrades.
“That platform is going to endure,” he said. “We need to make that a standoff-capable platform.” He said the Eisenhower-era B-52 ” for now still has that responsibility.”
“We’re in a…capabilities-based assessment period right now, in round two of an analysis of alternatives, for standoff,” Alston added.
Meanwhile, Northrop Grumman [NOC] said yesterday that the B-2 fleet will receive a new radar system following the Air Force’s decision to authorize full-rate production of the units by the company’s Radar Modernization Program (RMP).
The FRP decision was made last week, according to the company, and authorizes it to begin production the final radar units needed to complete the fleet modernization. The RMP contract, awarded in December 2008, is worth $468 million.
Northrop Grumman is currently producing radar units authorized under the RMP low-rate initial production program and installing units in operational B-2s as part of the RMP system development and demonstration phase.
The new units consist of a new advanced electronically scanned array antenna, a power supply and a modified receiver/exciter.
The 20-aircraft fleet is operated by the 509th Bomb Wing from Whiteman AFB, Mo.