Warbird Information Exchange

Senior Air Force Generals To Skeptics: We Can Field A New Bomber In 2018
Defense Daily 09/26/2007
Author: Michael Sirak


Although the schedule might be tight by normal Department of Defense standards, senior Air Force generals yesterday reiterated their commitment to fielding a new bomber aircraft in 2018.

"I don't think there is a question that we can bring a bomber on by 2018," Gen. Bruce Carlson, commander of Air Force Material Command, said yesterday during a forum of the Air Force's top generals at the Air Force Association's 2007 Air and Space Conference and Technology Exposition in Washington, D.C.

The compressed fielding schedule will necessitate that the Air Force pursue a basic model up front and then make improvements to its capabilities in subsequent blocks, Carlson and his senior counterparts said.

"It will have to be a block-type program and we will have to walk through this with our eyes open and restrain requirements," he said.

"We are committed to making this happen," added Gen. Ronald Keys, commander of Air Combat Command.

Keys, who is retiring next month, said the new bomber program, like any Pentagon weapon project, faces three types of risk: financial, technical and political.

For two of these, funding and technology, the service has at least some control. The political leg is less predictable.

"This is going to be technology that we know or we know that we can get to," Keys said of the technical approach that the service is taking. "And then we will do block upgrades...so all of the fancy stuff will be in the [later] model."

As for funding, the Air Force has maintained that it has earmarked the money in its future budgets to support the new bomber, which is the service's fifth highest acquisition priority (Defense Daily, Oct. 16, 2006).

The Air Force is "about 95 percent of the way" through securing the funding for the bomber program, Carlson said.

The Air Force's analysis of alternatives for a next-generation long-range strike system identified a new manned, subsonic bomber aircraft as the best option to pursue to meet the 2018 fielding goal (Defense Daily, May 2).

Service officials have said they want a platform that can survive in hostile airspace for extended periods. Notional attributes include an unrefueled range in excess of 2,000 miles and a payload capacity between 14,000 pounds and 28,000 pounds.

"It won't be the Cadillac version because this is not required," Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley said on the same panel of the initial version of the bomber that will be pursued.

Moseley said, at end of the day, the debate on the new bomber goes back to the heart and soul of the Air Force: range and payload.

"If you don't have that capability, how will you play in the policy world of the country in deterrence and dissuasion?" he asked. "How then do you hold a global set of targets at risk? How then do you play into the normal attributes of an Air Force that are not limited by water or river crossings or mountains?

"Those skeptics who say it can't be done," the chief continued, "I wonder what they thought before December 1903 when Wilbur and Orville [Wright] said they could fly?"