The Pentagon is preparing to take the next steps in its acquisition of the nation’s next stealth bomber, a procurement project that analysts expect to be a priority in the military’s fiscal 2017 budget request.
The Air Force awarded Northrop Grumman the $80 billion contract to build the long range strike-bomber in October. The service is expected to acquire 80-100 planes, which will begin entering service in the mid-2020s to replace the B-1 and B-52 bombers.
The losing team of Lockheed Martin and Boeing filed a protest Nov. 6, arguing that the Pentagon’s evaluation of the competing bids was “fundamentally flawed” and did not adequately consider the value and skill brought by their proposal.
The Government Accountability Office has 100 days to review the protest, meaning a decision is expected in mid-February.
If the government finds no merit to the protest, Northrop Grumman can begin work on the bomber immediately. If Lockheed Martin and Boeing win the protest, however, it “all goes back to the drawing board” and the Pentagon must reconsider both proposals and make a new decision, said Richard Aboulafia, the vice president of analysis at Teal Group.
Everyone expected a protest because of the high value of the contract, but Aboulafia said the Air Force took great care in its deliberations to make sure it wouldn’t need to redo them. As a result, he said he doesn’t expect the protest to stand.
“It really seems like the Air Force brought their A-game to this and brought everybody onboard,” he said. “It would be a major upset if they did.”
Which company builds the next bomber will have lasting impacts on the defense industrial base as well, according to Dakota Wood, a defense analyst with the Heritage Foundation.
If Northrop Grumman ends up losing the bid as a result of the protest, “essentially they’re out for the foreseeable future,” Wood said.
Boeing is behind the F/A-18, F-15, MV-22, P-8, C-17, C-135 family and the service’s newest tanker, the KC-46. Lockheed Martin’s portfolio includes the F-22, F-16, A-10, C-130 and P-3, as well the military’s big-ticket F-35.
In contrast, Northrop Grumman only has the E-8, a command and control aircraft, the E-2D, the RQ-4 Global Hawk and the B-2, an older bomber no longer in production.
“If Lockheed Martin/Boeing wins the contract, then there is nothing on the horizon for Northrop Grumman to compete for, which means your work force, your intellectual capital, anything associated with that just basically goes away and you can’t easily reconstitute that,” Wood said. “If Northrop Grumman wins, it keeps a diversified industrial base.”
Pentagon officials have said considerations of the defense industry would not play into their selection.
But Wood said it’s impossible to ignore the implications for the country, saying that having companies compete to solve problems usually results in the best solution for a good price.
“More people thinking about a problem in the competition, design and proposal phase generally results in better ideas,” he said. “And the government usually comes out ahead in terms of price.”
Regardless of who builds it, retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said work needs to begin quickly to get the new technology into the skies.
“Regardless of the outcome, we need to get to work building this thing as soon as possible, because while the importance of these new aircraft capabilities grows, our current aircraft fleet continues to age,” he said, noting that the average American bomber is almost 40 years old.
“We’ve got to stop fooling around with inducing additional delay and get on with building the aircraft,” he said.
The next-generation bomber, which makes up one piece of the nation’s nuclear triad, has largely been supported by lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who see it as critical to the nation’s national security and deterrent capabilities.
“The long range strike-bomber will serve our country for most of the 21st century and promises to provide critically-needed capabilities in the contested environments we will face,” Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., said in a statement when the contract was awarded last year. “Now more than ever, getting this program completed on time and on budget is crucial not just for one service or one mission but for the United States’ ability to project power around the world.”
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., also said a new bomber will provide a “leap in technology” that keeps America ahead of the increasing defenses of adversaries.
Michael O’Hanlon, an analyst with the Brookings Institution, said he expects a new bomber to be a funding priority for the Defense Department next year.
“It’s a way for Obama to help cement his legacy as a pro-defense moderate Democrat, and of course the Air Force wants it, too,” he said. “It will have conventional as well as nuclear applications, and it’s relevant to showing resolve vis-a-vis China as well.”
Despite the program being a priority, officials have suggested the long-range strike-bomber acquisition could see some cuts in the fiscal 2017 budget request, expected to be presented by the Pentagon in early February, to meet budget caps set by Congress last year.
Michael McCord, the Pentagon’s comptroller, said last year he expected the program to see a slowdown in fiscal 2017 since delays to the program have meant it cannot spend money as quickly as officials had thought.
“There’ll probably be some slowdowns in some modernizations programs,” McCord said at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in November, noting that the bomber would likely be among them because it got off to a slow start with a delayed contract award.
