The Pentagon’s top buying officer shared a few of the closely held details of its future stealth bomber Thursday in a briefing with reporters on how it’s improved acquisitions process should make this next generation weapon less expensive and faster to field.
The program is classified to the extent that the Pentagon has not even made public the requirements it shared with defense contractors who are competing to win the contract, which may top $90 billion to build between 80-100 bombers.
In a briefing with reporters Thursday however, Frank Kendall, under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, offered a few insights into how the bomber will be put together: modular like the Littoral Combat Ship so that the technologies it will use to perform can be quickly upgraded.
A modular design is one where various parts of a weapons system can be inserted or removed in an interchangeable fashion to make it less expensive to upgrade the system with new technologies. The approach allows the Pentagon to upgrade its sensors and weapons without having to take apart the entire airframe to meet the new threats it identifies from adversaries.
Both Northrop Grumman and a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed Martin are heatedly competing to win the bomber contract, which is expected to be awarded this summer.
The new bomber would be responsible for delivering nuclear and conventional weapons and be able to evade quickly maturing sensors and deterrence capabilities by potential rivals such as China and Russia.
On Thursday, Kendall said other vendors would be invited to compete for business in future modifications to the bomber.
“Modular designs and the competition for future upgrades are very much part of that approach,” Kendall said. “I think we will have opportunities to compete technologies that will go into the bomber to a degree we would not have had with other programs before. The design is structured so we have the opportunity to insert technology refresh in a way in which we have not had the opportunity to do in the past.”
Modular designs do not always lead to cost saving, however. In the past several years, that modular design has created headaches for the Littoral Combat Ship, as the modules themselves saw their requirements change, leading to program delays, or the mission concept for the ships changed, leading to changes in the mission modules.
In addition, in 2014 the Government Accountability Office found that the way the mission modules were developed obscured the actual total cost of the Littoral Combat Ships, because the modules development and costs were often not included in the price of the sea frames.
