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Delaying new bomber would be a mistake

The Air Force must move forward on a new bomber.

The nation needs it. Troops deserve it. A new bomber is even required by law.

With a force of 180 planes, the Air Force’s bomber fleet is at its lowest strength since the mid-1930s.

The service’s 21 B-2 Spirit bombers are its newest, but the last was delivered a decade ago and the planes lack versatility. The 65 B-1B Lancer bombers have survived a troubled gestation to become extremely useful, but they’re expensive to operate, weren’t built for longevity and will need to be retired soon. Only our 94 B-52 Stratofortresses, of which 65 are combat-ready, can carry any bomb, over any distance, to perform a range of nuclear and conventional strike missions.

But we’ve relied on the B-52 for too long. We must move ahead.

According to official Air Force figures, our average bomber is 32 years old and has logged 11,400 flight hours.

The legal requirement for a new bomber is in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, the congressionally mandated Pentagon strategy document, which calls for initial operating capability by 2018.

But in recent months, Air Force leaders have provided contradictory cues as to where we stand on a new bomber and whether they’ll strive to meet the QDR requirement. Here is what I think is going on:

I believe the service is planning two generations of future bombers, the ”2018 bomber” mandated by the QDR and a “2035 bomber” that will take many more years to reach squadrons.

Service leaders view the 2018 bomber as a simple, pragmatic aerial truck, hauling bombs over vast distances. It will be a conventional aircraft, powered by turbofan engines and operating below 50,000 feet, much like the bombers of today. It will use digital technology but will be, in some ways, merely a present-day version of the B-52.

The 2018 bomber isn’t on the drawing board yet, even though it is the simpler and more urgent of the two projects.

The nation’s two largest defense contractors, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, announced Jan. 25 they will team up to present a plan to design and build the “2018 bomber” and hinted that it might be unmanned. In my view, it would be better if these two industry giants were to compete for the job.

The 2035 bomber will be futuristic — a suborbital semi-spacecraft able to move at hypersonic speed along the edge of the atmosphere. It will draw heavily from a project called Blackswift that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is pursuing.

There have been hints that this highly advanced aircraft may exist already, or soon. A senior Air Force official told me he wishes he could “bring this out of the black.” The service operates “black” programs, the existence of which is made known only to a select few in Congress, at its base at Groom Lake, Nev., which is off-limits to the press, public and even most lawmakers.

I like the idea of moving ahead with both low- and high-tech bombers. I hope the current crisis in the fighter force, caused by the grounding of the F-15 Eagle fleet, won’t delay progress on a new bomber.

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The author, an Air Force veteran, lives in Oakton, Va. Dorr is the author of “Air Combat,” a history of fighter pilots. His e-mail address is robert.f.dorr@cox.net.