Sessions called the deal "a huge procurement."
In a few weeks, the Pentagon will announce the companies picked to develop America’s next bomber jet, sparking a budget war that will last for years and reshape the defense industry, experts say.
The Long Range Strike Bomber, which will probably be called the B-3, will provide more bang for the buck than several fighter jets. But it won’t be cheap. It is likely to cost at least $111 billion to acquire 100 planes, says Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. That’s almost twice the amount the Air Force has quoted before, and it assumes no cost overruns. The higher price tag is due to the service previously understating the costs, not to any real hike in expenses, Harrison says.
Adding the cost to operate the planes more than doubles the price tag yet again to in excess of $200 billion, experts say. Plus, the B-3s are expected to only replace the oldest U.S. bombers, the B-1s and B-52s. An additional program will probably be required in a couple of decades to replace the younger bombers, the B-2s, the experts say.
“It’s a huge procurement,” says Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. “We will pay much more attention to it as we move forward.”
The B-3 bomber is just one of several multi-billion-dollar weapons to be produced in the 2020s, and advocates for those ships and planes will fight each other tooth and nail, analysts say. The bomber program will also be a test case on Capitol Hill for whether the Pentagon can buy major weapons without massive cost overruns and schedule delays.
The bomber contract decision will lead to changes in the companies bidding for it. If the team that includes Lockheed Martin Corp. wins, it could give that one company unrivaled—and perhaps unhealthy—power as a central player in all three of the newest U.S. warplane programs—the bomber plus the F-22 and F-35 fighter jets—on top of the company’s newly expanded role in the military helicopter market.
What’s more, the bomber award may result in the losing bidder being purchased by another company or at least entering new markets or selling parts of its business. That in turn could reorder which politicians are champions of which companies in the coming budget battles.
“We shouldn’t underestimate how consequential this contract award is going to be for the future of this sector of the aerospace industry,” says Harrison.
