The companies were bitter rivals during the Pentagon’s Joint Strike Fighter competition. | AP Photos Boeing, Lockheed team up

Major defense programs don’t get much more important, or more difficult, than the Air Force bomber competition for which Boeing and Lockheed Martin are joining forces.

The aerospace titans have decided they’ll bid together, with Boeing as the prime contractor and Lockheed as its “primary teammate,” to build a fleet of 80 to 100 new bombers for no more than $550 million apiece.


The companies were bitter rivals during the Pentagon’s Joint Strike Fighter competition, but the realpolitik of sequestration-era defense spending prompted them to join forces in pursuing the new bomber. A third contractor expected to bid on the program, Northrop Grumman, has so far remained silent about its intentions, but is expected to have an edge if it goes ahead.

Northrop built the Air Force’s newest bomber, the B-2 Spirit, and it works with Lockheed in building the F-35 Lightning II. As an unsubtle reminder about its qualifications involving advanced stealth aircraft, Northrop commissioned a book earlier this year retelling the story of the development of the B-2.

Boeing and Lockheed likely worried that Northrop’s stealth bomber experience put them at too big a disadvantage if they bid individually.

So they opted for a joint effort, which “brings together nearly two centuries of combined experience designing, developing and testing aircraft for defense customers around the world,” the companies said. “The companies also bring expertise in integrating proven technologies, and their skilled workforces and critical infrastructure and scale, to meet the U.S. Air Force’s cost and schedule requirements.”

Cost and schedule are two things that have made bombers some of the most difficult things for the Pentagon to buy over the past 40 years, and the specifics involved with the Air Force’s new program sound like they could be just as tough.

For one thing, the secret stealth bomber is only part of what the Air Force has called a Long-Range Strike “family of systems,” first pitched during the flush budget years of Iraq and Afghanistan, before the era of sequestration. So in addition to the 80 to 100 new bombers, the Air Force has said it wants new standoff weapons, drones and upgrades for its existing bombers.

For another, it would require a leap forward. The Air Force wants the bomber to be “optionally manned,” meaning that, if necessary, it could fly combat missions without pilots. Remotely operated aircraft have become an indispensable part of military operations — the Air Force notched its 2 millionth hour of Predator and Reaper drone flight last week — but its new bomber could be the first unmanned aircraft to carry nuclear weapons.

The aerospace vendors competing to build the bomber must build an aircraft that can answer all these requirements, stay under a cost ceiling and deliver the first aircraft by the mid-2020s. If history is any guide, all of that could be a big challenge, according to a Congressional Research Service report last spring that outlined the Air Force’s checkered bomber record.

In the late 1970s, the service planned to buy 250 B-1A Lancers to begin replacing its 1950s-era B-52s, but the program was canceled. Then it was later revived, and the Air Force wound up with a production run of 100 B-1Bs. Sixty-three remain in service today.

In 1981, the Air Force wanted 132 B-2 Spirits, but between requirements changes, cost growth and the end of the Cold War, it wound up with 21 — at a cost of more than $2 billion apiece. Twenty remain in service. Today’s Air Force also retains about 76 of its original run of 744 B-52 Stratofortresses. The newest one in the fleet turned 50 last year.

In short, the need to build a brand-new, high-performance aircraft that meets stringent requirements — the B-2s repose in climate-controlled hangars, for example — has always been very tricky amid Washington’s larger budgetary and political forces.

Air Force officials have grouped the bomber with two of their other major priorities: Lockheed’s F-35 Lightning II fighter and Boeing’s KC-46 refueling tanker, hinting they’d try to protect it as much as possible. President Barack Obama’s “pivot” to the Western Pacific region is expected to place new demands on all the Air Force’s bombers, the CRS report said, as commanders use them to cover its immense distances, watch large swaths of ocean or even launch attacks at long distances.

The report cited one example from recent history, in which commanders sent a pair of B-2s from Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., to a bombing range in South Korea and back, nonstop, as a message to North Korea about the credibility of U.S. air power. As those kinds of demands grow, CRS worried whether today’s aging bomber force can continue to take such assignments.

“As potential … adversaries throughout the world become more prevalent and more capable, the question remains: Will the Air Force’s legacy bomber force keep pace with sustainment and modernization efforts in order to remain a credible response to such adversaries, or will they become increasingly irrelevant because the nation cannot afford them?”

Since the Pentagon is enduring budget cuts from sequestration that hit everything in its portfolio equally, and because the Air Force is keeping its bomber secret, it isn’t clear what effect sequestration could have on its schedule or performance.

Boeing and Lockheed officials repeated that they get how important it will be to meet the Air Force’s cost and schedule targets.

“We’re confident that our team will meet the well-defined system requirements and deliver a world-class next generation Long-Range Strike Bomber to the U.S. Air Force within the budget and time frame required,” said Orlando Carvalho, vice president of Lockheed’s aeronautics division.