The US Air Force has kicked off the competition that will determine who will build the Long Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B), a next-generation aircraft intended to replace the venerable B-52 bomber and the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. This week, the Air Force sent requirements to industry for the program. Its goal is picking a winning design by spring of 2015.

The requirements were largely classified, but the mission isn't very secret. The Air Force has been driving the development of a new bomber around the mission of defending against the Chinese navy, based on a demonstration in 2004 that echoed Gen. Billy Mitchell's demonstration of the superiority of air power in 1921.

Just like the Army and Marine Corps planes' sinking of the "unsinkable" German battleship Ostfriesland was intended to demonstrate the vulnerability of ships to bomber planes—and to shore up the budget for the then-shrinking Army Air Corps—the location and bombing of the former USS Schenectady off Hawaii was intended to demonstrate the role the Air Force could play in defending the Pacific against the growing threat of Chinese naval power. The role could include launching from bases out of range from China's "carrier-killer" anti-ship ballistic missiles and other long-range tactical weapons. The Air Force has been pushing for a plane built for that type of mission ever since, desiring a bomber capable of evading detection by the Chinese and striking at targets at sea.

Development of the LRS-B has been ongoing, in limited ways, under "black" contracts since the cancellation of the Air Force's "Next-Generation Bomber" program in 2009. That program was shot down by then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates when it was clear that the aircraft would be hugely expensive. In a speech to the Air Force Association in September of 2009, Gates said:

What we must not do is repeat what happened with our last manned bomber. By the time the research, development, and requirements processes ran their course, the aircraft, despite its great capability, turned out to be so expensive—$2 billion each in the case of the B-2—that less than one-sixth of the planned fleet of 132 was ever built. Looking ahead, it makes little sense to pursue a future bomber—a prospective B-3, if you will—in a way that repeats this history. We must avoid a situation in which the loss of even one aircraft—by accident, or in combat—results in a loss of a significant portion of the fleet, a national disaster akin to the sinking of a capital ship. This scenario raises our costs of action and shrinks our strategic options, when we should be looking to the kind of weapons systems that limit the costs of action and expand our options.

Because of the size of the program and the investment required to even get in the door, the usual-suspect aerospace firms are the only ones getting a crack at the LSR-B contract. Lockheed Martin and Boeing announced last fall that they will make a joint proposal for the LRS-B program; it's not clear if Northrop Grumman, the manufacturer of the B-2, plans to compete or not.

The new bomber is targeted to cost under $550 million per plane with a production run of 80 to 100 aircraft, and it is to be delivered in about 10 years. In a speech in June, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for acquisition William LaPlante said that the program "is designed around a fixed set of requirements [and] relatively mature technologies... [we will] build the first version knowing it won’t have everything on it that we want or will want. We’re building an adaptable approach with an open architecture, [with] places on the wings that allow us to customize sensors and weapons with future capabilities." On the $550 million-per-plane pricetag, LaPlante said, "If later on we decide to buy 200 bombers, or we decide to buy 50, the [cost] will change."

Critics contend that LaPlante's comments mean it will end up costing just as much as the B-2. Even the Air Force's own general in charge of acquisition admits that the cost will be higher. Lt. Gen. Charles Davis told Defense News, "Is it going to be $550 million a copy? No, of course it’s not going to be $550 million a copy once you add in everything.”

There's bound to be some additional adjustment to the requirements as well. The "open architecture" the requirements call for now may not be sufficient to deal with the shifting realities of the mission the LRS-B was conceived for. Chinese military's defensive capabilities have leapt forward considerably in the last decade, casting doubt on how effective unescorted, manned bombers of any kind would be in countering a Chinese naval force. In March for instance, China commissioned the Kunming, the first of a new class of guided missile destroyers intended to rival the US Navy's Arleigh Burke DDGs and provide advanced air defense for the Chinese fleet.