Yup: Long-Range Strike Bomber Competitive Procurement Started

The US Air Force has launched the competitive phase of the classified long range strike bomber by issuing a request for proposals, with Northrop Grumman and a Boeing/Lockheed Martin team poised to compete for a contract to develop and build 80-100 aircraft over the next two decades.

Details of the air force’s requirements for the new bomber are classified, and service officials are unlikely to provide more updates until a scheduled contract award in the second quarter of 2015.

“It will be an adaptable and highly capable system based upon mature technology,” says secretary of the air force Deborah Lee James.

Air force officials also have said the new bomber, also called the LRS-B, will enter service as a manned aircraft with a target unit price of $550 million. As the first new US bomber launched since the Northrop Grumman B-2A, the LRS-B is expected to replace a fleet of 76 Boeing B-52H and possibly a portion of the supersonic Rockwell B-1B fleets. A fleet of 20 B-2As will remain in service and complement the LRS-B.

The request for proposals has been highly anticipated by the competing teams as the largest new business opportunity in the aerospace sector for at least another decade.

link.

Some further bits.  

Noted in the above first is that California passed a $400 million dollar tax credit if the winner builds in California.  Northrop Grumman has replied they will.  No word on the Lockheed/Boeing side.  

The bomber procurement is described as a system of systems.  What do you want to bet one side will get the main aircraft and the other will get a long range strike missile and captive carry UAV to go with?  Perhaps an onboard DEW (laser) integration contract, too.

The aircraft has been touted as being faster than the B-2.

I bet this sucker has already been under development and they are just going to pick between two.  My preference actually would be for three different aircraft: one fast (SR-75), one uber stealthy (bat plane son of B-2) and another bomb truck (late life child of the B-52 & a UAV).  But.  We are likely to get one with different capabilities instead.

(another link)