No more Next Generation Bomber after all

One of the significant departures in the Pentagon's 2010 budget was the cancellation of the Next Generation Bomber project, which seemingly had gotten underway last year with a $2 billion black contract award to Northrop Grumman. At the time, we had supposed that the non-competitive award suggested that the next bomber design would follow the rough outlines of the existikng B-2 Spirit bombers; a patent filing found by Aviation Week suggested that Northrop would also draw on the rough outlines of its X-47B drone for the Navy.

The new budget, of course, asserts that the existing bomber fleet is adequate for the time being. As we wrote on 12 August of last year, the few details known then about the putative Next Generation Bomber suggested that it would be equipped with a single but particularly large bomb bay. An oversized bomb bay is most useful for oversized, bunker-busting bombs, so this would make the bomber particularly aimed at the so-called deeply buried target set.

Cancellation of the program suggests that Bob Gates' thinking on this matter has rather evolved. There are several possibilities. He may be thinking that existing or developmental weapons in the USAF arsenal could hold this target set at risk from the B-2s. Alternatively, he could believe that the problem is intractable, or that deterrence--holding other targets at risk in return--is working just fine.

This strongly suggests that the USAF's next bomber, such as it may be, will be an unmanned platform. It may very well be nuclear-capable, in that nuclear-armed cruise missiles are similarly robotic but powerful weapons. Whatever the case, the decision definitely shows that Gates and his team are willing to change their minds, and to enforce their will after those decisions are made.