LRS-B: Why Northrop Grumman Won Next U.S. Bomber
Aviation Week & Space Technology
Bill Sweetman
Oct 27, 2015
The U.S. Air Force announced Oct. 27 that Northrop Grumman beat a Boeing/Lockheed Martin team in a competition to develop and build 100 of the bombers, which are expected to reach initial operational capability in the mid-2020s. The Pentagon says the next phase of the work, engineering and manufacturing development (EMD), should cost $21.4 billion in 2010 dollars, including the delivery of an unspecified number of test aircraft.
Another $1.9 billion has already been spent on risk reduction, bringing both competing teams through the initial design phase. In 2016 dollars,
the estimated EMD cost is $23.5 billion, the Pentagon says. The B-2 cost $37.2 billion to develop in 2016 dollars.
The Air Force also says that the average procurement unit cost for the Northrop Grumman bomber (which does not have a formal designation yet) will be
$511 million in 2010 dollars, assuming a 100-aircraft buy ($564 million in 2016 dollars). This figure, the result of two independent Pentagon estimates, is lower than the $550 million (2010 dollars) goal that was set in 2011, when then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates approved the start if the program.
Northrop Grumman’s contract includes fixed-price incentive options for the first five batches of low-rate initial production aircraft, comprising 21 bombers. The price for those aircraft (which will be higher than the average) has not been disclosed. Through production, the program has been estimated to represent $80 billion in business.
The LRS-B is expected to be operational in the mid-2020s. The exact date will depend on initial operational capability criteria, such as a certain number of aircraft in service, which are still to be determined by the Air Force’s Global Strike Command.
The stakes for LRS-B were so huge that industry analysts have long predicted that the losing bidder would protest the award. Boeing is no stranger to that tactic. In 2008, the company successfully protested the Air Force’s 2008 award of a contract for refueling tankers to a Northrop-EADS team and ultimately won the contract in a second competition. Boeing and Lockheed Martin said in a joint statement that they were “disappointed by today’s announcement (and) interested in knowing how the competition was scored in terms of price and risk.” The Air Force says it will start debriefing the loser on Friday, and there is a 100-day period in which to lodge a protest.
“The Air Force has made the right decision for our nation’s security,” said Wes Bush, Northrop Grumman president, chairman and CEO. “Our team has the resources in place to execute this important program.”
For the time being, however, the make-up of Northrop Grumman’s team is a secret, as are most attributes of the program. Not even the engine subcontractor is disclosed, although the Air Force said today that
all major subsystems have been selected. Although
most analysts agree it is overwhelmingly likely that the bomber will resemble a smaller cousin of the B-2, a blended wing-body aircraft with two engines and an unrefueled radius of action of around 2,500 nm, no such details have been confirmed.
Details of the selection process also remain highly classified, but it is likely that the winning bid rested on Northrop Grumman's operational experience with wide-band, all-aspect stealth technology on the B-2 bomber and the still-secret RQ-180 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) unmanned air vehicle.
But the winning formula was most likely not just a question of delivering more stealth or more range. In LRS-B, the winner had to meet a complex set of requirements that stress risk reduction, an open systems architecture, agile management and manufacturing technology.
The LRS-B contest was unique in three particularly important ways. First, the requirement had emerged from the ashes of the previous Next-Generation Bomber program (NGB), canceled in April 2009, with its goals scaled down and schedule stretched out, and unit cost as a key performance parameter (KPP).
Second, rather than funding demonstration programs, the Pentagon supported two teams through preliminary design review (PDR), probably for almost two years, 2013-15.
A third key feature of the LRS-B is that its management has been assigned to the
Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO), which, Air Force acquisition chief William LaPlante said Oct. 21, has “an incredible track record of
delivering eye-watering capabilities—not just one-offs, but things going into production.”
Significantly, LaPlante describes the 80-strong LRS-B project office within the RCO as like the team that produced the Lockheed F-117 stealth fighter 35 years ago: “A small empowered group of warfighters, acquisition people and maintainers.” Although the
RCO’s only acknowledged aerospace platform is the Boeing X-37B spaceplane, its technical focus can be gauged by the fact that a 2012 recruitment notice for its deputy director identified only three mandatory areas of “significant experience . . .
low-observables,
counter low-observables and
electronic warfare.” Like the F-117, the LRS-B is apparently designed to meet its goals with mature subsystems in a new platform.
However, LaPlante added, the RCO team has substantial oversight from the Pentagon, Congress and Government Accountability Office, and the program incorporates red team/blue team exercises to validate it against possible threats.
The LRS-B contest set an average procurement unit cost of $550 million—in fiscal 2010 dollars based on building 100 aircraft—as a KPP. “The risk is that you pick the wrong number. If you have firm requirements and do the analytics, you have a shot at pulling that off,” LaPlante says.
Some of the key technologies in the LRS-B are both secret and mature
. “Not only have some technologies been wind-tunnel-tested, prototyped or flown—some of them have been used operationally,” LaPlante said Oct. 21.
However, LaPlante also emphasized that delays and overruns cannot be eliminated. “Integration is always a risk,” he said, “and we have put together a schedule with the right margins to accommodate delays.”
LRS-B, too, is planned to be upgraded easily and competitively, “with space and weight provision for things we can’t imagine today,” LaPlante said. Open architecture, he said, could allow the Pentagon to procure a new or upgraded subsystem competitively, “provide it to the prime and say, integrate this.” Along with the cost of maintaining the bomber’s low-observable systems, upgrades will account for a large proportion of the bomber’s life-cycle cost—which will be much greater than its procurement bill.
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