WinnCad Elements Blog: Does the Air Force Already Have a Secret Stealth Bomber?

Friday, March 4, 2011

Does the Air Force Already Have a Secret Stealth Bomber?

Officially, the $3.7 billion set aside for the “Long Range Strike” program in the Pentagon’s 2012 budget is meant simply to draw up plans for a new, stealthy heavy bomber for the Air Force — a replacement for the Cold War era fleet of long range, strategic aircraft. “It is important that we begin this project now to ensure that a new bomber can be ready before the current aging fleet goes out of service,” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said.

What he didn’t say is that the new bomber might already be flying, in prototype form, somewhere deep inside the Air Force’s complex of secret test bases.

According to the Pentagon, the new bomber is still just a concept. “Right now we’re in the technology-leveraging phase,” said Maj. Gen. Alfred Flowers, a senior Air Force budget official. Over the next five years, the Air Force plans to spend $3.7 billion on the bomber, with the goal of equipping the first squadron in the early 2020s.

This is actually the Air Force’s second attempt in just four years to build a new bomber. The first try — the so-called “2018 bomber” — was canceled on cost and technical grounds in 2009. The current go-around is designed to avoid those pitfalls. “We are relying on mature” — proven — “technologies, [so] we will be able to mitigate a lot of risk,” added Marilyn Thomas, Flowers’ civilian deputy.

It’s the “mature technologies” comment that got ace aviation reporter Bill Sweetman thinking.

The Air Force “consistently refers to its new bomber as based on ‘proven technology,’ but there is no known basis of proof for its most important single feature: a degree of stealth high enough to assure survival in a heavily defended area, combined with affordability in manufacture and support.”

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an unknown — in other words, classified — program that spawned the “mature” stealth technologies for the new bomber. After all, the Air Force’s roughly $30-billion-a-year black budget is more than adequate to fund a wide range of cutting-edge weapon systems. At least one secret plane, the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 drone, recently emerged from the shadows.

In fact, Sweetman believes he has identified the bomber prototype’s manufacturer: Northrop Grumman, builder of the 1990s-vintage B-2 stealth bomber. In mid-2008, Northrop’s financial documents listed a $2-billion “restricted programs” contract that Sweetman claims paid for a bomber prototype.

Sweetman doubled down on his claim by linking the secret prototype to another high-tech Northrop program. “It is likely that the prototype will build on technology under development for the Navy’s X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstrator,” he wrote in 2008. The X-47, pictured, is a killer drone meant to fly off carrier decks. It flew for the first time this month.

The link between the killer drone and a new bomber isn’t at all far-fetched. Several years ago, Northrop’s own art department produced an image of a new bomber that bears a striking resemblance to the much smaller X-47. And considering how smoothly the X-47 seems to be progressing, a larger manned version need not be far behind.