During what is expected to be his last official visit to a U.S. nuclear enterprise base as Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel yesterday told B-2 airmen serving at Whiteman AFB that the Air Force cannot afford to fall behind in nuclear modernization efforts and said work on the long-range strike bomber (LRSB) should continue. The Air Force last summer released an RFP for the estimated $80 billion LRSB planned to debut in the mid-2020s. “That process has to be done,” Hagel said. “We have begun.” The LRSB is expected to replace the B-2 after its planned retirement in the 2040s, and Hagel emphasized the need to invest in the follow-on. “The B-2’s a tremendous, tremendous plane, the best in the world,” Hagel said. “But [other countries’] modernization continues to push us out of our war capability….[W]hen your sons and daughters come into this business, we will have failed them terribly, dangerously so, if we don’t make the investments now to start building out just as all of our fathers, our grandfathers and grandmothers did. That’s why we have a B-2 today, because we had the foresight to invest in it.”
Hagel also touted the Force Improvement Program, and signaled an increasing DoD focus on support of airmen while recognizing how airmen’s confidence in one another can help the nuclear mission. “I think sometimes some of those important points are not integrated enough into our overall scope, the overall health of our enterprise of what you do,” he said. “And I want you to be assured that we know that in Washington. Your leaders know that, your chiefs know that, the people that you have leading all of you know that, and I know you live it right here on this base here every day.”
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