The contract for the Long-Range Strike Bomber should be awarded in the next one to two months, the Air Force’s top acquisition official said on Friday. “It’ll be done when it’s done, but I’m expecting the next one to two months,” Dr. Bill LaPlante, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Acquisition), said during an Air Force Association breakfast speech. He said that source selection was going well. Northrop Grumman is competing with a Lockheed Martin-Boeing team to win the contract. After some analysts and pundits have expressed skepticism that the Air Force can stick to its expected procurement flyaway cost of $550 million a plane for 80-100 LRSBs, LaPlante defended the ongoing work on the program.
The service acquired its last bomber, the B-2, at a flyaway cost of $737 million a plane in 1997 dollars. “You’ll have to take my word for it, unfortunately, but when you look at the work that these guys are doing [on LRSB], people will say, ‘You know what? We can still do this stuff. We still have the talent in this country to pull this stuff off,’” LaPlante said. “Now everybody is very cynical on size and very suspicious, but we’ll just have to prove them wrong, and they’ll be proven wrong. They will be proven wrong. It’s really remarkable the work these guys are doing.”