AF to Accelerate Stealth Bomber Program
The Air Force has asked firms working on the B-2 stealth bomber to delay peak production until the plane proves itself in flight tests, then to accelerate the task of completing all 132 bombers and finish the program a year earlier than expected, officials said Friday.
In his final official act, outgoing Air Force Secretary Edward C. Aldridge Jr. told reporters that the new production schedule could reduce the cost of the bomber program by $3 billion to $5 billion. But he confirmed that the cost of building a 132-plane force of the aircraft already has grown by 16% over original estimates, reaching $68.1 billion and making it the most expensive U.S. military aircraft ever built.
Budget Requests Classified
The Air Force has continued to hold the exact production schedule of the program secret, and Aldridge said the service will continue to consider its yearly budget requests classified. But he said an early end of production would help trim the cost of the program by releasing a “standing army of production people” a year ahead of schedule.
“Any time you can close down production earlier and still achieve these . . . savings, you’re doing a pretty good job,” he said.
The change in schedule will minimize the number of the radar-eluding bombers built during its lengthy flight-test program, Aldridge said. “Because we normally see things in the flight-test program that do have to . . . be fixed in the production aircraft, we do like to minimize that concurrency” between tests and production, he said.
Mid-1991 Delivery
The changes also will delay the date on which the boomerang-shaped aircraft formally enters the nation’s military arsenal, Aldridge said. But he added that Northrop Corp. still is expected to deliver the first of its B-2s to Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri in mid-1991.
In addition, Aldridge said Northrop and the Air Force have reached an agreement under which the manufacture of most of the 132 bombers would be compressed into the few years before 1995, when he said the program would end. However, the pace of production is still subject to congressional budgetary approval.
At about $520 million each, the B-2 bomber will cost about 20% more than the B-1B bomber, which the Air Force is building now. After several years of testing the B-2, the Air Force hopes to win a long-term congressional commitment that would permit the service to hold the cost of the program to original estimates, an approach the service tried with the B-1 program.
‘Valid and Sound’ Design
However, Aldridge said, “we’re not there yet.” The Air Force will wait until “sometime after the flight test has gone through a period of time that we know the design of the aircraft is valid and sound” before seeking such a congressional commitment, he said.
The B-2 bomber, rolled out at Northrop’s Palmdale, Calif., assembly plant Nov. 22, is scheduled to take its first flight in the early months of 1989. Officials said the plane is now undergoing ground tests in which the craft is subjected to vibration.
