The United States has counted on bombers for tough missions for decades, but the U.S. Air Force bomber fleet will struggle to do its job as a capability void opens after 2015.

Talk of a new bomber has come in fits and starts since the U.S. Department of Defense moved to curtail the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit program more than 15 years ago. However, new threat assessments and the relative decline of older systems have made a new program urgent.

According to Gen. John D.W. Corley, commander, Air Combat Command, direct attack of mobile or moving targets will grow difficult after 2015 and the new threat environment will be at full flush by 2020. The fleet of 20 Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit bombers is just too small for persistent attacks in heavily defended airspace, and the Boeing/North American Rockwell B-1 Lancer and Boeing B-52 Stratofortress are not survivable there.

In February 2006 the Department of Defense called for a new long-range bomber to be fielded by 2018. Since then, there have been signs of activity, but questions linger. Is the U.S. Air Force ready to settle on requirements for a new bomber? Can the U.S. Air Force's American industry partners really produce a bomber that fast?

The U.S. Air Force has set clear top-level criteria for the new bomber. It will have a combat radius of between 2,000 and 3,000 miles, high subsonic speed, improved survivability and a whole new approach to the battle-space information architecture.

Despite the dark threat forecast, there is a silver lining in the form of increased technology maturity that has grown out of the stealth fighter and unmanned vehicle programs. As the paper discusses, early stealth programs like the Lockheed Martin F-117 Nighthawk and the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit assumed considerable risk to pioneer new technologies.

The Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit was an example of a major weapons program explicitly designed to mature critical technologies. The Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-22 Raptor closed many gaps but still took on the challenges of super-cruise, better maintainability and more integrated avionics. By the time of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter down-select in 2001, the art of stealth had matured to the point where customers deliberately set requirements so as to control risk and cost.

Most technologies for the 2018 bomber are already closer to Technology Readiness Level 7 than for any previous stealth aircraft program. Old obstacles such as the integration of antennae, improved maintenance and the best in lean manufacturing have largely been mastered.

Focused program management in government and industry can drive forward technology maturation in critical areas. Four decades of investment in research and development of stealth combat aircraft since the 1970s are about to pay off in rapid fielding of a vital new system.

(The Lexington Institute is an independent think tank in Arlington, Va., that supports democracy and the free market.)

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