Defense Secretary Robert Gates, testifying Tuesday on the Pentagon’s Fiscal 2011 spending plan and new Quadrennial Defense Review, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that a new Air Force bomber “would probably not appear into the force until the late ’20s.” This is a seemingly significant departure from the Pentagon’s previous public estimates that had the bomber entering the inventory much earlier in that decade, or as soon as 2018, if one goes back to the 2006 QDR. Gates said the Defense Department is “still wrestling” with the type of bomber platform to pursue (e.g., standoff, penetrating, manned, unmanned, some combination of those attributes). The additional time for study that the department now intends to take will determine what the bomber should be, whereas the analysis up until now has focused on whether a new bomber was really needed, he said.
Anduril and General Atomics will develop their Collaborative Combat Aircraft for the Air Force, beating out Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, the service announced on April 24. But any of the non-selected companies can compete to actually manufacture the eventual design, the Air Force said.