Mary-Louise Hoffman
The Defense Department has required a modular approach for the design of the U.S. Air Force‘s Long-Range Strike Bombers to allow future incremental modifications on the aircraft’s systems, Defense One reported Thursday.
Marcus Weisgerber writes Frank Kendall, DoD acquisition chief and an inductee into Executive Mosaic‘s Wash100 for 2015, told reporters the LRS-B program has been structured “so that we have the opportunity to insert technology refresh in a way which we have not had the flexibility to do in the past.”
Kendall added at the press conference that DoD also seeks to gain access to intellectual property rights from military platform developers in order to open competition for subsystem upgrades later.
“In order to do this well, you have to basically control the interfaces and control the design at the modular level.”
The Air Force is evaluating bomber development proposals from Northrop Grumman and the Boeing and Lockheed Martin team and could issue a contract by summer, according to Defense One.
Aaron Mehta of Defense News reported that each long-range bomber is estimated to cost $550 million and will be built to replace the military service’s B-52 and B-1 aircraft.
The military service wants to save money on technologies by increasing competition across its programs’ lifecycle, Mehta wrote.
