As the Pentagon prepares to announce the winner of one of its most significant  contracts since the F-35 contract award in 2001 — the Long Range Strike Bomber — it faces a myriad of challenges and very high expectations. A Boeing-Lockheed Martin team is competing against Northrop Grumman, builder of the B-2 bomber, for the $25 billion prize.… Keep reading →

ST. LOUIS: It was the question of the day: Mr. Secretary, can you elaborate on the Long Range Strike Bomber? The Pentagon plans to buy  80 to 100  of the $550 million-a-copy bomber — most details of which remain classified. A Boeing employee asked the question after a short speech by Defense Secretary Ash Carter, here to… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: In a sign that this town is slowly coming back to life after a laconic August, the Senate Armed Services Committee has written Defense Secretary Ash Carter about mistakes made about the price of the Long Range Strike Bomber (LRSB) in two reports to Congress and raised questions about the latest delays to Boeing’s problem-plagued KC-46… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: The Pentagon’s top acquisition official, Frank Kendall, and the head of Air Force acquisition, Bill LaPlante, have just completed a review of the Long Range Strike Bomber program. “We looked at the design to make sure it’s at the level of maturity it’s supposed to be,” Kendall told me in an interview in his… Keep reading →