Should the bomber go the way of the battleship? That is what T.X. Hammes recently suggested here at War on the Rocks (“Rethinking Deep Strike in the 21st Century”). Hammes urged policymakers to abandon the U.S. Air Force’s Long Range Strike-Bomber (LRS-B) program. Recalling procurement debacles like the B-2 and F-35 programs, Hammes argued that policymakers and planners should avoid the risk of another such acquisition fiasco and instead give standoff missiles and the emerging technology of autonomous drones a chance. Hammes compared the Air Force’s effort to field another manned bomber with the Navy’s attempt after World War I to hold on to the battleship, only to see that increasingly costly platform surpassed by a new technology, swarms of aircraft. However, this essay will show that missile-only alternatives are more speculative, more risky, and much more expensive methods of delivering large volumes of firepower against heavily defended targets, an essential capability the United States will need if it is to maintain deterrence and stability in the face of increasingly sophisticated challengers around the world.
The need for long-range strike
Hammes stated, “The requirement for a long-range strike capability in the era of increasingly effective anti-access weapons systems is clear.” This point is indisputable. The ability of future potential adversaries (and not just China) to attack and suppress forward air and naval bases and surface warships with precision missiles threatens to negate the massive investment the United States has made over many decades in relatively short-range tactical airpower and missiles.
In the case of the Western Pacific, by next decade China will have the capacity to project a large volume of precision firepower out roughly 2,000 kilometers from China’s coast and thus push U.S. Air Force and Navy tactical aircraft, along with Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles deployed on surface ships, out of range of China’s military and command infrastructure (Iran may gain a similar capability by next decade). The U.S. Pacific Fleet’s two guided missile submarines (due for retirement next decade) could launch roughly 300 Tomahawks, a wholly inadequate strike capacity against a challenging opponent. The Navy’s attack submarines could add a few hundred more Tomahawks but only at the risk of sacrificing their critical anti-ship and anti-submarine missions.
Thus long-range strike may very well be the only remaining useful military capability available to U.S. policymakers and commanders against opponents with their own long-range missile forces. Having the ability to strike the assets and conditions most valued by an adversary anywhere they are located is critical to deterring adversary misbehavior and for prevailing in a conflict should deterrence fail. Failing to have this capability – in other words, leaving the adversary with a sanctuary for production, organization, and training – is a recipe for defeat. The ability to deliver a large volume of sustained firepower against an adversary – his military forces, infrastructure, internal security forces, or even the personal interests of the adversary’s leadership – is a powerful tool for dissuading that adversary against aggressive behavior in the first place, the fundamental goal of deterrence.
U.S. commanders will need a stealthy long-endurance aircraft like LRS-B for maritime surveillance and strike in order to prosecute a war at sea against an enemy fleet. Should China, for example, have the capability next decade of knocking out U.S. air and naval bases in the Western Pacific, its forces would then be able to establish air superiority out to perhaps 1,500 kilometers (the combat radius of its Flanker and J-20 strike-fighters). It would then presumably be too risky for the Navy’s non-stealthy P-8 Poseidon and MQ-4 maritime surveillance aircraft to operate in this denied zone. The LRS-B might be the only aircraft able to fly there, identify enemy surface naval targets, and either strike them or pass them off to U.S. and allied attack submarines.
U.S. planners should pursue a capability to target mobile missiles and their transporter-erector-launchers (TELs). This is a very challenging mission, but the United States will need this capability if it is to achieve fundamental campaign objectives such as reopening sea lines of communication and protecting the global commons in the face of adversary long-range land-based anti-ship missiles and airpower. In a recent essay for Breaking Defense, I proposed an operational concept using miniature autonomous search and strike missiles that would be deployed from stealthy U.S. bombers to hunt for TELs and thus, at least temporarily, suppress long-range anti-ship missiles. A large and sustained air campaign (described below) could suppress adversary air defenses to the point when around-the-clock suppression of TELs could be possible.
The larger point of that article was to show that it would be relatively inexpensive to add this capability to the LRS-B’s portfolio of missions. The ability to target mobile missiles would threaten the large investments adversaries have made in this concept, threaten a sanctuary he may have planned on, and disrupt his long-range anti-ship operations – something the United States must achieve if it is to meet a fundamental campaign objective. The new National Security Strategy of the United States recommits to the goal of protecting the global commons. Military planners have a duty to devise capabilities that respond to policymaker’s priorities, even when they are challenging to achieve.
Costs and risks of the LRS-B program
Expecting the LRS-B program to resemble the poor experience of the B-2 and F-35 programs is employing the wrong analogy. Both of those programs were at the edge of technology and thus took great technical risks, with large cost overruns the result. With LRS-B by contrast, program managers are allowing very little technical risk. Indeed, according to a Congressional Research Service report, the new bomber might already be designed and nearing production.
In 2012, a top Air Force acquisition official described how the LRS-B program is using subsystems already in use on the F-22 and F-35 aircraft. Managers are restricting the use of unproven subsystems and technology in the new bomber in order to reduce risk and improve the odds of hitting the unit fly-away cost target of $550 million (2010 dollars). A 2010 report, written by Mark Gunzinger for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, further described how the new bomber could make use of existing systems such as the F-35’s sensors and combat systems.
If the Pentagon purchases 100 LRS-Bs, what capability will it have acquired? We don’t know LRS-B’s payload capacity. If it matches the B-2’s, an LRS-B will be able to deliver 80 500-pound Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bombs, with up to five-meter accuracy (a JDAM kit currently costs about $25,000; the Pentagon plans to have over 217,000 in its inventory). We should also assume that LRS-B will be able to employ air-to-surface missiles, decoys, and air defense suppression weapons/.../