据《防务快讯》4月22日报道

美国众议院武装力量委员会主席亚当·斯密当日在美国企业研究所称，B-21轰炸机是他24年来首次见到的执行最好的采办计划，做到了按期、按预算、精明采办方式，计划更有希望、更紧迫，会带来更大的变革。但他也警告说，计划尚未全部完成，一旦开始试飞，许多问题会很快暴露出来。据报道，B-21为隐身战略轰炸机，可载常规与核武器，是美国“三位一体”核力量的重要组成部分，主要针对中俄，由诺斯罗普格鲁曼公司秘密研制，研制计划始终蒙上神秘面纱，空军期望第一架样机在2022年首飞，同步建造第二架样机，计划在2027年部署服役，主要替代现役B-1B和B-2战略轰炸机。美国国会预算办公室估算，采购第一批次100架B-21轰炸机需要约800亿美元，1架B-21轰炸机，配装10枚远程防区外发射巡航导弹，能发射8枚核弹头，单架采购成本为5亿美元，外加4000万美元的1年维护维持费。

B-21 A Good News Story; DoD Acquisition ‘Getting Better:’ HASC Chair

Rep. Adam Smith, who’s excoriated the F-35, said the B-21 bomber is “on time, on budget, and they’re making it work in a very intelligent way.”

By   PAUL MCLEARYon April 22, 2021 BREAKING DEFENSE

B-21 Raider artist rendering

WASHINGTON: The secretive B-21 stealth bomber appears to be solidly on schedule,the top lawmaker  on the House Armed Services Committee said today, calling a recent briefing on the program “one of the most positive, encouraging things that I’ve had happen to me in the last couple of weeks.”

Rep Adam Smith, never known for sugarcoating the facts on any big-ticket acquisition program, said that the Air Force appears to have “learned the lessons” of the vastly over-budget F-35 program which has long since blown its original schedule for fielding, which he has excoriated in the past. The B-21, by contrast, is “on time, on budget, and they’re making it work in a very intelligent way.”

Smith made it clear today that the B-21’s progress is part of a larger trend at the Pentagon. “I will just say that I’ve never in my 24 years seen a situation where there seemed like more hope, more urgency, to make those changes.”

“We’ve had this terrible two decades,” of aircraft, ship, and ground vehicle programs stalling out or eating themselves alive thanks to big promises racing ahead of what’s technologically possible, Smith said at the American Enterprise Institute this morning. “But lessons are being learned and we’re getting better about how we buy these things, so we’re starting to see the change that I think we need to see.”

The Northrop Grumman-built stealth bomber has been cloaked in some mystery since its inception, but the Air Force has said it expects the first model should fly some time in 2022, and a second is currently being built at the Northrop facility in Palmdale, Calif.

The bomber is designed to carry both conventional and nuclear weapons — it will be a key part of the nuclear triad in the coming years — and is slated to enter service by 2027. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the cost of buying the first 100 bombers would eventually come in around $80 billion.

Maintaining them won’t be cheap, either.

The CBO has also estimated that a single B-21, armed with 10 Long-Range Stand-Off cruise missiles and capable of launching eight nuclear warheads, would cost $500 million to procure, plus $40 million a year in 2020 dollars to maintain.

That’s money the Air Force and Pentagon says will be well-spent, as the Air Force will need to begin retiring the aging B-2 and B-1B in the coming years.

Smith cautioned that the program is far from complete and things can go sideways quickly one the plane starts flying, but he was relatively upbeat about what he sees as the Pentagon having taken the hard lessons of the F-35 and other acquisition messes to heart.

“Only one thing impresses Adam Smith: fast-track innovation, so apparently, B-21 has pulled it off,” said Rebecca Grant, a national security analyst. “The seal of approval for the Rapid Capabilities acquisition approach bodes well for other Department of the Air Force fast-tracks including National Defense Space Architecture.”

With the 2022 budget coming in at $715 billion, or essentially flat from 2021, DoD’s leadership will have to make some difficult choices about what programs they devote money to, especially given the likelihood of more flat budgets in the future.

“I want the Pentagon to feel some measure of physical pain every time they spend a dollar,” Smith said. “And I want them to make sure that they do it in the most cost effective, intelligent way possible.”

On the B-21 bomber, military leaders have stressed the need for a long-range, nuclear-capable bomber with stealth characteristics for years, given the increasingly sophisticated radar and sensing technologies developed by China and Russia in order to make it harder for American Cold War-era bombers to come close to their shores.

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