{"id":18839,"date":"2015-03-06T12:30:33","date_gmt":"2015-03-06T01:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=18839"},"modified":"2015-03-06T15:15:51","modified_gmt":"2015-03-06T04:15:51","slug":"what-might-americas-new-long-range-strike-bomber-cost-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/what-might-americas-new-long-range-strike-bomber-cost-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What might America’s new long range strike\u2013bomber cost? (part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my previous post<\/a> on the US Long Range Strike\u2013Bomber (LRS-B), I promised to return to the likely cost-effectiveness of the future system. But first I’m going to back-track to examine the possible costs in a bit more detail. We’ll get around to cost-effectiveness in part three.<\/p>\n

I noted that the USAF was estimating that it can build 100 LRS-Bs for the same cost as the 21 B-2s it acquired in the 1980s and 1990s. The finance industry is required to say that ‘past performance is not a reliable indicator of future returns’. Sadly, that isn’t true of Pentagon weapon system programs. Back in the early days of The Strategist<\/em> I showed how Augustine’s laws of defence acquisition could be used to accurately cost the new Ford<\/em>-class aircraft carriers<\/a>, despite previous optimistic projections.<\/p>\n

Now I’m going to change my tune and state that Augustine’s laws won’t<\/em> work for the LRS-B. But first let’s note that they’ve done pretty well so far on predicting US bomber costs and the long-term trend is a well-established one. The graph below shows the cost of American bombers from 1929 to 1985, plotted in then-year dollars. (If we adjust for inflation, the graph flattens a little, but the growth is always well above inflation, at times as much as 10% per year, equivalent to a doubling of unit cost every seven years.) And Augustine’s data set includes some medium bombers. If we include only ‘heavy’ bombers (another relative term), the trend is stronger still.<\/p>\n

Had we used Augustine’s growth law in 1990 to predict the cost of the B-2, we would’ve got the apparently stupid answer that each aircraft would cost $4 billion (all costs in US$) when delivered in 2000. Of course that turned out to be an overestimate\u2014but not by as much as would’ve seemed likely at the time! Each B-2 cost $800 million flyaway off the production line, but the extraordinary R&D costs saw each of the delivered aircraft cost the American taxpayer $2.6 billion in total (program cost)\u2014a totally unsustainable amount. I’ve plotted those costs on the graph, and the program cost isn’t far off the historic trend line.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n

The reason I say that this law won’t hold for the LRS-B is simply that it can’t. Running the trend out to 2025 gives a figure of around $100 billion per aircraft. Given that the system blinked at the cost of the B-2, that’s just not plausible, even if the US economy was in a happy place and the perceived threat was high. I’ve also plotted the projected $550 million (adjusted to 2025 dollars) unit cost of the LRS-B and the optimism involved in that estimate is clear. To my mind, it’s likely that costs will be substantially higher than the projected figure, or the LRS-B isn’t going to provide all of the capabilities the USAF wants in a future air warfare environment, or both.<\/p>\n

I suppose we should also allow for the possibility that the LRS-B will be so cleverly designed that it\u2019ll buck the long-term cost trend and<\/em> be a stunning performer. In which case we’ll have to wonder what all of the talented aircraft designers of the past were thinking when they produced the cutting-edge systems of the day at the cutting-edge prices of the day.<\/p>\n

Much more likely is that the design of the LRS-B will be a compromise between state-of-the-art performance and cost. While it would ideally be large, thus giving it a substantial range, endurance and payload, there are suggestions<\/a> that it’ll be significantly smaller than the B-2. That’s a fairly direct way to keep costs down but a smaller aircraft will reduce the ‘throw weight’ of weapons it can deliver, a significant drawback in what’s meant to be a system that’ll help American forces defeat anti-access systems which rely on numbers as part of their effectiveness. Precision delivery is great, and precise small weapons can ruin a lot of enemy materiel, but strikes against hardened targets require a certain amount of heft. And targets like mobile missile launchers are relatively cheap to build\u2014if a billion-dollar bomber can be defeated by hardening targets and building more million-dollar mobile missile systems, you have to wonder if it’s worth building.<\/p>\n

If it’s to be an effective weapon system well into the 21st century, it’ll need a wide range of active and passive defensive measures, enabling it to penetrate contested airspace and strike even well-defended targets. Even then, it’s going to need to be able to deliver stand-off weapons with ranges of hundreds of kilometres, and possibly more in future. That raises the possibility of further increasing the stand-off distance and using non-penetrating launch systems.<\/p>\n

Andrew Davies<\/a> is senior analyst for defence capability and director of research at ASPI.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my previous post on the US Long Range Strike\u2013Bomber (LRS-B), I promised to return to the likely cost-effectiveness of the future system. But first I’m going to back-track to examine the possible costs in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":18844,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[907,689,721,31,655],"class_list":["post-18839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-costs","tag-military-spending","tag-research-development","tag-united-states","tag-usaf"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhat might America's new long range strike\u2013bomber cost? 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