A New Bomber Vision

摘要

The Air Force is slowly revealing a new blueprint for its bomber force, offering revised ideas regarding how many it wants, how and where they will be deployed, and how they will be armed. The 16-year-old "continuous bomber presence" mission at Guam is gone, replaced with "dynamic force employment," in which bombers will pop up unexpectedly around the world to demonstrate a perpetual ability to project power. The Air Force's stance on how many new, stealthy B-21 bombers it needs is changing. Instead of "at least 100," the number appears to be 145. Air Force leaders don't actually quote that number, but they're now comfortable saying they need 220 bombers overall to fulfill the National Defense Strategy (NDS), and that 75 of those will be re-engined B-52s. That leaves 145 other aircraft, after the B-1 and B-2 retire. Gen. Timothy Ray, whose Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) flies those bombers, used that 220 figure throughout a media blitz this spring. It amounts to five squadrons more than the old figure of 175, which he told defense writers in April was "programmatically derived," rather than a practical answer to NDS requirements.