USAF: LRS-B reduction reflects more accurate cost estimate

The Air Force's fiscal year 2017 budget request issued this week proposes a more-than-$3-billion reduction in Long-Range Strike Bomber development spending between FY-17 and FY-20 than it had proposed in its FY-16 request.

Service officials told reporters during a Feb. 9 Pentagon briefing that the lower proposal does not represent cuts to the program, but rather a more accurate cost estimate. Before awarding the new bomber development contract to Northrop Grumman last October, the service conducted a new independent cost estimate that pegged per-aircraft costs at $564 million -- $40 million less than its average procurement unit cost requirement of $606 million in 2016 dollars -- and its development cost at $23.5 billion.

Carolyn Gleason, a budget deputy in the service's financial management office, reiterated during the briefing that the plan laid out across the FY-17 future years defense plan does not change the scope of the effort, but simply reflects the more accurate cost estimate -- which takes into account Northrop's winning proposal.

After Northrop won the contract last fall, its competitor -- a Boeing-Lockheed Martin team -- protested the award. A Government Accountability Office decision is expected Feb. 16.