B-21 Bomber Estimate By CAPE: $511M A Copy
NATIONAL HARBOR: The Air Force’s new bomber, the B-21 Raider, should come in almost $40 million below the official $550 million a copy official estimate, says Randall Walden, director of the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office. So, $511 million is the new $550 million.
After his panel here at the Air Force Associations 2016 annual conference, Walden said the Pentagon’s office of Cost Estimate and Program Analysis (CAPE) has produced a new estimate of $511 million a plane, which matches earlier estimates by the plane’s builder Northrop Grumman.
CAPE has been regularly performing cost estimates of the plane since 2012.
Walden also made clear the Air Force will probably pursue a deep penetrating fighter to accompany the bomber to heavily defended targets deep inside a country. He didn’t say it but my understanding is war games have shown the B-21 is incapable of making it to western China to destroy the missile and artillery units there.
The aircraft concept is called Penetrating Counter-Air (PCA). The program, I understand is called PCAP.
Here’s what Air Superiority 2030 Flight Plan says about PCA:
“PCA will focus on maximizing tradeoffs between range, payload, survivability, lethality, affordability, and supportability. While PCA capability will certainly have a role in targeting and engaging, it also has a significant role as a node in the network, providing data from its penetrating sensors to enable employment using either stand-off or stand-in weapons.”
This seems consistent with rumors that the Air Force is pursuing a new program to build an aircraft to accompany the bomber deep into western China, where the Second Artillery has its facilities and many of China’s most important capabilities.
I’ve spoken with a number of industry experts who assume PCAP will be a program. They also decline to discuss it any detail, saying the threats and capabilities are classified........