Bomber, Space Surveillance Eye Boost

Aviation Week and Space Technology ^ | 12/09/2009 | Amy Butler

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz says that the service’s forthcoming budget request, though pinched by the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will likely include money for a new bomber and a new space surveillance system.

The on-again-off-again Next-Generation Bomber (or NGB, also called Long-Range Strike), could re-emerge with the Pentagon’s fiscal 2011 spending request going to Capitol Hill in February, Schwartz said during a luncheon speech last week at the Credit Suisse/Aviation Week Aerospace & Defense Finance conference here.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates put a hold on the NGB program last spring in the fiscal 2010 request because the Air Force hadn’t fully outlined the “parameters,” such as range and payload, and whether the aircraft would be manned or unmanned and carry nuclear weapons in addition to conventional ones.

Schwartz says he feels the Air Force now has a more complete idea of its bomber needs, and has been able to better articulate them to Gates and his staff.

A follow-on Space-Based Space Surveillance (SBSS) system is also a potential new start in the forthcoming budget, Schwartz says. The first SBSS satellite, built by Boeing and Ball Aerospace, has been fabricated and is ready for launch. But the Air Force had held off on articulating a follow-on strategy for buying a full constellation pending further review.

The first SBSS satellite includes a powerful electro-optical telescope and is designed to surveil every spacecraft in the highly populated geosynchronous orbit at least once a day. This is needed to better keep track of objects in space and to understand the capabilities of those spacecraft. Launch was to take place in the fall, but a problem with the Orbital Sciences Taurus XL booster prompted a slip

[The Comedian]

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