Budget pressures seen as biggest risk to long range bomber program.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

* The Air Force is setting out to do something it hasn't done in more than two decades: acquire a heavy bomber.

The aspiration is to have an operational long range strike bomber in the air by the mid-2020s.

To do so, the service will have to avoid some of the pitfalls of the past, and keep funding flowing to the program despite budget pressures, analysts said.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and its acquisition failures are fresh in the minds of lawmakers and the public. The B-2--the last U.S. bomber built--may be less so; but a plan to procure 132 of them fell well short after Congress lost faith in the program and cut the fleet number off at 21. Its predecessor, the B-1, also was never built in the numbers envisioned.

Experts interviewed said that the Air Force and industry were capable of delivering the LRS-B, as it is also known, on budget and on time, but there are some big "its."

"I have no doubt that the mid-2020s goal can be met--given sufficient funding," said Mark Gunzinger, senior fellow at the Center of Strategic and Budgetary Assessment.

Loren Thompson, chief operating officer at the Lexington Institute, said he expects by the end of the Obama administration that the Air Force should be able to pick a winner and a design, which would put it on track to go into rapid development for production early next decade.

"2025 for an initial operating capability is doable as long as they keep the funding on track," he said.

Sticker shock could derail the program, said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at the Teal Group. That was one factor that led to the premature end of the B-2.

"It is right to see public perception as a major risk here," he said.

He expected the program per-unit cost to far exceed $1 billion per aircraft. That factors in all the research-and-development costs and tacks them onto however many aircraft are produced. The Air Force wants a $550 million per-aircraft price tag, a figure that doesn't add in development money.

Thompson said: "Without an urgent threat to keep the program on track, there is a danger that money will be cut in large enough amounts to delay the effort."

As far as the public and lawmakers, "They don't claim to understand stealth. They don't claim to understand the mission. But almost everybody in Washington claims to understand a price tag," Thompson said.

An additional problem, Aboulafia said, is that research-and-development programs are fat targets for budget cutters.

"The temptation...