Northrop Grumman expects a steady flow of income for many years from maintaining and improving the B-2 bomber and is using that experience to compete for the Air Force’s next generation of long-range strike programs, a Northrop official said Tuesday, Copley News Servicew reports, in the Daily Breeze.
Northrop receives more than $500 million a year for periodic maintenance and a series of upgrades for the 21 B-2s, which the Air Force plans to keep in service for another 50 years, said David Mazur, a vice president in the corporation’s El Segundo-based Integrated Systems sector. The B-2 is an ocean-spanning, stealthy bomber.
Northrop also is developing concepts for a program to produce a new extended-reach weapon system the Air Force hopes to deploy by 2020, and for an even more futuristic strike platform that could be combat ready 15 years later, Mazur told reporters.