By Franz-Stefan Gady
The US Air Force is once more postponing the award of a contract to build the new Long-Range Strike Bomber.
This Tuesday, during a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee’s Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, the U.S. Air Force announced that it will delay awarding a contract to develop the top-secret Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) military.com reports.
In his testimony, Lieutenant-General Arnold Bunch, military deputy for the office of the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition said that “[t]his is a case, sir, where we need to go slow to go fast. We’ve got a fair, deliberate, disciplined and impartial process anytime that we do a competition. And we’ve been transparent and working with industry trying to get this thoroughly done and documented so we can make that decision. It’s coming soon. That’s about as good as I can give you.”
The hawkish chairman of the House Armed Services Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee Randy Forbes, however, was clearly not impressed with the general’s opaque answer: “Do we have any idea whether that’s going to be two months, 10 years? When what do we think?” To which Bunch replied that a decision will be made “within the next couple of months.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat