Lockheed eliminated from GBSD

The Air Force has selected Boeing and Northrop Grumman to move ahead with the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent next generation ICBM. Lockheed had also been in the running, but weren't selected. The GBSD program is the biggest program after the B-21 bomber, and is estimated to go as high as $100B before it's over.

Boeing was awarded a $349M contract, and Northrop $328M. Both contracts have a firm $359M ceiling. Under the terms of the contract, both companies will spend the next 36 months performing technology maturation and risk reduction activities. In Fiscal Year 2020 a single contract will be awarded for the new missile. The Air Force has estimated total value of the contract at $62.3B, but the Pentagon CAPE office puts it between $85-100B.

www.defensenews.com...

Lockheed had also been in the running, but weren't selected.

Because of the Flop 22 and 35...

Investors

imagine what we could do for health care, education, border security, and police training with that kind of funding...

a reply to: odzeandennz

Not much if we get overrun by opponents technical superiorities and numbers.
How would YOU stop them?

originally posted by: odzeandennz
imagine what we could do for health care, education, border security, and police training with that kind of funding...

The money gets spent on wages (income tax) and property taxes, for their buildings as well as equipment (sales taxes). Those taxes then get recycled into city taxes for education and healthcare.

Border security needs high-tech CCTV equipment just like those buildings will.

Yet another $100B down the drain geez

The US doesn’t actually need land based ICBMs. Just because they were needed in the past doesn’t mean the capability needs to exist for all eternity.
They can make do with SSBNs and air launched nuclear missiles.

Yesterdays threat is long gone. The Soviet Union doesn’t exist anymore neither its tens of thousands strategic nuclear warheads and delivery systems.
The current START treaty limits both Russia and the US to a mere 1550 deployed warheads and 800 delivery systems (bombers, missile silos and submarine launch tubes).

Outside the military-industrial fantasyland of juicy defense procurement contracts, they are actually decommissioning individual launch tubes on the Ohios to keep the limit.
Currently there are 14 Ohio SSBNs in the fleet with 24 launch tubes each. That’s 336 launch tubes total with a theoretical throw weight of 4706 W88 warheads . That’s a theoretical (!) combined yield of 2.2 gigatons.

In reality the Ohios don’t carry nearly as much warheads of course. START I reduced the warheads carried by each missile to 8 and there a lots of W76 warheads with smaller yields (100kt instead of 475kt) in use as well.
With the current START treaty, the total number of launch tubes on Ohios will be reduced to 288. And the Tridents will carry just over 1150 warheads, most of them being modernized W76. Actual combined yield is somewhere around 250 megatons or less than 15% of the theoretical maximum of Ohio fleet.

This alone shows even without substantial investments, the Ohio fleet could take on an even greater share of the strategic deterrence.
Especially considering that the current ICBM force is a shadow of its former self. There are 450 Minuteman IIIs, left most of them carrying only one (!) warhead, either the W78 (350kt max) or the W87 (475kt). Combined yield is less than the Ohio fleet, about 200 megatons. Little more than the theoretical throw weight of a single all armed up Ohio with 336 W88 warheads.

So what should be done?
The various START treaties are not going away. Going forward the US wont find itself in a situation requiring the sudden need to introduce hundreds of new launch systems or warheads. Future reductions are more likely than not.
Given that the US already uses only a tiny fraction of the potential destructive force of its nuclear arsenal, I seriously doubt there is an actual need to retain everything.

The US could easily get rid of ICBMs today and get to START limits be rearming submarines and bomber fleets. This would cost far less, especially in the long run. And it would actually play to the American militaries strengths instead of its weaknesses. The US is decades ahead when it comes to nuclear capable penetrating aircrafts, even looking only a white world assets. The Ohio submarine fleet constitutes an unrivaled capability. And the Minuteman ICBM force is well, pretty crappy at this point.

So just get rid of it. Beef up the Ohio replacement program and funnel the rest of the money into black world penetrating platforms. Nobody cares that the Minutemans wont be there to absorb Russian first strike ICBMs or some crap like that. Once strategic nukes are used its game over anyway.
Wont happen of course. Mattis said as much.

a reply to: odzeandennz

You know, how about people like you skip posting that tired, utterly fallacious, sanctimonious, unproductive, and smarmy comment in every single defense and weaponry related topic instead?

BTW, i don't have to imagine because i and the gao already know that the only programs and etc more wasteful, ineffectual, corrupt, populated by nearly 99% stupid dangerous power mad and completely untrustworthy and shockingly inept staffing at every level than defense and STEM stuff is LITERALLY EVERY OTHER PART OF THE GOVERNMENT WITH THE CATEGORIES YOU LISTED CONSISTENTLY SCORING AS THE WORST BY FAR...

So if we didn't spend that money on defense abd gave it to the idiots you mentioned, what would happen is the country would be in even worse shape than today by at least 2 orders of magnitude!

a reply to: mightmight

Who exactly are you that you feel as though you have any qualification whatsoever much less having the sheer gall to dictate nuclear policy with a peremptory wave like that?

Sorry, i thought the purpose of a forum like this is to voice ones opinions, propose ideas, present facts and arguments and discuss them in a civilized manner.

I don't know if this was a consolation prize to Lockheed, but Lockheed and Raytheon were awarded separate, five year, $900M contracts to develop technologies for LRSO.

www.dodbuzz.com...