A U.S. Air Force official said that availability of B-2 stealth bombers has been increasing, as the service looks to increase the mission readiness of the service’s 20 Northrop Grumman [NOC] B-2s with a cockpit display upgrade. The service has requested $156 million for the program in fiscal 2021.
“With the B-2 Spirit, we have a number of modernization efforts underway with the largest program, the replanned B-2 display modernization program, moving forward,” Air Force Brig. Gen. John Newberry, the program executive officer for the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Bombers Directorate, said last month. “The aircraft is mission ready and has been hitting increasing trends in aircraft availability recently.”
Newberry said that no bomber program milestones are expected for the remainder of this year but that there will be some next year.
The B-2 display modernization program is a successor to the B-2 Defensive Management System Modernization (DMS-M) program, an effort begun in 2015, which was to include a digital electronic support measures (ESM) subsystem, new ESM antennas, and modern display processing units to improve threat radar detection, identification, and avoidance capabilities.
DMS-M was expected to cost about $2.8 billion, and, as a result of delays in the program, the Air Force restructured it to include just the cockpit upgrade in the service’s fiscal 2021 budget request after spending about $1.9 billion on DMS-M.
“The current display sub-system lacks the processing power to provide necessary situational awareness to air crews in the projected dense threat environments of the future,” per the request. “Also, the legacy multi-function display units (MDUs) are not supportable due to obsolescence and repair issues. Without this program, display availability will severely impact aircraft availability.”
The Air Force said that “delays in the acquisition of B-2 DMS-M reduced return on investment.” Because of the delays, the service budget proposal moves funds from DMS-M in fiscal 2021 “to address reliability and sustainment of the B-2 cockpit display system until end-of-life, while developing new capabilities aligned to the [2018] National Defense Strategy.”