America's New LRS-B Stealth Bomber: The 'Target' Dilemma

James Hasik, Rachel Rizzo

Security, Asia

What are the targets for the new plane? What happens after the bombs fall? 

What’s the most important role for the USAF’s planned Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B)? What could it do that fighter-bombers, cruise missiles, and drones couldn’t?

Arguably, a big manned bomber offers a unique combination of massive, repeatable, human-on-scene air power at a distance, which is valuable when targets are challenging but plentiful. Already today, hardened targets are plentiful and tough to find. But mobile targets, one of the LRS-B’s planned target sets, while perhaps more plentiful, are near impossible to find. That calculus leaves aside the political questions—even if the LRS-B’s likely targets could be attacked, should they? Policymakers should consider all these questions before endorsing the next bomber.

Money is tight, so could less-stealthy (and thus less expensive) aircraft attack the same targets as the LRS-B, just by standing off with cruise missiles? While this may work for some targets, it couldn’t work for all. Without nuclear explosives, some hardened targets require massive ordnance, and one thing bombers bring that missiles cannot is bunker busters. Against American bombers, to hunker in a bunker is to invite attack, and adversaries have experienced this firsthand throughout history, most notably in the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein. But tunnel-boring machines are widely available and relatively affordable, and some adversaries have been digging for decades. Over the past few years, neither Israel nor the United States could bring itself to bomb Iran, to try to arrest a very undesirably nuclear weapons project, because there were simply too many bunkers to bomb. If a problem of that magnitude is not worth unloading a bunch of MOABs, what would merit it?

Read full article