A Tupolev Tu-160 bomber, an Ilyushin Il-78 refueling tanker and three MiG-31 fighter jets fly in formation over Red Square and the Kremlin during a military parade dress rehearsal in Moscow May 6, 2010.
IN PHOTO: A Tupolev Tu-160 bomber, an Ilyushin Il-78 refueling tanker and three MiG-31 fighter jets fly in formation over Red Square and the Kremlin during a military parade dress rehearsal in Moscow May 6, 2010. Reuters/Vladimir Nikolsky

The huge hike in the defence budget proposed by President Barack Obama for the forces will lead to the development and acquisition of many advanced weapon systems, both by the Air Force as well as Navy. The allocation of $534 billion means Pentagon gets the flexibility to spend millions of dollars to work on an array of stealthy fighter jets, bombers, and drones. A sizable investment in space programs and satellites is also in the pipeline.

The top weapon systems that the budget will prioritise will be an invisible air force, laser weapons and rail guns. The air power will be getting a new boost under a new project which the Pentagon calls as “Aerospace Innovation Initiative”, reports Daily Beast.

Stealth Bomber

For the Air Force, the focus is on the quest for a new super stealth bomber that can take off by the mid-2020s. The highlights of the proposed new bomber will be its stealthy, subsonic, and nuclear-capable Long-Range Stand-Off cruise missile capabilities.

The new fighter program called Next Generation Air Dominance, or F-X will seek to replace the F-22 and an older jet F-15C Eagle, which was designed to kill other jets. The bomber program will have an outlay of $1.2 billion in the 2016 budget proposal. It is speculated that the either Northrop Grumman or a Boeing/Lockheed Martin team will take the contract for the new bomber.

Concerns over F22

The focus on the new bomber under high priority follows concerns among top defence officials who feel that the current stealth fighters of the U.S such as the F-22 Raptor and F-35, may not survive in the face of advanced air defences being built by Russia and China. New types of low-frequency radars can track and attack those jets.

Therefore, Pentagon will be shifting gears from the “fifth generation” stealth jets which are already rolling out from assembly lines to a new wave of “sixth-generation” stealth fighters. Besides Air Force, the new budget also wants to multiply the air power of Navy with carrier-based stealth drones.

Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer in his testimony before Congress, said the Defence Department would “develop a new X-plane to keep U.S. industry ahead and will ensure the Air Force and Navy have an aircraft that can control the skies”.

Under this program, Pentagon’s research arm, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, will develop the new prototype for the stealth fighter X-plane”. It will be a precursor to “sixth-generation” successor to the Air Force’s F-22 Raptor air-superiority fighter that will also replace the Navy’s “fourth-generation” F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.

The budget provides the Navy for a “Next Generation Fighter”, which was previously known as the F/A-XX program, to replace the old Super Hornet fighters by the mid-2030s. Navy is also developing a stealthy new drone called the “Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike aircraft.”

GPS Systems

Meanwhile, the fiscal 2016 budget of the Air Force also earmarks $7.1 billion for space programs, including the 10th Global Positioning System III satellite. Manufacturer Lockheed had been building GPS-III satellites since 2008 after edging out Boeing from the bid. But the Lockheed program is facing some delay due to technical issues on a key sensor, reports Reuters.

In the new budget, the GPS program has been given $673 million in research and development, and $265 million in procurement funding, making it a total of $938 million. The new allocation in the budget will enable the acquisition of GPS III satellite 10 and allow the Air Force to work on the next-generation ground control systems being built by Raytheon Co.

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