No surprise here, the Air Force gets the biggest chunk of classified weapons cash
Here’s a little tidbit to impress your friends this weekend: Bloomberg Government just published a report on the Pentagon’s and Intelligence Communities’ classified spending and found that the vast majority of classified weapons development money goes to the U.S. Air Force. That’s right, the flyboys get the most cash to develop everything from super-secret stealth ...
Here's a little tidbit to impress your friends this weekend: Bloomberg Government just published a report on the Pentagon's and Intelligence Communities' classified spending and found that the vast majority of classified weapons development money goes to the U.S. Air Force.
Here’s a little tidbit to impress your friends this weekend: Bloomberg Government just published a report on the Pentagon’s and Intelligence Communities’ classified spending and found that the vast majority of classified weapons development money goes to the U.S. Air Force.
That’s right, the flyboys get the most cash to develop everything from super-secret stealth bombers and spy planes to space and cyber weaponry, according to the report.
"Almost all classified procurement money and two-thirds of the research and development funds were allocated to the Air Force," reads the B-Gov report. "About $17 billion of Air Force classified funds are labeled ‘Other Procurement,’ which probably includes money for space and cyber programs."
The report points out that big chunk of cash in the Air Force’s classified budget is for the service’s new bomber (I took the iPhone photo above of Northrop Grumman’s concept design for the bomber a couple of years ago at a trade show. It apparently rides rainbows of doom).
The Air Force requested $292 million for fiscal 2013 to develop a new strategic bomber. The funding for it will quickly rise to $2.7 billion in fiscal 2017, making it the largest special access program in that year.
The bomber is a stealth jet that’s supposed to work hand in hand with a "family" of other stealthy spy planes and fighter jets, along with satellites, to go out and hunt down targets in heavily defended airspace, Air Force leaders have repeatedly said.
The planned fleet of 80 to 100 new stealth bombers will be built using existing technology in order to get them into service by the 2020s (some think that the planes are already flying over the Nevada desert) and will be designed to be "optionally-manned."
This means that the aircraft doesn’t need pilots aboard for the most dangerous conventional strike missions (it can also help for incredibly long missions that would be too long for pilots to endure.) However, for less risky sorties or nuclear strike missions, the plane would be manned.
Happy Friday!
John Reed is a national security reporter for Foreign Policy. He comes to FP after editing Military.com’s publication Defense Tech and working as the associate editor of DoDBuzz. Between 2007 and 2010, he covered major trends in military aviation and the defense industry around the world for Defense News and Inside the Air Force. Before moving to Washington in August 2007, Reed worked in corporate sales and business development for a Swedish IT firm, The Meltwater Group in Mountain View CA, and Philadelphia, PA. Prior to that, he worked as a reporter at the Tracy Press and the Scotts Valley Press-Banner newspapers in California. His first story as a professional reporter involved chasing escaped emus around California’s central valley with Mexican cowboys armed with lassos and local police armed with shotguns. Luckily for the giant birds, the cowboys caught them first and the emus were ok. A New England native, Reed graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a dual degree in international affairs and history.
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