Northrop Grumman received contracts totaling more than $2.5 billion for secret aircraft programs in the first quarter of 2008, strongly supporting reports and indications that the company has won a U.S. Air Force contract to build a prototype for the Next Generation Bomber (NGB) program.

First-quarter results issued April 26 state that Northrop Grumman “was awarded approximately $2.6 billion for restricted programs during this period.” The results showed a comparable increase in backlog for the company’s aircraft business, the Integrated Systems sector.

The existence of a “black” demonstration program explains a number of anomalies in the Air Force’s planning for NGB. The unclassified budget shows no funding for the new bomber in 2008-2010, despite the fact that the service is planning initial operating capability (IOC) in 2018.

Rivals Boeing and Lockheed Martin announced in late January that they were teaming on NGB, and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works leader Frank Cappuccio said at the time that Lockheed Martin had decided not to team with Northrop Grumman because of “openness issues.” Boeing and Lockheed Martin stated that they did not have any government funding.

Northrop Grumman proposed building a bomber-sized demonstrator for the Air Force in 2005 as part of the Joint Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS) program. Shortly afterward, the Pentagon decided to terminate J-UCAS and divide its funding between a Navy program – which Northrop Grumman won last year – and a classified Air Force project.

Scaled Composites, acquired by Northrop Grumman last August, is likely to play a major role in the program. Northrop Grumman CEO Ron Sugar described the acquisition as “very important and very strategic to us, with respect to advanced aircraft programs we’ll be competing for in the near future.”

The Air Force and other sources have indicated that a full-scale competition for NGB will start around 2010, suggesting that the demonstrator should be flying by then and validating the basic concepts behind the design, probably including a high level of stealth combined with advanced aerodynamics. The operational aircraft may be produced in unmanned and manned variants, and may take on a penetrating reconnaissance mission in addition to its bomber role.

For more on this story, see Defense Technology International's feature this month, Ultra Stealth

Image: Jozef Galtial for DTI