Bipartisan Coalition Demand Bomber Program Cost Transparency

The Project On Government Oversight joined groups across the political spectrum to urge Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-AZ) to continue to demand the Air Force tell the public the full contract value for the B-21 long-range strategic bomber program.

June 22, 2017

By POGO Staff

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To:

June 22, 2017
The Honorable John McCain
Chairman, Senate Armed Services Committee
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20150

Dear Mr. Chairman:

We urge you to include in the Fiscal Year 2018 NDAA Chairman’s mark a provision requiring the Air Force to be more forthcoming with the total cost of the B-21 long-range strategic bomber program.

We commend your effort last year to force the Air Force to release the full contract value of the B-21 and urge you to try again.

We do not accept the Air Force refusal to provide the full cost of research, production and maintenance of the new B-21 long-range strategic bomber. The public deserves to know the full cost of the program before spending so many billions of dollars. The only reason to conceal the full contract value is to make it more difficult to track the inevitable cost overruns in this major Air Force acquisition.

There is a terrible precedent from one of the B-21’s predecessor bombers, the B-2, which due in part to spiraling costs was cut from a proposed 132 aircraft to 21 and wound up costing $2.2 billion each.

The Air Force argument that our adversaries would have an advantage if the cost is released in specious. As you have said, “The Air Force has already told our enemies what each plane costs, what it looks like and who is making its most important components. All of this would seem to be more useful information for a foreign intelligence agency than the overall contract value.”

We will work to persuade other committee members to support your provision if you include it again.

Signed by: