Air Combat Command recently conducted a study of alternatives for a new bomber type aircraft to augment the current bomber fleet which now consists of largely 1970s era airframes, with a goal of having a fully operational aircraft on the ramp by 2018. Speculation that the next generation bomber would be hypersonic and unmanned were laid to rest when Air Force Major General Mark T. Matthews, head of ACC Plans and Programs said "Our belief is that the bomber should be manned" at a May 1 Air Force Association sponsored event. He later cited that the bomber would also likely be subsonic due to the cost of development and maintenance of a hypersonic or even supersonic bomber. The 2018 bomber is expected to serve as a stop-gap until the more advanced "2037 Bomber" enters service.^[1] USAF officials expect the new bomber to have top end low observability characteristics with the ability to loiter for hours over the battle field responding to threats as they appear, something that the B-52H and B-1B have done with great success in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Major General David E. Clary, ACC vice-commander, summed it up by saying the new bomber will be expected to "penetrate and persist". The decision to make the next generation bomber subsonic was made in light of the additional cost and complexity along with the limited value of supersonic speed in a penetrator bomber, as exampled by the B-52H which has out lived the B-58, XB-70 and FB-111 all of which were supersonic and are all now out of service or in the case of the XB-70 proved to be too complex and too expensive to ever enter service in the first place. Another issue is that of cruise missile deployment, currently only the B-52 is allowed under treaty to carry and fire the cruise missiles in Air Force inventory. Major consideration was paid to operation readiness and flexibility, the older B-52 is currently the most reliable of the heavy bomber fleet, and the B-2 is limited in the nature of the missions it can undertake and requires specialized maintenance facilities. In 2006, the program expected that a prototype could be flying as early as 2009.^[2] In September 2007, Air Force generals stated that even though the development schedule for the bomber is short, it can be fielded by 2018.^[3]