Rogers backs DOD plans for new bomber

A senior House member on Wednesday welcomed comments from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that endorsed commitment to build the Air Force’s new long-range strike bomber.

“I’m thrilled to hear him commit to that leg of the triad,” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), who chairs the House Armed Services Committee Strategic Forces subpanel, told The Hill.

He said Hagel had come “180 degrees” from his early days as Pentagon chief when he backed trimming the U.S. nuclear arsenal “and affirmed we need that defense triad,” which consists of land-, sea- and air-based atomic weapons.

{mosads}The F-35 long-range strike bomber is “absolutely essential to keep our deterrent edge as we go in to the next 25 years,” Hagel told reporters at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri on Tuesday.

“We need to do it. We need to make the investments. We will have it in the budget. It’s something that I have particularly put a priority on in the budgets and things that I’ve talked about with the Congress,” he added.

The Defense Department is slated to submit its fiscal 2016 budget to Capitol Hill on Feb. 2, and could include a request to fund the new bomber program.

Nonproliferation experts argue axing, rather than refurbishing, one of the legs of the triad could save potentially billions of dollars and that such a move would bolster President Obama’s arms control legacy.

The Pentagon wants to build up as as many as 100 new aircraft to the tune of around $550 million each to replace its aging bomber fleet, including its B-2s, which are over 50 years old.

“It’s always about strategic deterrence so that we don’t have to send our men and women into conflict,” Hagel said during a speech to the base’s troops. “Our adversaries have to know and have to believe, and essentially have to trust that we have deterrent capability, that in fact we have everything we say we have.”

Rogers said a new long-range bomber “can be done” despite Washington’s austere budget environment.

“I don’t think it’s prohibitively expensive. We’re just going to have to do some different priorities and I’m going to working with him to help him accomplish that,” he said.

Rogers said he had some ideas on how to pay for the effort, but refused to elaborate.

However he did say “public-private partnerships” could “help facilitate some of this long-range investments.”

“There’s ways that we can do it, absolutely,” he said.