NGB demonstrator may be a twin-engine aircraft resembling an X-47B. Initial version will be piloted, but an unmanned endurance version is a probable follow-on.

Is Northrop Grumman building a secret bomber prototype? In late April, the company revealed first-quarter financial results. Data indicated $2 billion in new "restricted programs" contract awards at Integrated Systems, the aircraft division. This almost certainly confirms what DTI first reported earlier this year: Northrop Grumman has a classified, sole-source contract to build a demonstrator for the U.S. Air Force's Next-Generation Bomber (DTI March, p. 30).

USAF budgets show no funding for the Next-Generation Bomber (NGB) itself in 2008, although documents show money for technology work in Fiscal 2008-10. Northrop Grumman CEO Ron Sugar said last year that Integrated Systems had made strides in black programs and identified restricted projects as the top new-business opportunity. Taken together, the evidence points to a single, very large contract win. Northrop Grumman also acquired Scaled Composites in 2007, a company that can develop large prototype aircraft quickly.

The $2-billion contract casts new light on the decision in January by Boeing and Lockheed Martin to reveal their year-old collaboration on NGB. (Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman declined interview requests.) Hailed as an NGB "dream team" combining Boeing's bomber experience with Lockheed Martin's stealth technology, the teaming now looks like an effort to catch up with a rival that has a lead in the next major U.S. combat aircraft program.

It is likely that the prototype will build on technology under development for the Navy's X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstrator (UCAS-D), putting within reach USAF's goal of a 2018 initial operational capability date for the bomber. Industry and USAF sources have talked about a competition in 2010, leading to the start of systems development and demonstration in 2011. But it would be Northrop Grumman's to lose.

Events since 2000 placed Northrop Grumman in pole position. USAF interest in a replacement bomber was rekindled after 9/11, but USAF Secretary Jim Roche and Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper focused on the Lockheed Martin FB-22, seeing it as a low-risk solution that bolstered the case for the embattled F-22.

The departures of Roche and Jumper in 2005 coincided with a change in thinking. In October, USAF defined a three-stage Next-Generation Long-Range Strike program. Phase I would keep the force effective until 2018, with upgrades to aircraft. Phase II would be a new "2018 bomber," while Phase III encompassed hypersonic concepts. This was the end of the road for the FB-22, since nobody envisioned the F-22 remaining in production long enough to dovetail with Phase II.

Late in 2005, at a conference on unmanned combat air vehicles in London, there were signs of convergence between the bomber requirement and the Joint UCAS project. J-UCAS had been kicked off as a major effort three years earlier, but USAF was interested in a platform larger than the Navy could accommodate.

Northrop Grumman J-UCAS Program Manager Scott Winship said at the time that the company had proposed completing a third prototype as an X-47C with a 172-ft. wingspan and 10,000-lb. payload. J-UCAS leader Mike Francis stressed an advantage of the unmanned vehicle: an inherently lower radar cross-section (RCS) than conventional tailed aircraft.

Despite the tension in J-UCAS, it was a surprise when an early-2006 high-level Pentagon review killed it, splitting resources into a white-world Navy effort and a classified USAF program, while endorsing a plan to field a bomber in 2018.

It's now apparent, however, that USAF had already picked a primary approach to the NGB, and that the next two years of work, starting with the remaining Fiscal 2006 J-UCAS funding, are intended to validate that choice.

This approach emerged from J-UCAS, and particularly from Northrop Grumman, which anticipated the J-UCAS split and was prepared to respond. The company believed that the basic 42,000-lb. J-UCAS was better suited to t