New B-52 Radar Program Has Nunn-McCurdy Cost Breach, May Be Reduced in Scope

Rising costs on the B-52 Radar Modernization Program—one of the key upgrades that will take transform the B-52H into the B-52J configuration—have triggered a law requiring the Air Force to notify Congress, and the service is now considering reducing the scope of the program.

The Nunn-McCurdy Act requires the services to tell Congress when a program’s cost or schedule estimate has increased substantially from its approved baseline. If there is a “critical” breach of cost or schedule—defined as a 25 percent increase—the Defense Department must certify the program as necessary for national security or cancel it.

The Air Force characterized the B-52 radar unit cost increase as “significant,” meaning a deviation of at least 15 percent. Service and industry sources said the increase is about 17 percent, meaning the program does not need certification to continue.

“The Air Force Program Executive Officer for Bombers submitted a program deviation report to the Air Force Service Acquisition Executive” regarding the radar modernization program on April 11, an Air Force spokesperson said. “The Air Force is assessing the cost and schedule growth on the program and initial review of the PDR indicates it will be a significant cost breach.”

Raytheon is developing and installing the new radar under contract to Boeing, the B-52J integrator.

“The next step in the process is for the Secretary of the Air Force to provide the formal notification to Congress prior to May 24,” the Air Force spokesperson said.

“To be clear, we are at the beginning of the process,” another spokesperson said. The B-52 RMP program manager notified service acquisition leadership that “there could be an increase in the cost estimate (not actual costs, just an increase in the estimate). The program office is currently assessing the estimates.”

As long as the estimate validates that the cost increase is “significant” but not “critical,” all the Air Force must do is notify Congress and submit a “Selected Acquisition Report.”

The RMP is replacing the B-52’s long-obsolete and problem-prone analog AN/APQ-166 radar with a new one—the Raytheon AN/APQ-188—that is a hybrid of the active electronically-scanned array (AESA) radars used by the Boeing F-15 and F/A-18, configured mostly for the air-to-ground mission. 

It is part of the overall B-52J update, which will install the new radar, new engines and engine pylons, digital engine controls, communications and other upgrades to the venerable bomber, giving it an extended service life into the 2050s. The planned Initial Operational Capability for the new radar is 2027.

In addition to providing ground-mapping functions and spotting and tracking aerial threats at range, AESAs in recent years have also been used for electronic warfare and communications.   

Darlene Costello, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, told a House Armed Services subcommittee on May 8 that the breach had occurred. Asked by Rep. Trent Kelly (R-Miss.) if she is confident the RMP won’t hit the “critical” threshhold, Costello said she is “pretty confident.”

That, she said, is “why we have decided to continue with the program. We believe we can find an affordable way forward to deliver the needed capability. We conducted an affordability review when we first got the information about the pricing coming higher than we expected.”

Costello said the Air Force has “refined the requirements down to a viable product of what [Air Force Global Strike Command] really needs to do, as opposed to possibly other items. That doesn’t mean we can’t bring in capability later, but for now, we’re focusing on getting this capability to the warfighter because it’s needed.”

She said the service doesn’t expect the increase will become “critical” or “close to” that condition, “but we are beyond the ‘significant’ threshold and we’re working through the process” to officially notify Congress.”

The 2024 report from the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test & Evaluation, released in January, indicated that the RMP is largely meeting its technical requirements, although some questions remain about the shaping of the B-52’s radome and how that will affect performance. A low-rate initial production decision covering 28 of the Air Force’s 76 B-52s is slated for late fiscal 2026, with the remainder to follow after completion of initial operational test and evaluation in fiscal 2028. The RMP completed its critical design review in early 2022.   

In March, the Air Force put out a request for information asking industry about other “modified” radars that could be supplied off the shelf to equip the B-52, but cautioned that it was “not a solicitation” and was published for “informational purposes only.”

A Government Accountability Office report from 2024 noted that the RMP’s cost had increased from $2.3 billion to $2.6 billion.