Northrop Gets Defense Lifeline in $80 Billion Bomber Contest
- Smallest suitor wins biggest warplane contract this decade
- `Transformational' award cements status as first-tier supplier
Northrop Wins $80B Pentagon Bomber Sweepstakes
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Northrop Grumman Corp., shut out of prime contracts for U.S. warplanes since the B-2 in the 1980s, won a Pentagon sweepstakes valued at as much as $80 billion to build the Air Force’s Long-Range Strike Bomber.
In beating a team of Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co., Northrop overcame the world’s two largest defense contractors and secured a financial lifeline stretching into the 2020s. The plane, still highly classified after years of planning, will be the military’s first new bomber since the Cold War and one of the biggest U.S. weapons systems of the next decade.