The Air Force's early efforts to field a next-generation long-range bomber likely will be cloaked in the shadows of a classified program, according to a senior service official.

“I think that it will probably start out just like a number of our high-end technical programs -- it is going to start as a ‘black' program until we understand where we are going,” Air Combat Command chief Gen. Ronald Keys told reporters during a briefing at an Air Force Association-sponsored conference in Washington. “Black” is military term typically used to describe a classified mission or weapons program.

The ACC chief said programmatic details such as anticipated costs and initial capability milestones will be disclosed to the public. However, issues pertaining to the platform's projected range, speed and payload will remain closely held secrets known only by a select number of service and Pentagon officials intimately involved with or charged with overseeing its development.

“The details of what it is going to look like, how fast it is going to go, how far it is going to go, what it's real capabilities [are] and stuff like that, I am not sure we are interested in letting a lot of people know what those will be,” Keys said.

The 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review, released earlier this year, directed the service to terminate work on its portion of the Joint Unmanned Air Combat System (J-UCAS) program and begin development of a new long-range bomber.

Since then , Air Force and Pentagon officials have said the air service plans to lean heavily on lessons gleaned from its J-UCAS work as it begins developing a new bomber.

Top uniformed Air Force officials have said the service is mulling whether the new strike aircraft will be composed of a family of aircraft or a single plane.

With the QDR calling for a new bomber to be introduced into the field by 2018, a number of industry offerings have been floated.

One platform that has surfaced in debate about the new strike platform is a conceptual bomber version of Lockheed Martin's F-22A fighter, which would feature a basic Raptor airframe as its baseline. It would be modified to meet the expected payload and range requirements for a long-range strike aircraft. Former Air Force Secretary James Roche was a proponent of the concept. Defense observers with close ties to the Air Force have said the so-called “F/B-22” has been discussed within the Pentagon as a possible bomber candidate.

One of the advantages of modifying existing aircraft is that those platforms likely could be fielded much faster -- and conceivably much cheaper -- than an entirely new aircraft that would have to be designed and built from the ground up, some observers say.

But Keys said he doubts the possibility that a modified Raptor could fill the service's long-range strike needs by 2018.

“Now [the new aircraft] may have some F-22A kinds of capabilities or attributes, but I am not sure that we will pick up the F-22A and make it into a long-range bomber,” Keys told reporters at the Sept. 27 briefing.

Another platform that has been floated as one that could meet the service's 2018 long-range strike needs is Northrop Grumman's B-3 bomber, an offshoot of the company's venerable B-2 bomber.

For his part, the ACC commander told reporters he is solely focused on finding an aircraft that can meet the service's requirements.

“What I come and say is, ‘I need something that goes about this far, has this sort of internal volume, that can go and stay up about this long, has the capability to accept these kinds of sensors. What do you have out there that can do that for me?” Keys noted. “I do not go in and ask for a piece of hardware -- I ask for capabilities.”

He also noted the cost to implement modifications to existing airframe specifically to meet the service's requirements may not necessarily be cheaper in the long run than simply buying a completely new plane.

“As soon as I say, ‘I need something that goes Mach 1.5,' people come back to me and say, ‘We can make this go Mach 1.2,” Keys said. “But to go Mach 1.5, it is going to cost you $25 billion dollars more -- all of a sudden, I am a lot less interested in going Mach 1.5”

But the process of defining those capabilities that Keys said he will base his long-range strike decisions is not yet complete.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley has stated that a future long-range strike aircraft must have “persistent, survivable, penetrating capability” armed with a significant amount of weapons.

Additionally, service officials are still in the process of developing a comprehensive analysis of alternatives as part of the bomber program, a study that will help guide work on the platform.

As the air service continues its early work on the effort, one capability that likely will not be ready by the 2018 deadline is a hypersonic power plant, according to Keys. After the service was ordered to field a new bomber, there was talk in defense circles about powering the strike aircraft with hypersonic engines, which would allow it to travel at speeds exceeding those routinely achieved by today's fastest military jets.

“When you get to 2018, you are not going to have that next great leap in technology,” the four-star said.“I believe that you are not going to have a hypersonic airplane, or an airplane that uses hypersonics.”

To that end, Keys said a more viable scenario would be a supersonic or subsonic aircraft that would be based on engine technologies fleshed out on platforms like the F-22A, the Joint Strike Fighter and, as envisioned, the Navy's Unmanned Combat Air System effort, which is the moniker the Navy placed on its portion of the former J-UCAS program after the Air Force was ordered to move its portion into the bomber development initiative.

The ACC chief said he believes that advanced propulsion systems like hypersonics will probably reach maturity in time to potentially be fitted on the Air Force's long-term bomber, which he said will be fielded in the 2030 to 2040 time frame.

“You take engines that you already have, you aerodynamic capabilities that you already have . . . and you can make a next-generation long range strike” platform, Keys said.

He also confirmed, as reported by ITAF earlier this year, that “there has been some talk” within the service about basing the 2018 long-range bomber and an envisioned next-generation gunship on the same airframe to pare down development and production costs.

“When you look at the requirements for a long-range [platform] -- persistence, payload -- the next generation gunship may look less like the gunship that we all would recognize, and look more like a bomber that we would all recognize.”

The service's existing gunship fleet consists of two variants of the AC-130 aircraft: the AC-130H and AC-130U. The U-models have 25 millimeter guns in addition to the 40mm and 105mm cannons carried by both models.

But as the list of potential capabilities planned for the futuristic bomber grows, some have questioned whether the Air Force can finance all of its long-range bomber requirements while in the midst of a service-wide budget crunch and a costly recapitalization effort.

Christopher Bolkcom, a senior defense analyst with the Congressional Research Service, said during the conference that bomber advocates will “have to push all the way up to 2018” to guarantee the long-range strike effort gets the funding it needs within the service's budget.

He noted that the $5 million inserted into the service's six-year spending plan for the effort is a sign of “tangible support that bomber advocates can hang their hat on.” But Bolkcom warned that the service's deep-seeded, fighter-based priorities would be a hurdle in securing future dollars for the burgeoning bomber effort.

“Air Force funding priorities are really not favorable to bombers, and there is now real way to get around it,” Bolkcom said. “The logic I hear from the corporate Air Force is something like this: ‘We need air dominance to pursue all subordinate missions, and we need fighters to achieve air dominance.'”

But Keys this week countered such claims, stating that 2018 is “doable” and that getting funding would not be an issue as the service marches toward 2018.

“I got a helluva lot of money in my budget” for long-range strike, Keys said. “This is not a hollow program.”