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Pentagon Picks Northrop Grumman For Next Gen Bomber (theatlantic.com)
retroworks writes: The B-52s currently in use have been flown by three generations of American Air Force pilots. B1s and B-2 Bombers are also long in the tooth. The Pentagon has been looking for a new model to replace them, and Northrop Grumman has won for the next half-century with a major new order for state-of-the-art bomber aircraft. The bomber will be capable of carrying nuclear weapons, and the contract is worth almost $60 billion. The Atlantic reports, "While the current fleet remains useful, the Air Force wants a bomber that can evade the advancing air defenses of Russia and China—if ever the need arises. The long-range bomber would act as a deterrent against actions designed to keep U.S. forces out of a designated area—what the military calls 'anti-access aerial denial.'"
Actually, its not just speculation - the program is already fairly mature as all competitors have flown demonstrator scale versions and developed their entries to a higher level than normally required to. As an example, both the F-22 and F-35 programs were awarded based off of non-representative demonstrators, and the actual production examples were then developed from scratch after the contracts were awarded - in this case, the competitors were required to fly demonstrators based on the production examples, and were fully funded to that goal. The winner now gets to continue development on to full scale.
Why the change in approach? Because its run by a different office than normal acquisitions - the LRS-B contract competition was run by the Rapid Capabilities Office, which also handled such programs as the X-37 and thus isn't bound to the normal acquisition rulebook.