Lockheed Martin, Boeing Team Up For USAF Long Range Strike Bomber Contract

Lockheed Martin and Boeing will submit a joint bid for the U.S. Air Force's new long-range strike bomber contract, Reuters reported Tuesday.

"We're very pleased with how our team has come together, and how that enabled the solution that we're going to be offering," Orlando Carvalho, executive vice president of Lockheed's aeronautics division, told the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit.

Carvalho did not provide any specifics about the joint offering or the schedule for bids. He mentioned that the team would soon submit a bid to the Air Force, according to the report.

The report further stated that the Air Force has been unusually tight-lipped about the bomber program, saying only that it plans to buy as many as 100 new bombers for no more than $550 million each. U.S. arms makers have been working on classified contracts preparing for the new program for several years, but few details have emerged.

The Air Force announced a formal request for proposals for the bomber and planned to select a winner in the spring of 2015 on July 10 that it had released. It provided no details, and declined even to say when the bids were due.