With the demise of the Warsaw Pact and the decline in U.S. defense budgets, pressures are building to reconsider long dormant issues about the roles and missions of the Armed Services, particularly the nation's three major air arms-strategic bombers, land-based tactical aircraft, and naval aviation. An example of these pressures is a recent Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) report that calls for potential reductions in other programs to fund more rapid production of the B-2 bomber and an examination of other 'tradeoffs at the margin'. In response to the SASC report, this information memorandum examines the basic issues involved in comparing long-range bombers and naval forces and makes some simple quantitative comparisons between the B-2 bomber and the proposed A-X aircraft in cases where they compete head to head. The remainder of this introductory section sets the stage by summarizing the SASC report on the B-2 and its call for DOD to investigate tradeoffs at the margin. The second section examines the three suggested tradeoffs that involve naval forces. The third section presents some quantitative comparisons of the B-2 and A-X, and the final section summarizes the main themes of the analysis. The paper is presented in the format of an annotated briefing with charts and explanatory text.


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