From DoD Buzz:
Did the Obama administration effectively drop the Next Generation Bomber as part of its arms control strategy? That is the theory posited by Lt. Gen. Robert Elder, the Air Force’s top Global Strike commander and 8th Air Force chief, at a breakfast meeting yesterday.
Defense Secretary Gates had indicated the bomber’s fate was uncertain back in late January. Gates told Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh (D-In.), that an earlier speech he had made in support of the bomber was delivered “at a time when the economic outlook was rather different than it is now and the prospects for the defense budget perhaps different. We need to look at all of the aspects of our strategic posture, the role of a next generation bomber, along with some of the other systems we’ve been talking about, clearly have to be a focus of the Quadrennial Defense Review.” So Gates was pretty clearly signalling that money and the country’s strategic posture would both play a role in delaying the bomber.
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My Comment: I think the issue is money .... not what a future Start Treaty may look like.