The Pentagon may take another two months or more to award a closely watched contract to build a new long-range bomber, a senior U.S. Air Force official said Tuesday.

Northrop Grumman Corp. is vying with a team of Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. to build up to 100 new jets that would to be fielded from the mid-2020s to replace aging B-52s and B-1 bombers.

"It's coming soon," Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, a senior Air Force acquisition official, said during a congressional hearing. "My hope is within the next couple of months."

The Pentagon had initially planned to make the award in the spring, but has pushed back the timetable several times. Analysts had expected an announcement in the next few weeks.

The planned new Long-Range Strike Bomber program is expected to cost more than $80 billion and is one of the most fiercely fought Pentagon contests in a decade. Analysts have said Boeing or Northrop could be forced to shrink or sell parts of their military aircraft business if they lose, and the classified nature of the program has left observers unable to handicap which of the rival contractors might win.

The slipping contract timetable has already led Congress to cut some funding for the program from the proposed fiscal 2016 budget, though much of the development work has already been done through classified funding.

Write to Doug Cameron at doug.cameron@wsj.com

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 29, 2015 16:55 ET (20:55 GMT)

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