Un extravagant bomber

USAF is wishing for a new bomber. They built a humungous fleet of B-52's back in the 50's. About 200 of them are still flying, 60 years later. According to Popular Mechanics, the Air Force plans yet more upgrades to keep 'em flying until 2040. The B-52 will be the first aircraft of any type to remain in service for 90 years. Clearly a successful design. It's big, has a long range, and a long loiter time and a big payload. It's dead meat against enemy fighters, but we have a lot of enemies that don't have fighters.
Subsequent bomber designs haven't been as successful. There was the supersonic B-58. It was quick, but short ranged, and a small payload. They have all been scrapped. There was the B-70, of which only a couple of prototypes were built. I don't remember the details, but it failed to get funded. Then there was the supersonic B-1. B-1 had better range and payload than the B-58, but it still could not match the B-52, and it was expensive and not many were built. And finally, the invisible-to-radar B-2. If the radar can't see you, the fighters can't find you. B-2 has reasonable range and payload, but cost $2 billion apiece. We only built 20 of them.
So what do we do for an encore? USAF chief of staff Norton Schwartz wants a plane for intelligence gathering, electronic warfare, linking to offboard sensors. No mention of delivering bombs and missiles on the target. Retired Gen. John Corley wants a lot of them. "How creditable is a force if you only have a handful of assets? " Good point.
Rebecca Grant, a Washington think tank thinker, must read a lot of science fiction, she wants laser weapons. She also wants supersonic. Supersonic sucks fuel like a sewer pipe, shortening range to the point of unusability. Plus, a big bomber is never going to outrun the fighters.
No discussion of what missions a new bomber needs to fly. The chances of carrying nukes into anywhere is low. We don't nuke people anymore. The B-52's are useful for carpet bombing places like Khe Sangh and backing up ground troops with smart bombs laid on key spots, like bridges. The B-2's were responsive enough to pour an avalanche of iron bombs into a Baghdad restaurant just a few minutes after a spy reported that the Saddam Hussein family was having dinner there. What should a new bomber do?
I don't think USAF will get the funding until we have a good answer to that question.