Long Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B)

This is a proposed US Air Force project. estimated at $80 billion, that Aviation Week thinks is close to contract award to either Boeing-Lockheed-Martin, or Northrup Grumman.  A think tank organized conference talked a lot about it.  One thing they didn't talk about was the mission such an aircraft might perform.  Is it supposed to penetrate Soviet or Chinese air defenses and nuke Moscow or Peiping?  Is it supposed to do maritime patrol in the Atlantic?  Is it supposed to carpet bomb ISIS held places in the Mid East?   Is it supposed to operate against defended airspace? 
   Since Viet Nam, USAF bombing missions have been flown by fighters, with bombs hung under their wings.  It seems to work, and it's not clear to me what the Long Range Strike Bomber could do to justify its $80 billion project cost. 
   The proposed aircraft does not seem all that formidable.  We are talking subsonic, 12,000-20000 pound bomb load and a range of only 2500 miles.  Where as the ancient B52 (still flying) could hoist 70000 pounds of bombs and could range out 4400 miles.  The WWII propeller driven single engine Douglas Skyraider could manage a 20,000 pound bomb load.   So we are talking  about a smallish aircraft with not much range.  Think about tanking in the way in, tanking again on the way out, and if you miss your tanker rendezvous you run out of gas.  That's the way we got the short legged F105 Thunderchiefs (Thuds)  to Hanoi and back. 
   The last successful bomber program USAF managed was the B52 program back 60 years ago.  Since then they did the supersonic B58 Hustler, which although fast, didn't carry enough bomb load to do anything worthwhile unless the bombs were nukes.  And we don't use nukes any more.  There was the B70 Valkyrie, big, supersonic, but never got into production.  Then the B1 Lancer project, supersonic, cool, but very expensive and lacking in range and payload.  And finally the B2 project, successful, good range and payload, really stealthy, but at $1 billion a copy, just too expensive.  They shut down production after building only 25 of them. 
   Given that sorry record, I think it behooves Congress and the MSM to raise some questions about the need for the LRS-B project.
    Consider taking a commercial jumbo airliner, taking out the seats, hanging missiles under the wings.