Northrop Grumman has won a contract to build the Pentagon’s Long Range Strike Bomber, a fleet of planes designed to strike deep into enemy territory that is said to be one of the Pentagon’s most significant weapon programs over the next decade.

In announcing the award, valued up to $55 billion or more, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter was quoted as saying it represents a “technological leap” that will allow the U.S. to “remain dominant.” The bomber, which would carry nuclear weapons, is a “strategic investment for the next 50 years,” he says.

The competition to build 100 of the planes, which would enter service in the 2020s and a successor to the aging fleet of bombers, was fierce.

The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon has not disclosed what the planes will look like, or what they will be capable of doing. Development costs, which may or may not have produced prototypes, have been hidden in the Pentagon’s classified “black budget,” the newspaper says.

The competition featured Northrop Grumman against a team of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Despite its history as a defense supplier, which includes building the B-2 bomber, Northrop was no longer a prime contractor on a major military jet program.

By contrast, Boeing makes the F/A-18 Hornet and the KC-46 tanker, and Lockheed Martin is the manufacturer of the F-35.

The Pentagon has said that each plane would cost $550 million in 2010.