North American Rockwell / Boeing B-1 Lancer

Reportedly, as part of its defensive EW suite, the B-1A was intended to have a towed decoy related to the TDU-X.

It is also worth mentioning that two separate people claimed this thing was being developed as a towed decoy for the B-1A bomber before it was canceled. It is possible that an offshoot of this towed target program did have that concept in mind, but we cannot find any evidence that anything came of it. A towed electronic warfare and even infrared-enabled decoy for the B-1A would have been quite useful for ensuring its survivability.

Such a decoy would have to of been capable of being stable at high speed and the small towed decoys we know today were just not possible during the 1970s when the B-1A was being developed. It's also worth noting that the B-1A's born-again successor, the B-1B, was one of the first aircraft in the USAF's stable to received modern towed decoys. So maybe there is something to these claims, we just need to find documentation of it.
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For a bit of comparison with the EW suite of the B-1B:
Grey Havoc said:
Reportedly, as part of its defensive EW suite, the B-1A was intended to have a towed decoy related to the TDU-X.

It is also worth mentioning that two separate people claimed this thing was being developed as a towed decoy for the B-1A bomber before it was canceled. It is possible that an offshoot of this towed target program did have that concept in mind, but we cannot find any evidence that anything came of it. A towed electronic warfare and even infrared-enabled decoy for the B-1A would have been quite useful for ensuring its survivability.

Such a decoy would have to of been capable of being stable at high speed and the small towed decoys we know today were just not possible during the 1970s when the B-1A was being developed. It's also worth noting that the B-1A's born-again successor, the B-1B, was one of the first aircraft in the USAF's stable to received modern towed decoys. So maybe there is something to these claims, we just need to find documentation of it.
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Grey Havoc said:
Lc89 said:
www.stripes.com

South Dakota Mines team uses cold spray to help Air Force repair B-1B Lancer

Without cold spray technology, the fix of this aircraft would have required a lengthy repair process and a cost estimated to exceed a half of a million dollars, which would have included dismantling part of the aircraft and sourcing spare parts from a salvaged bomber.
www.stripes.com www.stripes.com
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Hey, I was only joking you guys.
 
213.JPG

The U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command concluded its divestiture of 17 B-1B Lancers Sept. 23, as the last bomber departed Edwards Air Force Base, California, to fly to the boneyard at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona.

The divestiture of the aircraft is in support of the U.S. Air Force’s efforts to modernize America’s bomber fleet by inducting the B-21 Raider, as authorized by the National Defense Authorization Act.

“The divestiture plan was executed very smoothly,” said Brig. Gen. Kenyon Bell, AFGSC director of logistics and engineering. “With fewer aircraft in the B-1 fleet, maintainers will be able to give more time and attention to each aircraft remaining in the fleet.”

The 17 B-1B aircraft were retired from a fleet of 62, leaving 45 in the active inventory. Out of the 17 retired, one went to Tinker AFB, Oklahoma, as a prototype for structural repair actions; one went to Edwards AFB as a ground tester; and one went to Wichita, Kansas, to the National Institute for Aviation Research for digital mapping; and one went to Barksdale AFB, Louisiana, as a static display for the Barksdale Global Power Museum. The remaining 13 aircraft will be stored at the boneyard at the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group at Davis-Monthan AFB in Type 4000 storage. Four of those will remain in a reclaimable condition that is consistent with Type 2000 recallable storage.
USAF Global Strike Command Divestitures 17 B-1B Aircraft, Moves Towards B-21 Raider
B-1B Lancer

The retirement of the B1-B did not affect the service’s lethality or any associated maintenance manpower, and allowed officials to focus maintenance and depot-level manpower on the remaining aircraft, increasing readiness and paving the way for bomber fleet modernization to meet future challenges.

“Beginning to retire these legacy bombers allows us to pave the way for the B-21 Raider,” Bell said. “Continuous operations over the last 20 years have taken a toll on our B-1B fleet, and the aircraft we retired would have taken between 10 and 30 million dollars per aircraft to get back to a status quo fleet in the short term until the B-21 comes online.”

By retiring these aircraft now, AFGSC can focus on prioritizing the health of the current fleet, including modernization efforts, to make the bomber fleet more lethal and capable overall, said Bell.

The Air Force needs to transition from three bombers to two — the rebuilt B-52H Stratofortresses and the next-generation B-21 — to deter both established and rising powers. This change is vital to future joint and allied operations because no other service or partner nation provides long-range bomber capability.

Defense World

View News at Defense World
www.defenseworld.net www.defenseworld.net
 
With their own money? I think they’re going to have an uphill battle selling the upgrade to an aircraft on its way out.
 
Josh_TN said:
With their own money? I think they’re going to have an uphill battle selling the upgrade to an aircraft on its way out.
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The old Bone is still slate for another decade of of service with the Air Force already showing it can fit the missile, or a similar size one in its bay.

Extrenal Pylons are a generally an easy thing to put together when you already have most of the work down. Mainly the attaching the thing to the plane.

Which the B1 does in six places.

They mainly have to rewire the system, which is easy. And test how to make the pylon so the missile release cleanly, again fairly easy these days with computer modeling. I be shock if it takes more then 18 months.
 
With the airframe hours and spares situation the way they are not to mention things like resource black holes such as the B-21 and F-35 programs, I have to wonder if the remaining B-1Bs can be kept in service another ten years.
 
I didn’t realize B-1s were expected to last a decade. I thought B-21 would begin replacing them as soon as it entered service, which would mean an ever decreasing fleet size from the late 2020s on. Already there are only 24 combat coded machines to the best of my knowledge. Is the AGM-183 ever going to be purchased in such numbers such that the B-52 fleet couldn’t deliver enough of them? It seems unlikely for a missile that looks to cost north of $10 million. HACM is even further down the development road; it seems unlikely to be adopted before the B-1s are already starting to be withdrawn.
 
Grey Havoc said:
With the airframe hours and spares situation the way they are not to mention things like resource black holes such as the B-21 and F-35 programs, I have to wonder if the remaining B-1Bs can be kept in service another ten years.
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Was the plan to fit the B-1's with an AESA radar also canned?
 
mkellytx said:
Josh_TN said:
The B-1 never had a good serviceability rate. It had had huge avionics issues even when it just entered service and I don’t think it’s ECM ever delivered. The engines I think were always touchy and variable geometry introduced another point of failure.
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That is not an entirely accurate statement @Josh_TN, to be fair that does properly describe most of the service life of the aircraft. There are, however, notable exceptions to the general rule. During the 90's congress funded a study which required Ellsworth to receive the mandated spares and support they were supposed to receive. Throughout the duration of the study they were able to maintain the required MC rate. The second notable occurrence was 2002-2005, which were the years I was at Dyess. We broke the records for sustained high MC rates that have never again been replicated. Why? They retired the 83's and 84's and we had spare parts, by 2005 the well had run dry and it was regression back to the mean.

Sustainment is nowhere near as sexy as procurement and those holding the purse strings have short memories.
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Wait, wait, wait. So you're saying when you actually give people the spares they're supposed to get they can, you know, keep the aircraft flying? No. Way. So it's less that the B-1B is the dog you'd have us believe it is and more they just didn't bother with required upkeep. That's hardly the aircraft's fault.
 
Josh_TN said:
I thought B-21 would begin replacing them as soon as it entered service,
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Replacing the B-2 first.

Also, this has been discussed for a couple years by the USAF. GSC demonstrated external carriage and launching of the JASSM last year, and they noted at the time the pylon(s) were configurable with different harnesses for different connector configs. Boeing was the contractor for those demos.
 
sferrin said:
Wait, wait, wait. So you're saying when you actually give people the spares they're supposed to get they can, you know, keep the aircraft flying? No. Way. So it's less that the B-1B is the dog you'd have us believe it is and more they just didn't bother with required upkeep. That's hardly the aircraft's fault.
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What you miss is that in 2002-2003 while they had the parts the jets were flying mostly 4 hour prof sorties, even the 2003 deployment was to Guam, so they were still mostly 4 hour prof sorties, life was good. By 2004 we left the Arabian peninsula bases for Diego and things trended down ever since. Those 20+ hour sorties with heavy fuel and bomb loads compounded by lack of spares made things ugly by 2005-2006. We burned through hours so fast that the phase dock had to double up to keep jets out in the sandbox. Since we used them so hard, there was always a lot more to fix. Engine failures also accelerated. I ran both of those shops and saw it up close 2003-2005.

Finally, it was a HD/LD fleet of 67 so every aft ECM compartment fire, nose gear collapse, ruined wing, hydraulic failure that caused the jet to taxi into a ditch catch fire and explode, turkey vulture that took out an ECM radome spilling 10,000 lbs of JP-8 on the ground, or my favorite, engine that fell off of a jet over Afghanistan took limited jets off the ramp forever or in other cases for well over a year.
 
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As a kid, I remember seeing a B-1B flying over a grain elevator. We were delivering wheat to grain silo. It was in August 1989 or 1990. McConnell AFB was where they were based out of at the time. I think they liked using the silos as simulated targets.
 
mkellytx said:
NeilChapman said:
My first thought was that the plan would be same as B-2. It seems there are nineteen among three squadrons so perhaps six per. I think that number is constrained by limited numbers and perhaps the amount of support B-2 requires.

On one hand it would make sense to start off with a one for one replacement in squadrons until the aircraft is better known. On the other hand, Ellsworth is planning for ~30 Environmental Protection Shelters and it currently supports two bomber squadrons. So maybe the number is 15. Fifteen makes sense as the original plan was for 100 - 6 squadrons and the other ten for training and testing.

Time will tell.
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Thanks, good stuff Neil. So, thirty shelters and the FTU sounds a lot like the training squadron gets 14 PAA and the combat coded squadron gets 12 PAA for 26 PAA plus four spares gets to 30. For reference, at the 7 BW ages ago when the 28th was the Bone FTU (no WIC or test) the PAA was 14 while the 9th was 12 as the lone combat coded squadron.
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There is a big push for radical change in pilot training. It will be interesting to see how this changes B-21 quantities in a training squadron.
 
NeilChapman said:
There is a big push for radical change in pilot training. It will be interesting to see how this changes B-21 quantities in a training squadron.
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No doubt Neil, life's a bit easier with two person crews on two stations versus four on three or five on three. Most of the button pushing weapon system stuff doesn't require up and away training. Academics and sim will be as long or longer, perhaps the on aircraft stuff could be compressed. The big question mark is the expected annual throughput, both short and long course. If the buy stays large my money is on the larger squadron size to feed the pilot community beast.
 
mkellytx said:
NeilChapman said:
... The big question mark is the expected annual throughput, both short and long course. If the buy stays large my money is on the larger squadron size to feed the pilot community beast.
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Interesting point. Are we expecting B-1 pilots to go through training first? Don't they mostly need systems and stealth tactics training? Or perhaps it's 50% new guys. In a two crew configuration don't you stick a new pilot with an experienced B-1 pilot? Why wouldn't you use combat coded aircraft?
 
NeilChapman said:
Interesting point. Are we expecting B-1 pilots to go through training first? Don't they mostly need systems and stealth tactics training? Or perhaps it's 50% new guys. In a two crew configuration don't you stick a new pilot with an experienced B-1 pilot? Why wouldn't you use combat coded aircraft?
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If the B-2 is a guide the Raider will be a two pilot operation, WSO's need not apply. Don't feel too bad for them, there are all those empty F-15EX back seats... A few of the younger ones will get routed to UPT and come back as pilots.

The whole time I was around bombers the B-2 was a board only selection, since it always was a small community of priceless national assets, things may have changed since then. The best example of a largish transition was the Bone in the late 80's early 90's, all of my leadership in the early 2000's was that initial cadre. The initial cadre and first few batches of aircrew were all board selected. Once the community had a critical mass then it went to a more normal model of an FTU with short (other airframes) and long (UPT grads) courses.

So, initial Raider cadre will likely be board selected B-1/B-2/B-52 pilots with a few F-15E/F-35 guys sprinkled in, all will be super high potential folks. Price of entry will be IP on their respective type, O-4 and above will be top heavy on gray patch wearers. That will stand up the FTU, first combat coded squadrons' IOC's/FOC's and the weapons school. After that it all comes down to how big the fleet gets. Hopefully, the buy makes it to 130-150 jets in 8-10 combat coded squadrons and the pipeline gets set up to provide the right number of IP's and weapons school grads to become self sustaining before UPT grads start showing up to the FTU.

All that to say, the guys up at the 28th BW are going to be board selected for a while, the Bone pilots not selected will get to go south, get a staff job or transition to other airframes short on pilots/WSO's. The first batch at the 7th BW will be the the high potential types, at some point along the way they'll move away from the board and a flesh peddler at AFPC will figure out who transitions, who goes elsewhere and when to let the UPT guys put the Raider on their dream sheets.

So, hopefully this answers your question about experience. Most if not all of the initial cadre will be highly experience IP's on some other airframe and will train to be the trainers, with heavy input from the contractor and test community.

Unless Northrup pulls an F-22 situation where early blocks are not fully combat capable, then there will be no "combat coded aircraft" only an aircraft allocation for a combat coded squadron. When I was in the Bone community our jets were for the most part homogeneous, with a few notable exceptions. Pretty much every jet on the ramp was the same configuration, except for the one or two test jets with something in OT. When we got a tasking for the combat coded squadron (the 9th) we picked the best 8-12 jets on the ramp, regardless of if they had a 9th or 28th tail flash. The 12 PAA, means that the squadron will be expected to provide up to that many for a combat tasking, hence you probably have 14 jets, one in phase and maybe another sometimes at depot, but if there's another squadron on the base the expectation is that you'll use theirs as well to meet the tasking, else you may need 15-16 to meet the 12 if the airframe has a bad rep for reliability. Biggest consideration there was the number of hours left till the phase inspection. Doesn't make any sense to send something down range with less than XX% of its hours left if you're just going to have to swap it out in a few weeks.

All this to say, take it with a big grain of salt, it's been a while since I left the community and who knows what new idea(s) they've discovered since then, but it should give you the flavor.
 
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220418-F-DD225-002.JPG


80 year anniversary of the Doolittle Raid.

www.afgsc.af.mil

Ellsworth celebrates 80th anniversary of the Doolittle Raid

The 80th Anniversary of the Doolittle Raid was celebrated through several base events including a heritage flight, the dedication of a JASSM to a local museum, as well as a toast and tail flash
www.afgsc.af.mil
 
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Firefinder said:
sferrin said:
aonestudio said:
www.thedrive.com

B-1B Bombers Are Hunting Illegal Fishing Boats Off South America

Recent B-1B sorties highlight the growing maritime role for the bombers, but illegal fishing is a national security concern in its own right.
www.thedrive.com www.thedrive.com
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No no that not what will happen.

Remember this is a B1.

You need to Photoshop about...

10 more of those bombs on that photo.
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That's a real picture. No photoshop necessary. (It was a test, not an actual attack on a foreign boat.)

nypost.com

Air Force drops bomb on tiny boat

The US Air Force had something to prove. So it dropped a 2,000 pound, laser-guided bomb on a tiny, empty motorboat in the Gulf of Mexico. The test bombing run, performed by the B-1B “Lancer&#…
nypost.com nypost.com
 

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