Posted on 04/09/2003 2:53:56 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The B-1B Lancer bomber that dropped what may be the decisive ordnance in the war against Saddam Hussein traces its lineage through the Antelope Valley, emerging from a factory complex at the periphery of U.S. Air Force Plant 42.
A B-1B received a mission tasking Monday and within a dozen minutes or so dropped four massive "bunker buster" bombs on a building in a Baghdad suburb. The target: Pentagon officials referred to it as "a regime leadership meeting" believed to involve the Iraqi dictator and his two dreaded sons, Odai and Qusai Hussein.
President George W. Bush, meeting in northern Ireland with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said Tuesday it was not immediately known whether Saddam or his two sons were injured or killed in the attack.
The joint direct attack munition explosives left a massive crater. The munitions initially were tested in the late 1990s at Edwards Air Force Base.
Former Palmdale Mayor Pro Tem Joe Davies once commanded Air Force Plant 42 and went on to work as a communications representative for Rockwell International and later The Boeing Co. He worked at Rockwell during the heyday of B-1B production.
"I would imagine everyone is feeling great pride today," Davies said. "Obviously the bomber is extremely effective. It hit the target right on the money. The results certainly seem to verify every good thing we believed about it."
The Air Force officer in charge of the bomb drop from the B-1B is Lt. Col. Fred Swan.
Swan gave a telephone interview with Pentagon reporters Tuesday. After the lead pilot and crew returned to their Persian Gulf air base, he told reporters that they launched four 2,000-pound satellite-guided bombs - two of a type that penetrates into buried structures before detonating and two nonpenetrating types.
Swan said the crew was not told what the target was, but he was certain they had hit it.
Built by Rockwell - now part of Boeing - at its Air Force Plant 42 facility in Palmdale in the 1980s, the sleek B-1 bombers were tested at the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base.
Testing on improvements to the strategic bomber is ongoing, and Valley residents often can see the sleek, dragon-shaped craft swooping above the Valley, with its swing wings swept back or extended, depending on its flight profile.
With wings that swing forward for slower speeds and back for supersonic flight, the B-1 was designed for high-speed flight at low altitudes, with terrain-following capabilities so it could fly beneath enemy radar.
Originally intended to carry nuclear weapons, the bombers later were modified for conventional munitions, including the satellite-guided bombs used in Monday's strike.
At its peak, the B-1 program employed more than 7,000 people and was the largest military program of its day, with each of the 100 bombers built costing about $250 million apiece in 1980s dollars.
"The B-1 is an awesome airplane to fly," said Maj. Wim "Jiffy" Libby, chief B-1B pilot at Edwards Air Force Base. "It doesn't fly like a heavy airplane, but closer to a fighter" with a great deal of maneuverability.
Although heavier than a B-2 stealth bomber, the B-1B handles "about like a T-38" trainer aircraft, said Maj. Troy "Trasher" Asher, operations officer with the B-1 test team.
"It's high-performance for a heavy airplane, and gives the pilot a lot of capability," Libby said. "I can't think of a better airplane to fly."
The Edwards' bombers were the first to drop the satellite-guided joint direct attack munitions, testing them for the first time in February 1998.
"The capability you saw yesterday on the news is a relatively recent capability" successfully tested at Edwards, Asher said. "(It) is really only a few years old."
"It's a sophisticated aircraft technically," said Maj. Brian "Professor" Tom, B-1B weapons system officer with the Edwards test team. "The heart - the brains, really - of the aircraft are the computers we have on board that allow us to do these things."
Those computers, which control numerous functions from navigation to offensive and defensive weapons, are the domain of the two weapons systems officers. The four-man B-1B crew also includes the aircraft commander and copilot.
The Edwards test fleet consists of three of the black bombers. They are being used to test major upgrades that will allow the bombers to carry and deploy multiple types of bombs at once. It will also enable the bombers to use newer weapons such as the joint air-to-surface stand-off missile and joint stand-off weapon, as well as the wind-corrected munitions dispenser, a guided cluster bomb.
The upgrades will include software changes to bring the computers up from their 1970s-era capabilities and "make the human interface a lot better," Tom said. The improvements include graphic displays rather than strictly numerical.
"Those upgrades make the crew better able and more efficiently to put bombs on target," Libby said. "The improvements will make them able to do it even faster."
The B-1B bombers are able to carry more munitions than any other platform in the Air Force inventory, including the JDAMs that have been so important in recent conflicts.
When he saw the news reports of the B-1B strike, "I really thought the B-1 guys were doing what we're trained to do and what they're doing every day," Libby said.
"There's a pride in our brothers," Tom said.
"My first thought was 'it's about time,' " Asher said. "All of us in the B-1 community have been singing its praises for a very long time.
"It's about time it's being used the way it was intended to be used."
The bombers first saw operational use in Operation Desert Fox in Iraq in 1998. It was also used in Operation Allied Force in the Balkans in 1999.
More recently, the bombers received praise for their work over Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. One aircraft was lost in that conflict when it crashed into the Indian Ocean near its base on the island of Diego Garcia.
Though the aircraft now are praised for their performance, the bombers almost were never built and have endured a roller-coaster existence.
The long-range bomber capable of carrying nuclear weapons first was proposed by President Richard Nixon in 1970, but the program was cancelled by President Jimmy Carter seven years later.
The B-1 was resurrected by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, during the Cold War military build-up.
At the time of its production, Rockwell executive Sam Iacobellis said its radar signature would prove so elusive that "no threat aircraft could knock it out of the sky."
The aircraft that began production at that time was the B-1B, an improved model that eventually entered Air Force service. The four models of its predecessor, the B-1A, were used only for flight test purposes.
During the bomber's test phase, veteran Rockwell test pilot and flight commander Tommie Douglas "Doug" Benefield died after ejecting from a B-1A that dived into the desert east of Boron. Flight test engineer Capt. Otto J. Waniczek and pilot Richard V. Reynolds were severely injured but survived the Aug. 29, 1984, crash.
That crash involved ejection of an escape pod, but the parachutes didn't deploy fully. One chute collapsed, resulting in a collision of the pod with the ground. Waniczek and Reynolds went on to achieve distinguished careers, with Reynolds going on to command the Air Force Flight Test Center at the turn of the century.
Benefield's contributions are remembered on base in the Benefield Anechoic Facility, used for testing how aircraft react to and jam radar signals. The chamber was designed in the early 1980s and opened in July 1989 to test the B-1B.
Valley Press Editor Dennis Anderson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Big B-1 Bump!
The B-1b missed Gulf War 1, as did I while sitting at Edwards in B-1 Flight Test. ;0
Many of us tried to volunteer to go, but were turned down because we were "needed" there, and it just never happened. ;(
Glad to see it got the good shot this time. It is one heck of an airframe.
"tIqIpqu' 'ej nom tIqIp" (Hit them hard and hit them fast.)
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