Posted on 04/13/2024 7:47:38 AM PDT by george76
The US Air Force has 140 of its biggest warplanes – its heavy bombers – in active service: 76 Boeing B-52Hs, 44 Boeing B-1Bs and 20 B-2 stealth bombers built by Northrop Grumman.
..
Any other air force might content itself with 140 bombers and redistribute the lost bomber’s operating budget. But the US Air Force is counting on the B-1 to play a lead role in a possible air war over the Taiwan Strait. It’s such a high priority that the service is spending millions of dollars recovering, from long-term storage, a surplus B-1 nicknamed “Lancelot” that’s been sitting in desert storage, aka “the Boneyard”, for three years.
This is an operation the Air Force has done just three times in recent decades. Besides the B-1, the service returned to flying status two stored B-52s – one in 2020 and another in 2015 – in order to replace bombers that it lost to accidents.
Recovering from storage a machine as complex as a bomber is hard, expensive and time-consuming work. It can take hundreds of people working thousands of hours over a span of years and at a cost of millions of dollars.
That the Air Force is willing to make the investment speaks to the importance of the big, lumbering warplanes as the service positions itself to, among other contingencies, defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion fleet.
The four-engine, supersonic, swing-wing B-1 – crewed by four people and capable of carrying 37 tons of bombs and missiles over intercontinental distances – is the Air Force’s main anti-ship platform. It can carry 24 of the service’s best cruise missiles, including its Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles, or LRASMs.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
I’m sorry, but isn’t official US Gov’t policy still that Taiwan is a part of China?
Wow!
The B-1B has BY FAR the largest payload of any of our strategic bombers.
Major Kong was filmed saying "Shoot, a fella’ could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas with all that stuff.”, but something happened in Dallas in November 1963 between the end of filming and the release of the film, so "Vegas" was dubbed in over "Dallas". (The audio isn't in sync with Major Kong's lip movements.)
(Dr. Strangelove was supposed to be satire 60 years ago, not a documentary of the Biden administration.)
Here we go...
By September or October I imagine.....
/shiny side out
Why was it retired, and was it too early?
By 1967, all major improvement modifications had been completed on the B-58 and like its big brother the B-52, it could have remained in the inventory for many more years. Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even the Office of the Secretary of Defense, despite initial misgivings about the Hustler, came to realize its value as a strategic bomber and by January 1969, it had been given a new lease on life.
It was certainly a weapon system feared by the Soviets. But because of an indisputable blunder by Strategic Air Command, during a time when they were under pressure to cut costs, they decided to trade off all of the B-58s in hopes of retaining some older model B-52s. They got their trade off from the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Then, within months, they were also forced to phase out those older model B-52s they had hoped to keep.
What will the US military do then?
From Wiki:
“ The B-1B no longer carries nuclear weapons;[40] its nuclear capability was disabled by 1995 with the removal of nuclear arming and fuzing hardware.[122] Under provisions of the New START treaty with Russia, further conversions were performed. These included modification of aircraft hardpoints to prevent nuclear weapon pylons from being attached, removal of weapons bay wiring bundles for arming nuclear weapons, and destruction of nuclear weapon pylons. The conversion process was completed in 2011, and Russian officials inspect the aircraft every year to verify compliance.”
Lancelot LOL! Well researched article. /S
As I read it, Lancelot is the name of this particular B-1, not the name of the Lancer fleet.
I got a ‘68 in ‘85 for $65, same price as they were going to get for it at the junk yard.
Everything “worked”, roomy. About 8mpg.
Yup...love that one...
Is that a 106 Delta Dart?
Assassinations of high level reps from both sides blamed on the other. Blow some stuff up and blame it on the other. You know, the CIA doing CIA stuff.
The Hustler was on the tail end of the paradigm to go higher and faster. Now it's stealthier and more connected. It's usefulness would have been limited, and its maintenance expensive.
A BONE was lost last January, in a landing accident, at Ellsworth. Resurrection from the boneyard is part of the AMARC plan.
btt
he said LRASM
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