...25 years ago today, 1988, the USAF took delivery of the last B1-B bomber.
Question is: Did that weapon platform deliver as expected when conceived 25+ years ago?
The question is not to pass judgment on my part pro or con, just inquiring.

Didn't they just announce a huge upgrade for these birds? Must be pretty good then.

I'm a young buck (class of '06 and had captain on for about three years now), so you can take my opinion for what it's worth. I would say it is tough to judge the B1 based off of what it was designed for vs what it does today. It's a Cold War-era bomber designed to take on the Soviets but it's main contributions have been to wars against far inferior adversaries. It hauls a ton of AMMO and has dropped quite a bit...a big asset in the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns.

That said, it's been on and off the chopping block over the years. As we used to say in Minot, "remember, the B-52 is the replacement for the B1!"

[This message has been edited by Noblemen06 (edited 5/4/2013 5:19p).]

This is the way I understand it. Please feel free to correct any errors, etc:

The B1-A was designed to be a high-level bomber, just like the B-52 was.

But by the time the A model was coming to fruition, the Soviets had developed AA missiles that could knock down high-flying bombers.

The B-52s mission was then changed to low-level, under the radar, penetrations.

IR, etc pods were added under the nose to facilitate that mission, but early model 52's could not handle the stresses of low level flight (much more turbulence near the ground).

Also, by the time Carter cancelled the B1-A program, the Soviets had developed look-down, shoot-down capability on their fighters. (I believe a Soviet pilot's defection to S Korea in a Mig-25 allowed the the US to learn this - much to their surprise.)

When Reagan took over, he changed the direction of our policy towards the Soviets and was determined to force an end to the Cold War. Part of that srategy was based on our highly classified knowledge of the extremely poor state of the Soviet economy. (In my AF job at the time, very early 80's, I was privy to some of that info.)

Reagan was in a hurry to implement his plans, and reviving the B-1 program was a quick and easy way to start off.

But this time, the B-1B was going to be a low-level penetrator from the git go. Or so it would seem. Despite it's capabilities, the B1 airframe, etc, had NOT been designed for low-level penetration from the start.

From all accounts it does a great job of delivering conventional weapons and is the bomber of choice favored by grunts on the ground in Afganistan. The biggest complaints I am aware of are maintenance problems that make it's availability rates very low (much like the C-5) and it's high cost per hour to fly compared to the B-52.

I would maintain the the B1-B served Reagan's purpose admirably and was a key factor in ending the Cold War. It also turned out to be a very capable conventional bomber.

As I said upfront - these are just my uninformed observations and I welcome comments from the real experts on the B1-B.





[This message has been edited by NormanAg (edited 5/4/2013 7:28p).]

IIRC correctly they were grounded during Desert Shield/Storm for some problems dating back to 1988. About ten yeas ago one of them dropped an engine on approach to Diego Garcia. In 2006 a B-1B took a 7500 foot skid on the belly when the pilot forgot to deploy the landing gear but that's not the fault of the aircraft.

http://www.zianet.com/tedmorris/dg/bombers4.html

I went to flight school with and was trained by several Bone WSOs. Great dudes with cool war stories.

As far as the airframe goes, it is expensive as hell for the Bone to fly 1 hour. I don't remember all of the costs for different planes in the AF, but I think the F16 is around 10K per hour, the A 10 is 15k, the Strike Eagle is 25k, and the B1 is well over 100k.

[This message has been edited by Postal (edited 5/5/2013 10:58p).]

B-2 was the bird I helped build. It was Reagan's favorite project and almost single-handedly brought Gorby to Reagan's negotiating table. We could be in their space in hours - undetected - and take out their nukes. We had ways of validating our claims. B-2 was very, very bad news for Soviet generals.

[This message has been edited by Hill Country Ag (edited 5/19/2013 10:11p).]

Hill Country....
when was the B-2 first conceived??
I don't mean as a "pipe dream", I mean when it was stated this aircraft can be built!!