The True Reason Why America's Enemies Still Fear the B-1 BOMBER

The real

reason

all America's

enemies

should

still

fear

the massive but surprisingly sleek and agile B-1

bomber

. The US Air Force's B-1 Lancer strategic

bomber

s, popularly nicknamed B-1 bones, circle over battlefields in Syria and Afghanistan like Angels of Death. Dispensing GPS-guided bombs from above, however, the B1 started out as an expensive nuclear bomber that was possibly obsolete when it entered service, so a bomber designed to dodge surface-to-air missiles and Soviet interceptors found its niche fighting the ISIS insurgents during the war. In the 1940s and 1950s, the US military attempted to take its bombers to even higher altitudes and faster speeds to protect them from anti-aircraft guns and fighter aircraft, pushing new limits of performance with the pressurized B-29 and later with the B-47 and B-52 Stratofortress strategic aircraft. bombers, but in the early 1960s the downing of high-flying U2 spy planes over China and Russia by surface-to-air missiles made it clear that altitude no longer offered reliable protection;

The Air Force attempted to develop the huge XB-70 Valkyrie bomber. to maintain speeds greater than three times the speed of sound, but the Soviets responded with the Mach 3-capable MiG-25 Foxbat interceptor, the Pentagon abandoned the Valkyrie in 1962 and began investing more in ground- and submarine-launched ballistic missiles to provide nuclear deterrence this year. It did not sit well with the Air Force, which proposed a new low-altitude penetration doctrine in which supersonic bombers approached the ground at high speed using novel terrain-following systems, making them very difficult to track with radar. due to the intermediate terrain faced by the ground.

Due to radar-based radars and the ground clutter experienced by airborne radars scanning low-flying aircraft, the Air Force initially adopted the supersonic F-111 Aardvark to perform this mission, but wanted a larger workhorse. and longer range, the Nixon administration authorized the development of a Northrop Rockwell B-1 which saw its first flight in 1974, the expensive new bomber featured swing wings that could extend forward at a 15-degree angle to maximize lift. during takeoff or landing, allowing the forty-four point five meter long aircraft to operate from shorter forward airbases to minimize drag for supersonic flight the wings could fold inward at a sixty-seven point angle five degrees at high altitude the four b1a prototypes could reach up to 2.2 times the speed of sound with the help of two flexible vanes located under the nose that helped stabilize the airflow, however, through the mid-decade In the 1970s, the Pentagon was aware of the Soviet Union's development of new MiG-31 Foxhound interceptors equipped with SAS law and Doppler radars that could filter out ground obstacles, making low-altitude penetration highly Risky, meanwhile, the U.S.

B-52s were receiving AGM-86 nuclear-tipped air-launched cruise missiles that could be launched from well beyond the range of Soviet air defenses. Air-launched cruise missiles were reported to be adequate and the concept of the being was obsolete. President Jimmy Carter. It canceled the expensive B1 in 1977 believing it was more sensible to invest in the top secret B-2 stealth bomber. Instead, four years later, a newly elected Reagan who had criticized Carter for canceling the B1 revived the bones with an order for 100 aircraft this time. The Air Force thought it was a cheaper revised B1 B model that could fly more than 6,000 miles with heavier payloads, but at a reduced high-altitude speed of Mach 1.2830 miles per hour or Mach nine-five at low altitude, this was because the plane was for f-101.

The afterburning turbofans located at the wing roots were no longer designed to rotate backwards with the wings; there was no longer any pretense that the B would outperform fighters and air defense missiles; instead, the aluminum and titanium surfaces of the b1 B were reshaped and coated with radar absorber. materials to reduce the radar cross section to only two point five meters, approximately that of a small F-16 fighter, although far from being a stealth aircraft, the B1 would not be susceptible to being detected and targeted at very long range as it would be a b-52. The crew of four included a co-pilot weapons officer and a defensive systems officer who operated a suite that included powerful radar jammers and large flares to attract heat-seeking missiles and an APQ 164 passive electronically scanned multimode radar designed to Due to the low probability of interception it could spy on the positions of enemy fighters and radars, as well as scan the terrain for specific targets, the B-1B had three internal bomb bays that allowed it to carry up to 24 B 61 nuclear gravity bombs. or 1.2 Megatons b83 between them, each of them much more powerful than atomic ones. bombs dropped on Japan alternately, the B one could carry up to 84 gravity bombs of 80 to 500 pounds or equivalent weight and larger bombs, a theoretical maximum bomb load of 125,000 pounds was never operationally implemented the first of one hundred billets of b1 B were put into service in 1987 at the incredible price of $250 million each, however the Lancer suffered a series of initial setbacks ranging from engine fires to defensive countermeasures that jammed the radar itself and kept the bomber out of action during the 1991 Gulf bombing.

The war, when the Soviet Union collapsed the same year, nuclear bombers seemed to go with it, however, the Air Force improved the bones with GPS and the ability to use the ammunition of direct attack, jdam precision guided bombs and towing a total of 50 decoys to deflect hostile radar. guided missiles today the b1 can also mount up to 24 joint standoff weapons the jace glide bombs are joint jassim air-to-surface missiles with ranges measured in tens and hundreds of miles respectively the b1 remains highly regarded by pilots for its unusual maneuverability and responsiveness for an aircraft of its size, as can be seen in this video, in the early 2000s, Boeing even launched a concept for Mach 2 capable of b1 our model using the F1 19 or the F turbofans -22 Raptor and armed with air-to-air missiles regardless of bones. became a reality during the US campaign to overthrow the Afghan Taliban in 2001 Afghanistan was simply too far away for the Pentagon's ground fighters to fly without much air refueling, but those based on The Indian Ocean from Diego Garcia could fly over Afghan airspace and loiter for hours at a time.

At a time when the bones brought to the table their enormous payload and their ability to place dozens of GPS-guided, 2,000-pound Jadynn bombs. low cost, precisely below targets designated by ground forces, the B1 thus became a form of flying artillery that orbited overhead when ground troops paired up. It pinpointed enemy positions and marked them for destruction in 2008. Some were equipped with XR sniper targeting pods under their noses so they could also designate their own targets. The bones continued to drop huge bomb loads and conflicts in Iraq, Libya and Syria, for example, B once. He played a pivotal role in preventing the fall of the besieged Kurdish enclave in Kobane, Syria, in 2014, dropping 660 bombs that killed about a thousand ISIS fighters four years later.

Launchers were used to launch 19 Jassim cruise missiles as part of a punitive strike against Bashar al-Assad beginning in 2017, the 62b remain in service with the 7th and 28th Bombardment Wings based in Texas and South Dakota, respectively, Although the planes are often operationally deployed to Diego Garcia and Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, ironically, the Bs are basically good at the same things. that the b-52 is

still

useful for carrying many bombs and missiles over long distances and launching them against adversaries that cannot return the bone, it is faster than the b-52 can carry heavier payloads, it has more modern avionics and is less visible on radar. however, these advantages only marginally improve their survivability compared to Sam's and modern fighters.

Practically Air Force planners want to keep the Bs as far away from these threats as possible. The Air Force plans to retire the B-1 bomber by 2036, while the B-52 is planned to remain active well into the 2040s and possibly beyond, while the B1 is slightly cheaper to operate at 63 thousand dollars per hour of flight. The b1 is reportedly more difficult to maintain 74 man-hours of maintenance for every hour of flight and therefore suffers from low readiness. rates of 50% the b-52 leaves 262 hours and 80% in these metrics, therefore, the bone can be removed after a respectable half century of service until then, the huge swing-wing bombers will continue to receive improvements and will be able to adapt a once again. to adapt to the Pentagon's changing warfighting needs, such as the ability to hunt ships with long-range missiles that you