The one in the Air Force Museum, Boss Hawg, was our best flying jet. It NEVER broke. I remember a couple of times every jet on the schedule broke except ole’ Boss Hawg. It was also the last jet to be converted to Block D at Dyess. Wonder why it went to the AF Museum? Must of had a bad over-G or something during its service.

PBAR
http://bonewso.net Flying the Bone

Until recently the USAF view was that stealth is a replacement for EW. Witness the retirement of the F-4G and EF-111A. The F-22 gets tons of funding while will still have no replacement for the EF-111 and the F-16CJ is just now getting to the same level of capability the F-4G had. EW suites (ALQ-184, ALR-56M, ALE-50, etc.) on USAF aircraft always struggle for funding. Also, look at the our most important EW aircraft, the EC-130H Compass Call. Those are among the oldest C-130 variants we fly and there is no replacement in sight for it. We’d rather buy more short-ranged stealthy fighters…

pylons

Franc,
As I remember it, the APU exhausts comes from the bottom of the engine nacelles. That would be a bad place to put an hardpoint… :diablo:

PBAR
http://bonewso.net B-1B Discussion Board

I hope the Bone gets the external hardpoints back to carry these. A two-ship with 32 each could cause major havoc on an enemy air defense system.

PBAR
http://bonewso.net

Bone

From what I understand, the Bone was able to carry Mk-82AIRs and Mk-36 mines when DESERT STORM kicked off. However, there was a shortage of experience with conventional weapons in the crew force plus the fleet was having a lot of engine problems at the time. I guess it was hardly worth it to send them especially the defensive avionics weren’t mature either.

The Block F defensive systems upgrade (actually more of a downgrade) was axed a few years ago. The ALQ-161 has gotten some hardware upgrades in the meantime and from I hear the current plan is to replace it with a system that will also replace the B-52 and F-15E defensive suites.

As for the RCS, even when RCS maintance was done, the Bone was never anywhere near close to be low-observable . RCS maintance was dropped when it was realized it didn’t give much value for the hassle/money. The RCS improvement was huge over the B-1A but not enough really to bother with. Me personnally, I’d like to see the RCS vanes ripped out of the engine inlets because we’d probably get better altitude performance and have less problems with inlet ice FOD. The bad guys are going to see us coming anyways and I’d rather have the altitude than a lower RCS.

I spoke a guy who was the first DSO on the B-1A in the test fleet and he said he got up to 40,000 feet and Mach 2.5 in the -A model once. The speed would be nice but I’d rather have the additional altitude as I could sling a JDAM further. The poor altitude performance of the B-1B is our Achilles heel. It’s not any worse than a loaded A-10, Viper, etc. (and it’s better than the Tornado at least) but I’d rather be flying up with the B-52 over most of the AAA and tactical SAMs. Incidentally, I was told once (though I can’t verify it’s veracity) that Rockwell proposed a modification to the horizontal stabilizer’s position and it would have given us a couple more thousand feet of ceiling.

Too bad the Brits and/or the Aussies didn’t take up Boeing up on its offer of some of the Bones we sent to AMARC. I’d like to see the Brits get back into the heavy bomber business (though at least they have an exchange pilot with the B-2). 🙂

PBAR
B-1B WSO Dyess 99-05
http://BoneWSO.net

They were already offered and turned down

Both the RAF and the RAAF were offered some of the B-1s parked at AMARC and they both turned the offer down due to cost. The head of the Boeing B-1 division told me this at an airshow about three years ago. There was also an article about it in Aviation Week a while back IIRC.

PBAR
B-1B WSO (temporarily teaching at Elec Warfare School now)