You must be speaking of the maintainers. I haven’t met any aircrew who fly that hate the Bone (well, we have some disgruntled pilots who would rather be flying fighters). I don’t care what the maintainers think about it. It’s mission isn’t to be popular with MXers.
The B-1 is an awesome airplane. I was in awe everytime I flew it. However, the penalty for that performance is complexity and the AF has never funded the parts for it or done a good job managing the maintenance for it. Think of it as a 200 ton flying Swiss watch…
To address some other points, what we bring to the fight that the B-2/B-52 don’t is speed. I can get to a time sensitive target much faster than either of those jets. Furthermore, if someone figures out a way to counter-stealth (which I’m sure our friends the Chinese aren’t busily pouring tons of money into ) then the B-2 can’t outrun any fighter.
As for loiter, a bomber can always loiter longer than a fighter, even with tankers, for the simple fact that I can get out of my ejection seat (which is extremely uncomfortable to sit in) and move around to relieve some of the fatigue. One of my Strike Eagle buddies told me that after a 14 hour sortie he had to be physically lifted from the cockpit. 14 hours is barely a medium-length sortie for a bomber (my longest was a 27 hour nonstop flight)…
If the Bone was retired, we’d have a pretty big shortfall in how much iron we could lay down the first week of a war. Given the troubles we’ve had with basing rights, I’m for keeping all the bombers we can.
Doubtless there are some things we can do to reduce the cost of it like ditching the low-level flying, making it a 2-3 crew airplane, etc. but I think we need it.
The Chinese, NKs, Iranians, Syrians, etc. don’t fear our land power or even our short-range fighter fleet. They fear our long-range reach (bombers and strat mobility)…
PBAR
Some were MX but for the most part they were aircrew who were talking about the aircraft. I think they are sick because it takes 3 airplanes on average to fly one.
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