North American Rockwell / Boeing B-1B

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Ian33

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b1base.jpg


I am trying to locate the base that is under the B-1B, as I am making a slide show and would like to add a caption.

Any help appreciated.
 
That's not an AFB! It's Mojave, CA. Scaled Composites works out of there, and it's basically the Boneyard for airliners. It is north of Palmdale and west of Edwards AFB, so the Bone in the image could have been doing test work out of either location.
 
Thanks for posting this. I found the section on the NOE range problems, and the required solutions, interesting.
 
A B-1B just crashed in Montana.....

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57599191/b-1-bomber-crashes-in-southeast-montana/

This now leaves 62 B-1Bs in service with the USAF, and like the B-2, no B-1s have been lost in combat, they've been lost in peacetime accidents. The big question is whether or not there may be a number of technical issues with the B-1B that haven't been addressed in previous upgrades. If a tiny number of structural problems exist, then the USAF may have to upgrade the B-1s again and retire a teeny tiny handful of B-1Bs that may be too expensive to upgrade and maintain.
 
on 4 october 1989 a B-1B made a training flight from Dyess AFB, Texas
as they return, there nose-wheel refused to operate
with million dollar Bomber and Crew what to do ?
USAF ask Rockwell engineers, they came to simple solution land and faceplanting the bomber on soft ground
so the B-1B make detour to Edwards AFB Rogers Dry Lake
at arrival allot cameras filmed the surrealistic Landing.
Pilot Jeffrey K. Beebe made excellent landing and got for "most meritorious flight of the year" the Mackay Trophy.



View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmZC5uaw69s
 
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Some time later, an attempt was made to re-create this landing on the paved runway at Diego Garcia. Seeing an opportunity to better the Edwards landing, the crew elected to leave the main landing gear up as well.
 
SOC said:
Some time later, an attempt was made to re-create this landing on the paved runway at Diego Garcia. Seeing an opportunity to better the Edwards landing, the crew elected to leave the main landing gear up as well.


What for plane they used for that ?
 
This is an incredible and very clean landing. It looks like it got away only with minimal damage to the nose, but the engine will have to have a thorough clean up... It looked like a real bird while it was landing with its two main legs.

Stephane.
 
Bill Walker said:
Very interesting to see the amount of fuselage flex when the nose hits the dirt.

One time when I was at the Cold Lake (Alberta) Airshow, a B-1B was being demonstrated and after whipping down the runway at very low level and wings back, it pulled up and did a barrel roll as it gained height. Sometime later at the Abbotsford (BC) Airshow I was talking to the captain of another B-1B and mentioned it to him. His response was (and pointing at his aircraft at the same time), 'that's what hot-dogging does'. He was pointing at all the wrinkles the forward end of the aircraft had ----
 
kitnut617 said:
Bill Walker said:
Very interesting to see the amount of fuselage flex when the nose hits the dirt.

One time when I was at the Cold Lake (Alberta) Airshow, a B-1B was being demonstrated and after whipping down the runway at very low level and wings back, it pulled up and did a barrel roll as it gained height. Sometime later at the Abbotsford (BC) Airshow I was talking to the captain of another B-1B and mentioned it to him. His response was (and pointing at his aircraft at the same time), 'that's what hot-dogging does'. He was pointing at all the wrinkles the forward end of the aircraft had ----

OTOH, a roill is an authorized maneuver in the B-1. I have seen it done multiple times (though not on the same pass), so I'm not sure why he would consider that "hot-dogging". Now in a B-52 or B-2, that's another story. Not only would it be hot-dogging, it could likely prove fatal.
 
I'm not encouraging overstressing airframes or putting an aircraft in danger, but he could have just as easily pointed to the wrinkles and said, "that's what landing, flying at low altitude and pressurizing the cockpit do..."

Sidenote: I've seen the same maneuver a few times, and it was quite impressive seeing that thing move and hearing the four F101's.
 
In my humble opinion, this thread initially dedicated to current options for B-1' improvement and modernization. And now some posts (including mine) are mostly studing problems of information' storage, availabilty for usage after archiving/mothballing, different media types etc. Perhaps, this topic would be splitted - B-1 and infromation preservation?
 
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Surprisingly enough there are companies out there that still make 3.5" floppy drives and disks. 5.25" is dead and buried though and presumably everything before that.
I still have a 5.25" with Platoon on it for a C64 in the loft. I have it on tape too. Are we saying that my loft has better data storage integrity than the DoD?

You're assuming they still work. ;) I had more than a few burned CDs from the 90s that no longer work.
 
You're assuming they still work. ;) I had more than a few burned CDs from the 90s that no longer work.
It worked as of 1 month ago. As did Pac-Man on the VIC-20. To get back on topic, a B-1 is no different to Pac-Man, except the ghosts are the Taliban.

Best case, and all engineering drawings for the B-1B are in pristine condition, that doesn't mean all the subs did the same (they might not even be in business). Also, the production line is gone, the tooling is gone, etc. The odds of the B-1B being resurrected are zero.
 
There are tools for new B-52 but there are no tools for new B-1? that sad
 
You're assuming they still work. ;) I had more than a few burned CDs from the 90s that no longer work.
It worked as of 1 month ago. As did Pac-Man on the VIC-20. To get back on topic, a B-1 is no different to Pac-Man, except the ghosts are the Taliban.

Best case, and all engineering drawings for the B-1B are in pristine condition, that doesn't mean all the subs did the same (they might not even be in business). Also, the production line is gone, the tooling is gone, etc. The odds of the B-1B being resurrected are zero.
In that case I hope the USAF have lots of araldite.
 
It’s flight profile, weapons carriage capacity and speed always made the Bone, to me, the perfect arsenal plane. Fly with 4th and 5th generation fighters launch about 50+ AIM-260s then use it powerful jammers.

Perfect platform
 
If you expect it to fly "with 4th and 5th Generation fighter", you'll need to have a nearly equal availability rate... Fleet wide.

Otherwise the gamut of missile you promise to provide one day will pale in comparison to the lack of them on overall regarding the number of flight package canceled due to the airframe grounded.

Arsenal is a statistical weapon primarily before any tactical advantages it can bring.
 
If you expect it to fly "with 4th and 5th Generation fighter", you'll need to have a nearly equal availability rate... Fleet wide.

Otherwise the gamut of missile you promise to provide one day will pale in comparison to the lack of them on overall regarding the number of flight package canceled due to the airframe grounded.

Arsenal is a statistical weapon primarily before any tactical advantages it can bring.

Availability is just a matter of money and priorities.
 
The JimmyCarter B-1B was a compromise of the more maintainable B-1A so the B-1B was obsolete and hard to maintain from its inception. The B-1B has many great advantages but certainly needs to be replaced and the, smaller than B-2, B-21 is not the answer for payloads required. Smaller and smaller munitions are great but do not obviate the needs that only a large payload craft similar to B-1 can meet.
 
The JimmyCarter B-1B was a compromise of the more maintainable B-1A so the B-1B was obsolete and hard to maintain from its inception.

Wrong. The B-1B traded top maximum speed for lower RCS. It was determined the net effect was to make it MORE survivable. Also the B-1A was argualby less maintainable. It had much more complicated overwing fairings, inlets, and engine nozzles.

The B-1B has many great advantages but certainly needs to be replaced and the, smaller than B-2, B-21 is not the answer for payloads

Your options are: 1. Maintained B-1Bs
2, Nothing.

There is no door #3.
 
If you expect it to fly "with 4th and 5th Generation fighter", you'll need to have a nearly equal availability rate... Fleet wide.

Otherwise the gamut of missile you promise to provide one day will pale in comparison to the lack of them on overall regarding the number of flight package canceled due to the airframe grounded.

Arsenal is a statistical weapon primarily before any tactical advantages it can bring.
TomcatViP comments stand. The Bone is a hangar honey and needs to be replaced. This NDAA is no where near. A 900B is only a start.
 
LM's proposed H-Bomber would be good start, it should be manned vs what LM proposed as Unmanned as it still needs to carry and fulfill Bone missions which include CAS. Some of the resource spent on too many Hyper projects could be spent on a manned multi-mission bomber/launcher.
 

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The JimmyCarter B-1B was a compromise of the more maintainable B-1A so the B-1B was obsolete and hard to maintain from its inception. The B-1B has many great advantages but certainly needs to be replaced and the, smaller than B-2, B-21 is not the answer for payloads required. Smaller and smaller munitions are great but do not obviate the needs that only a large payload craft similar to B-1 can meet.
It was Ronald Reagan's B-1B. Carter cancelled the B-1 in favor of cruise missiles on B-52s and the B-2 (which he found out about when he took office).
 
To achieve a replacement for the Bone, they need to last a lot longer yet. The money is just not there right now.
 
LM's proposed H-Bomber would be good start, it should be manned vs what LM proposed as Unmanned as it still needs to carry and fulfill Bone missions which include CAS. Some of the resource spent on too many Hyper projects could be spent on a manned multi-mission bomber/launcher.

Ok, you really have to be deliberately trying to be this wrong.

1) That's not a Lockheed Martin proposal for anything. It's somebody's faked up concept art for the Russian PAK DA. I'm sure LM has some hypersonic bomber art but this isn't it.

2) Hypersonic strike and loitering CAS are two roles that cannot possibly be accommodated in one airframe. An airframe that can manage Mach 4+ cannot efficiently loiter for hours at subsonic speeds. It's not physically possible within shouting distance of the current state of the art.

3) USAF is developing a manned multi-mission bomber. It's called the B-21. That's all the money there is. Killing all of the hypersonic missile programs in total wouldn't fund another manned bomber program of any sort, much less your hypersonic loitering fiction.
 
LM's proposed H-Bomber would be good start, it should be manned vs what LM proposed as Unmanned as it still needs to carry and fulfill Bone missions which include CAS. Some of the resource spent on too many Hyper projects could be spent on a manned multi-mission bomber/launcher.

Ok, you really have to be deliberately trying to be this wrong.

1) That's not a Lockheed Martin proposal for anything. It's somebody's faked up concept art for the Russian PAK DA. I'm sure LM has some hypersonic bomber art but this isn't it.

2) Hypersonic strike and loitering CAS are two roles that cannot possibly be accommodated in one airframe. An airframe that can manage Mach 4+ cannot efficiently loiter for hours at subsonic speeds. It's not physically possible within shouting distance of the current state of the art.

3) USAF is developing a manned multi-mission bomber. It's called the B-21. That's all the money there is. Killing all of the hypersonic missile programs in total wouldn't fund another manned bomber program of any sort, much less your hypersonic loitering fiction.
1). not sure how one knows that this is not a LM version but ok.

2).Ok, but understand the beauty of combined cycle is in allows conventional jet operation.

3). Never said kill all HYpers but it has benn made clear by Congress these program are an unmanaged contractor money grab. Charge a lot and deliver cheap redundancy. The B-21 (smaller than the B-2) so hearlded as the replacement of exactly what (?) as it will not carry what a B-1 can carry and eventually the 52 will have to retire and there is no large bomber to take its place.
 
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