Project Sword
According to relevant reports in the United States, local time on January 4,1 planeBelonging to the 28th Bomber Wing at Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota, USAThe B-1B "Lancer" bomber crashed unexpectedly, all 4 crew members on board ejected and escaped. According to the data of the automatic weather forecasting equipment that records the conditions of the airport, there were a large number of low-altitude clouds and mist at the time of the crash, the visibility was very poor and the mist formed ice on the runway, causing the pilot to be unable to control the aircraft.
The B-1B after the crash was badly damaged and basically had no possibility of repairing).
According to the ** circulating on the Internet,The scene when the B-1B crashed was quite tragic, the aircraft was lying on its belly in the open space between the runway and the taxiway, the main structure of the fuselage was almost completely damaged, and it was basically declared scrapped, and there was no possibility and value of repair。This is undoubtedly a case for the US strategic air strike forceThe start of the year was not goodThe bad news, before the B-21 came, the B-1B at hand fell first. This also makes the topic of the decommissioning of the B-1B and the update and iteration of the US space-based nuclear deterrence a hot topic of attention from the outside world.
There is information that the crash was carried out by the B-85B with the number 85-0085 as shown in the picture
According to the US Air Force's plan, it is expected to replace the existing 20 B-21A + 44 B-1B + 76 B-52J bomber fleet with 100 B-21 + 76 B-52H after 2040. WhileWhen the U.S. Air Force begins to receive the B-21, the B-1B will be retired on a one-to-one basisPreviously, in 2021, the size of the B-1B fleet was cut once, from 62 to 45, in order to make way for the B-21 to make way for funds and establishment, the B-1B has come to the end of its service life, and in the "troika" of the US space-based nuclear forces, the B-1B is the first to be decommissioned. The reason for this is that the B-1B, in its long-term use, has not been able to achieve a balance between the adequacy rate, strategic strike capability and cost performance.
Although the outside world has always regarded the B-1B as a strategic bomber, in fact, since the end of the Cold War, the use of the B-1B has completely shifted to a tactical bomber。In all the wars of the United States from the 90s to the present, the B-1B has relied on its more than 1With a maximum range of 20,000 kilometers and a maximum bomb load of 60 tons, it frequently performs transcontinental precision strike missions. During the Kosovo War in 1999, the B-1B dropped 2% of its ammunition at 2% of the total sorties;In 2001, more than 40 per cent of ammunition was dropped on Operation Enduring Freedom Afghanistan at 2 per cent of the total sorties. The B-1B can carry 24 2,000-pound JDAM guided bombs in the inner bomb bay, or 44 in the outer pylons"Bomb truck"., in an asymmetric war such as the war on terror, the combat efficiency is extremely high.
However, in terms of the payload capacity of large-size precision ammunition, the B-1B is not so good, which also leads to its inability to adapt well to the 21st century to prevent out-of-area strikes as the main means of combat form, which is also the reason why B-52H has not been decommissioned, B-52H has a strong external capability, can be mounted with large-size precision-guided munitions and even GBU-57 ground-penetrating bombs, is a good defense of the out-of-area strike platform. One of the main tasks of the B-1B is to give full play to its low-altitude penetration capability, and use the LRASM anti-ship missile to strike China's surface ships in the western Pacific region.
One of the main future uses of the B-1B is to use the LRASM to strike PLA surface ships in the Western Pacific).
Throughout the war on terror, the B-1B carried out a total of 120,000 combat missions and high-intensity flights have led to a serious attenuation of the life of the airframe, and the problems of logistical pressure and availability have always been difficult to solve. In the statistics of the U.S. military over the years, the B-1B has a good rate of around 50%., and even in order to reduce the aging of the airframe, the US Air Force even requires the B-1B crew to prohibit low-altitude flights during daily flight training. In 2019 and 2021, the B-1B was grounded twice due to ejection seat failure and fuel system failure, and at the end of December 2022, it made an emergency landing at Kadena Air Base in Japan due to an air failure. It can be said that the entire service life of the B-1B has been struggling with all kinds of complicated logistics problems, not only the maintenance cost is high, the availability rate is also notoriously low, and it is estimated that the patience of the US Air Force is almost exhausted
The entry into service of the B-21 may be delayed, and the B-1B will hold out for a few more years)
After the B-21 is put into service, the B-1B can be completely decommissioned, and at the same time, many of the problems faced by the strategic strike system of the US Air Force have been solved. However, due to the delayed development schedule of the B-21 and the cost of overspending, I am afraid that the B-1B will have to continue to work with illness for a few more years. Dramatically, the two wings deployed at Ellsworth Air Force Base, where the crash occurred, will be the first units to be reequipped with B-21s in the future, and it seems that they are urging B-21s with "real action".