Author Topic: The B-1B Lancer Will Rule the Skies for at Least Another 20 Years  (Read 287 times)

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Offline DemolitionMan

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Jared Keller

The B-1B Lancer, the backbone of the U.S. strategic bomber force and favorite aeronautical middle finger to North Korea, will dominate the skies through 2040 thanks to a few tweaks by the Air Force.

Aviation Week reported on Oct. 3 that the service branch is in the process of updating “the way it inspects, maintains and repairs” Rockwell International’s venerable supersonic heavy bomber. And thanks to a series of broad structural tests, the service currently “does not anticipate” the need for a formal life extension program to keep Air Force’s fleet of 62 “Bone” bombers scaring the crap out of America’s enemies for the next few decades.Although the B-1B Lancer first entered service in 1986, the branch has been conducting fatigue testing on the bomber’s fuselage and wings in 2013 to ensure that the aircraft could continue to operate through its original projected lifespan of 2050. While the bombers’ F-101 engines were already subject to a life-extension regimen scheduled to wrap up by January 2019, Aviation Week reports that wing testing is currently 72% complete. And even though fuselage tests are just 20%, the fleet apparently looked intact enough for Brig. Gen. Michael Schmidt to tell Aviation Week the fleet wouldn’t require a “fully fledged” extension program.This is good news for the Air Force, and not just because of the nuclear threat posed by North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Lancers deployed 3,800 munitions during a six-month period against ISIS in Iraq and Syria that ended in February 2016. A year later, in February 2017, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein told reporters in Washington that the branch remained “pretty flexible” on returning the Lancer to the U.S. Central Command’s area of operations; the following July, Air Force Global Strike Command chief Gen. Robin Rand testified before the Senate Armed Services committee that the Bombers “will be in demand for at least two more decades.

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-b-1b-lancer-will-rule-the-skies-least-another-20-years-22699
"Of Arms and Man I Sing"-The Aenid written by Virgil-Virgil commenced his epic story of Aeneas and the founding of Rome with the words: Arma virumque cano--"Of arms and man I sing.Aeneas receives full treatment in Roman mythology, most extensively in Virgil's Aeneid, where he is an ancestor of Romulus and Remus. He became the first true hero of Rome