Sunday, April 21, 2019

Head Of U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command: 'The Air Force's B-1B Lancer Fleet Is Breaking Down'

A U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer, departs an airfield in an undisclosed location in Southwest Asia on May 17, 2018. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Enjoli Saunders)

Military.com: Overtasking of B-1 Lancer Fleet Led to Faster Deterioration, General Says

The U.S. Air Force overcommitted its B-1B Lancer bomber fleet in Middle East operations over the last decade, causing it to deteriorate more quickly than expected, according to the head of Air Force Global Strike Command.

The bombers were recently called back to the U.S. to receive more upgrades and maintenance to prepare for the next high-end fight.

"We overextended the B-1s in [U.S. Central Command]," Air Force Gen. Timothy Ray, commander of AFGSC, told reporters during a defense writers group breakfast Wednesday in Washington, D.C.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: We all got a heads-up that there is a problem when this happened 3 weeks ago.... US Air Force grounds B-1 bomber fleet over safety concerns (CNN). In response this is how the US Air Force is going about to repair it .... Boeing awarded $14B for upgrades to B-1, B-52 Air Force bombers (UPI).

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

14 billion! !!??????!!!!!

That's insane! !!!

That's a quater of the entire Chinese military budget.

This must stop or the west will lose military dominance! !

Anonymous said...

B1-B will be the backbone of America’s maritime strike force for the next 20 years, or more. That’s why Boeing got that $14 billion contract to make it suitable for long range strike missions in the Pacific as well as maintenance. That thing will be loaded with maritime strike Tomahawks, LRASM and or Naval Strike Missile so it can attack shipping from over 500 miles away.

RussInSoCal said...

Predictable. Probably why the B-21 Raider development is coming along so abnormally quickly.

Less bombers tasked with 8 month rotations instead of 4-5 mo. do a lot to reduce the life span. Same with the F-22. Lost a dozen in FL. Now a big order to Boeing for new build F-15's.

And exactly the argument against reducing our carrier fleet. Less carriers/bombers, fighters etc. sounds wonderful - icky weapons of war and all. However national commitments do not reduce in a comparative scale. Increased a whole lot under Obama, bye the way. Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iraq redux, for example.

/These machines and the men who fight them are good a reason why we're able to bicker and bloviate on this website.


FREEDOM,
PLOW,

R,

Jac said...

An other Obama catastrophe. He did it voluntarily.

Anonymous said...

My arguments are never against the brave people serving. Of course not. To me most of them are heroes, no matter if they even have seen battle yet.

My point is that we really have to examine

1. Do we have our priorities straight? We have hundreds of thousands of people killing themselves with drugs due to hopelessness/mental illnesses and poverty. All connected.

2. Are we really in need of a 700bn/yearly budget? And if we indeed need that much money to fight off enemies we need to evaluate if our politicians are not mad,blood thirsty murderers. This is not a normal amount to spend on warfare. It's not normal to be in war like state for decades with no end in sight. Are we sure there's no other way than bombing?

Year after year we drop TENS OF THOUSANDS of bombs. Do you think that's normal? Whatever we are doing it is not working. We might be killing the other side off efficiently enough so that it feels like winning but are we not lying to ourselves? Are we not half-mad killers if so many people need to be bombed and we keep thinking it's normal?

3. We should hold our leaders accountable. This must stop. I don't want to hear about a threat of XYZ behind top secret veils. It's going on for decades ffs!