http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1987-05-17/features/8702160463_1_b-1-s-fuel-bombs
WASHINGTON -- The Air Force claims its new B-1 bomber is a magnificent flying machine. It is easily ``the best warplane in the world today,`` according to Gen. John T. Chain, commander of the Strategic Air Command.
The B-1 certainly looks impressive enough in its camouflage war paint, but the Air Force`s own numbers indicate the B-1`s warlike beauty may be only skin deep. Not only do these figures contain enormous contradictions, they raise serious questions about the ability of the B-1 to accomplish its wartime mission. Consider just three numbers: the basic weight of the airplane and its bomb and fuel capacity.
An empty B-1 parked on the flight line weighs 181,000 pounds. Ground crews can load its three bomb bays with 75,000 pounds of nuclear bombs and short- range attack missiles. So far so good.
At cruise power, the B-1`s engines gulp down almost 20 tons of fuel an hour. No problem. For long-range bombing missions, the ground crews can pump 194,000 pounds of fuel into the B-1`s cavernous gas tanks. The total weight of airplane, bombs and fuel: an impressive 450,000 pounds.
The pilot now has a big problem. The Air Force has restricted the B-1 to a gross takeoff weight of 290,000 pounds. Above this figure the B-1 is not safe to fly. The pilot must unload about 160,000 pounds of fuel or bombs to get the airplane`s total weight down to the approved limit.
If the pilot elects to pump fuel overboard, he`s only got enough sloshing around the bottom of his fuel tanks for about an hour`s flight.
No matter what combination of fuel or bombs is unloaded, the B-1 can take off with no more than 40 percent of its advertised fuel and weapon payload. That`s at sea level, where greater air density and engine thrust allow for higher gross weights.
Flying at 10,000 feet, the Air Force restricts the B-1 to no more than 20 percent of its publicly announced fuel and weapons payload. Indeed, the weight restriction at medium altitude allows for no payload, and only enough fuel to fly from Chicago to Winnipeg, Canada.
While the limitations are driven by peacetime flight-safety considerations, the crews are not training under simulated wartime conditions, with wartime payloads. Vast uncertainties surround the B-1`s actual combat capability. Yet the Air Force maintains stoutly that the B-1 flies farther while carrying a heavier payload than the aging B-52 it replaces.
The B-1 does less. In peacetime, certainly; in wartime, probably. And at greater cost. To date, Congress has approved $26 billion for 100 B-1 aircraft. For just this one weapon the bill works out to more than $240 for every taxpaying household in the country. That is equivalent to the annual premium on a $200,000 life insurance policy, but in the case of the B-1 the taxpayers evidently did not get much national defense insurance for their money. For example, three of the 26 B-1s at Dyess Air Force Base in Texas are being cannibalized for parts to keep the others flying.
The Air Force solution to the teething problems of the B-1 is to spend more money -- an $800 million surcharge on top of the billions already spent. Most of the money is intended to upgrade the flight-control system, allowing higher operational weights, and to fix the B-1`s uppity and cantankerous electronics.
Rep. Les Aspin, D-Wis., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, remains skeptical. ``The fix has yet to be designed and is nothing but a name and a set of goals,`` he says. The $800 million requested by the Air Force is just the first installment of total costs that are unknown, but likely to run into the billions.
The central problem with the B-1 is not its cost, its weight or its marginal flying qualities. Rather, it is the basic lack of integrity that has marked the program from the start.
The Air Force knowingly promised cost ceilings it could not stay under and performance goals it could not meet.
As in so many other big-ticket defense procurement programs, some congressional opposition may have been co-opted through pointed reminders of the home-district jobs at stake in a plane whose parts manufacturing was subcontracted out to 47 states.
Nearly every legislator had a stake in the B-1. Despite occasional bleats about the cost, the oversight committees authorized full funding for the Air Force to proceed with all 100 Bs four years before the first one began flight testing. Legislators who would not dream of buying a ticket to fly on an untested passenger plane voted overwhelmingly to jump aboard the unproven B-1 program.
More money won`t avoid a repetition of this costly fiasco; more personal integrity in defense procurement programs might.
