Sunday, July 8, 2001
B-1 bomber no stranger to criticism
By Bill Whitaker
Memo to Abilene Military Affairs Committee:
Is it too late to get some of those B-52 bombers back at Dyess?
Maybe it’s just Abilene’s gloomy
economic picture of late — the announced closings of Victor
Equipment, Sitel and U.S. Brass — but word of cutbacks in
the Air Force B-1 bomber program can’t help but leave locals
with an uneasy sinking feeling.
Whether proposed defense cuts show up in
the form of fewer bombers soaring over Dyess Air Force Base probably
won’t be determined until later this year, after rankled
lawmakers from Georgia, Kansas and Idaho weigh in.
But when Pentagon analysts scrutinizing
the B-1 fleet start using words such as “boneyard” and
“hangar queen” — the latter denoting an aircraft
whose wings are clipped and whose innards are mined for spare
parts — it doesn’t bode well.
Designed to deliver The Bomb to The Evil
Empire during the Cold War, the B-1 garnered criticism early on.
In its 16 years of deployment, the supersonic bomber has been
plagued by maintenance woes, cost overruns and computer malfunctions.
Even its star-studded debut was something
of a misfire. The B-1 originally scheduled to land at Dyess amid
patriotic pomp in June 1985 had to be sidelined because it sucked
in part of an air inlet on the trip from California to West Texas.
Air Force officials hastily slapped the
insignia “The Star of Abilene” on a demo model and rushed
it off to Dyess.
For many years, mere suggestion the B-1
wasn’t up to snuff played like flag burning in our area.
Whenever we’d publish a New York Times piece about B-1 design
flaws and mechanical woes, Abilene’s high and mighty could
get mighty indignant.
Proponents claim the bomber has merely undergone
the “teething process” all new aircraft undergo. Others
fear it’s absurdly over-engineered to the point that just
the other day local wag Chester Cox said he’d heard future
B-1 missions would be limited to cloud-seeding forays.
Even experts at London-based Jane’s
Information Group, which covers the global defense industry, can’t
agree on the B-1.
Dave Rendall, author of Jane’s Aircraft
Recognition Guide, doubts the big bird’s future.
“The last B-1 was only delivered in
1988 and yet the USAF is already discussing withdrawing the first
from service,” he wrote in 1999. “Despite a radar cross-section
of 1 percent of that of the B-52 and a low-level capability, the
B-1B looks as if it will disappear long before its venerable partner.”
Yet Paul Jackson, another of Jane’s
aircraft researchers, isn’t so sure, even while conceding
that the more reliable B-52 — introduced in the 1950s —
remains to many the real backbone of the strategic bomber force.
“The B-52 just goes on and on and on,”
he marveled. “But who’s to say the B-1 won’t continue?
A few years ago, they might’ve been saying the same about
the B-52!”
Likely, many moons will pass before the
B-1 flies over our horizon for good.
Possibly the real question is how many people
will be left in Abilene to take pride in it?
Contact story editor and Sunday columnist
Bill Whitaker at 676-6732 or whitakerb@abinews.com
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Copyright
©2001, Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps.
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