Pictures of great freighter aircraft, Government Aircraft The B-1B has the capability to carry guided and unguided weapons and deliver massive quantities of precision and non-precision weapons against specific targets. Four prototypes of this long-range, high speed (Mach 2.2) strategic bomber were developed and tested in the mid-1970s, but the program was canceled in 1977 before going into production. It has a range up to 15 miles and strike precision within 13m. The F-14 Tomcat Was a Warfighter Without a War, This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. For example, the Lancer was one of the first aircraft named to … The B-1B is built by Boeing and has a payload of 90,000 pounds. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently granted the, Accelerating change The Northrop Grumman APQ-164 offensive radar system is a multi-mode radar with an electronically scanned phased array antenna, which provides high-resolution terrain mapping, velocity data, beacon modes, terrain avoidance, terrain following, position data, weather detection, rendezvous and calibration modes. The B-1B also known by its nickname “Bone” (B-ONE) is a 4 engined bomber with a crew of 4 (aircraft commander, copilot, and two weapon systems officers) carries the largest weapons payload of any aircraft in the USAF inventory (34,019 kilograms /75,000 pounds – a conventional payload could include 84 x 500 pound bombs!). Down below, at lower altitudes, the air is thicker, and turbulence is more likely. “There’s a lot of smart people well above my pay grade planning the future of the B-1. Flight testing continued through 1981. This prevented installing B-1 Air Launched Cruise Missile pylons. The addition of Lockheed Martin’s Sniper Advanced Targeting Pod soon allowed the supersonic bomber to offer precise weapons guidance to new generations of smart munitions. Sniper gives the B-1B the capability for self- identification of targets and bomb damage assessment. “The up-and-down motion in the B-1 felt more like a roller coaster — making me feel weightless at times or my breakfast coming up at others (still, I kept it down).”. Props and jets from the good old days, Flight Decks The contract ensures that B-1 crews are well equipped to meet its ever-expanding role. By flying low to the ground, the B-1 would be able to slip under Soviet air defense radars, which would be unable to distinguish the movement and the size of the B-1 from another movement near the ground. JASSM weighs 1,020kg (2,250lb) and has a range over 370km (200nm) and a dual-mode penetrator and blast fragmentation warhead. (U.S. Air Force illustration). Its nickname is The Bone. Of course, with a payload capacity comparable to the B-52, it takes a whole lot of power to move 370,000 pounds at fighter jet speeds. They need to fly between hills as fast as it can go if it's headed in to a ADA protected target. Once airborne, the wings tuck back against the body of the aircraft, granting it an almost fighter-like profile. In partnership with Wichita State University's National Institute of Aviation Research, or NIAR, airmen with the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center have been stripping the supersonic heavy payload bomber down to its nuts and bolts and then scanning each part into a computer to make a perfect virtual copy of the aircraft, the Air Force said in a recent release. All rights reserved. Rockwell Collins received a contract in February 2004 to upgrade the displays to 5in×7in colour multifunction displays using active matrix liquid crystal (AMLCD) technology. The B-1B's synthetic aperture radar is capable of tracking, targeting and engaging moving vehicles as well as self-targeting and terrain-following modes. Radar sustainability and capability upgrades will provide a more reliable system and may be upgraded in the future to include an ultra high-resolution capability and automatic target recognition. Known as the condition-based maintenance technique, or CBM+, the program gives maintainers the ability to see when a part may fail and to schedule a fix before it does. In a time sensitive targeting environment, the aircrew can use targeting data received from the Combined Air Operations Center or other command and control assets to strike emerging targets rapidly and efficiently. The first prototype bomber flew in mid-1935, and the B-17 entered small-scale production in 1937. OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM -- A B-1B Lancer performs a low-level fly-by for troops deployed for Operation Enduring Freedom on Oct. 27. It is commonly called the "Bone" (from "B-One"). Scientists are prototyping a "close combat assault ration'' containing an assortment of nutrient-dense energy bars. Although not forbidden, B-1s likely won’t use TERFLW mode anytime soon. The defensive system upgrade programme (DSUP), which includes the AN/ALR-56 radar warner and the BAE Systems integrated defensive ECM suite (IDECM), developed for the F/A-18 fighter aircraft, is on hold but may receive funding in the future.