A defense analyst and longtime critic of the B-1B Lancer bomber now says senior Air Force officials expect the much-maligned bomber to play a major role in a possible war with Iraq. "They think it's going to do very well in Iraq," Loren B. Thompson of the Virginia-based Lexington Institute said Friday. "They said they'd be in a world of hurt without it." Thompson spoke by telephone with the Rapid City Journal minutes after a meeting with top Air Force officials, whom he did not name. "This is the first time I can ever recall that senior leaders in the Air Force have been so uniformly pleased with the B-1 bomber," Thompson said. Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City has two squadrons of B-1Bs, some of which already are deployed to the Middle East, along with about 1,000 base personnel. Only two years ago, Thompson had advocated scrapping the entire B-1B fleet - at the time, 93 aircraft - in favor of buying more B-2 stealth bombers. Among his criticisms of the B-1B at the time: "It isn't stealthy, its electronic warfare systems don't work correctly and its support costs are astronomical." Thompson was echoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "It's not stealthy," Rumsfeld complained to Congress in August 2001. "It's designed for the Cold War. It has been headed toward expensive obsolescence." What a difference two years and two combat operations can make. The B-1B turned out to be the workhorse of air campaigns over Kosovo and
Afghanistan. Even critics such as Thompson acknowledge its success.
"It's the best bomber the Air Force has that is available in large numbers," he said. The Air Force currently has 60 operational B-1Bs. Twenty-six of those are assigned to Ellsworth's 28th Bomb Wing, which has two squadrons - the 37th and the 34th. The rest of the operational B-1Bs are at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas. (The Air Force mothballed another 30 or so last year to save money.) The numbers clearly suggest a big role for B-1Bs and for Ellsworth crews in any attack on Iraq. U.S. strategy calls for dropping more than 3,000 satellite-guided bombs on Iraqi military targets during the first 48 hours of fighting, the New York Times reported recently. Five hundred combat planes would deliver those bombs, the Air Force has said. B-1Bs can carry more satellite-guided bombs than any other aircraft. Big payloads Sheer payload size might be the key to the B-1B's successful conversion from controversial "low-level nuclear penetrator" in the 1980s into an aircraft that today is arguably the world's premier heavy bomber. "We are the dump truck of bombers," Air Force Maj. Jason Xiques of said during a recent telephone interview. "No one carries the mass we do." Xiques, who pronounces his Basque last name "ICK-ess," is chief of the Air Force's B-1B Weapons System Team at Langley Air Force Base, Va.. He pointed out that a B-1B can carry 84 500-pound "dumb bombs" - or nearly twice as many as today's "H" model B-52. (During the Vietnam War, "D" model B-52s were rigged to carry many more bombs, Xiques said, but no "D" models are in service today.) In 1999, during Operation Allied Force, Ellsworth B-1Bs flew about 100 combat sorties over Kosovo and Serbia, making the base's 34th Bomb Squadron the most combat-seasoned B-1B unit in the Air Force. They dropped 5,000 bombs during Allied Force, out of a total of 23,000 bombs dropped by all aircraft. Just as important for a bomber once thought to be unreliable, Ellsworth crews never had to cancel a mission because of mechanical failure. The operation did, however, reveal a persistent problem. Mark 82 500-pound bombs sometimes failed to release from a B-1B bomb bay. The Air Force insisted the problem did not cause an undue hazard. (The bombs do not arm until after they are released.) One Ellsworth crew even continued its combat mission after a bomb failed to release.
Two years later, however, the problem was moot. The upgraded "Block D" B-1Bs that flew missions over Afghanistan carried a satellite-guided, 2,000-pound bomb called the "Joint Direct Attack Munition" or JDAM (JAY-dam). The gravity-powered JDAM has a global-positioning system on board. The GPS uses satellite signals to manipulate fins that can glide the bomb to within yards of a target - from a release point as far away as 15 miles. B-1Bs dropped 67 percent of all the JDAMs used against the Taliban and al-Qaida. In fact, B-1Bs dropped 39 percent of all bombs of any kind during Operation Enduring Freedom. And Ellsworth B-1Bs flew more than 300 of 600 B-1B missions over Afghanistan. B-1Bs likely would use JDAMs against Iraq, too. A B-1B can carry 24 of them - compared to 16 for the B-2 stealth bomber and just 12 for the B-52. Wrong numbers Despite those numbers, Xiques said, he still has to correct people - sometimes even military experts - who think B-52s carry more bombs than B-1Bs. "There are a lot of misconceptions about the B-1B," he said. An absence of good press might be partly to blame. During Allied Force, B-52s let reporters fly on some missions. Those stories made headlines. (There is no room in a B-1B for that.) Also, smaller fighter-bombers bring back pictures from gun cameras and even bomb cameras. And high-flying B-52s left clear contrails over Iraq. As a result, the B-1B's role is underplayed in the national media, B-1B supporters say. In fact, a Page 1 USA Today story on Friday about U.S. war plans failed to even mention the B-1B. Other bad raps Some misconceptions about the B-1B are based in fact. National media also continue to report, for example, that the B-1B did fly in the Gulf War in 1991 because of engine problems. There were engine problems, Xiques acknowledged, but he also pointed out that B-1Bs were not even certified to carry conventional bombs until June 1991, months after the war ended. Critics also continue to say the B-1B "can't fly in snow" - a statement most people in western South Dakota will recognize as incorrect. The B-1B can have icing problems near the engine, but only within a narrow range of temperature and humidity. That ice could "pit" the jet-engine blades, but the Air Force figured out how to work around the problem. Xiques insisted the B-1B was capable of flying lower and faster in more kinds of weather - even at night - than any other U.S. bomber. The pesky ALQ-161 Some criticisms of the B-1B, however, are hard to dismiss. The most persistent one is that the B-1B's "defensive avionics system" - the so-called "ALQ-161" - is inadequate. The system identifies enemy radars or radar-guided missiles, then it jams them to throw them off target. The ALQ 161 has never lived up to the Air Force's original specifications, and Xiques acknowledged the system still had "reliability issues." But he also said software upgrades have made the ALQ-161 powerful enough to defeat most modern threats. "The 161 today is an extremely effective system," he said. Xiques speaks from experience. He is a former B-1B weapons-system officer or WSO ("Whizzo") - call sign: "X Man." B-1Bs have crews of four - two pilots up front and behind them two WSOs who sit at weapons-system consoles. One WSO runs the defensive weapons - radar, jamming, chaff, flares and other systems. The second WSO handles the offensive weapons - more commonly called the bombs. Xiques was a WSO at Dyess in 1998, when his unit deployed to the Persian Gulf. He flew the very first B-1B combat sortie ever, during a Desert Fox mission over a no-fly zone in Iraq. He said the ALQ-161, which has had several software upgrades, worked well. He also pointed out that B-1Bs can fly with protective "packages" of other aircraft to reduce the risk to crews. Other defenses The Block aircraft also have an "ALE-50" towed decoy, which Xiques described as a "big sponge for missiles." Towed by cable hundreds of feet behind the B-1B, the ALE-50 decoy draws enemy missiles off target. Ellsworth bombers used ALE-50s over Kosovo. Serbian missiles hit several decoys, sparing the B-1B at the other end of the cable. The B-1B also has a "tail warning system" that detects missiles that don't emit radar - "heat seekers" for example, or optically guided missiles. That system can release chaff and flares to draw missiles off target. In addition, the B-1B, though technically not "stealthy," has a very small radar cross-section. And finally, the B-1B can defend itself with brute speed. It can fly faster than 900 mph - Mach 1.2 . The terrain-following radar allows crews to fly a couple of hundred feet off the ground at more than 600 mph. B-1B critic Loren Thompson said Friday he stood by his earlier criticisms of the B-1B program, which was plagued by cost overruns, technical problems and lowered expectations. But he also agreed that solutions have been found for most of those problems. Thompson also acknowledged, "The B-1 does have some characteristics the B-2 lacks." One of those characteristics is a bigger payload. The other, Air Force officials told Thompson on Friday, is speed. "The B-2 just isn't as fast," Thompson said. The New York Times recently reported that the Air Force has stockpiled 6,700 JDAMs in the Gulf region, each of which could destroy a large building. Evidence suggests that, if there is a war, many of those JDAMs would be dropped by Ellsworth crews. Contact Bill Harlan at 394-8424 or bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com.

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