Remember the B-1 bomber? It was, well, a disaster. President Carter cancelled it, on the rather sensible grounds that ICBMs had made manned bombers obsolete. But Ronald Reagan never let a little thing like obsolescence stand in the way of spending money, as long as it was for something cool, like a useless long-range bomber, and he reinstated the B-1, ultimately buying a hundred of them. As the B-1s rolled off the assembly lines, the Air Force concluded that the shiny new planes would not be able to penetrate Soviet air defenses.
Well, the Soviet Union fell, but the B-1 soldiered on, in budgetary terms, at least. The Air Force continued to maintain and upgrade the planes, strongly “encouraged” by interested members of Congress, even though, as it turned out, the B-1 couldn’t penetrate any nation’s air defenses, because the plane’s computer systems could not activate the plane’s defensive and offensive systems at the same time, something that might have been thought of earlier.
So the B-1, throughout its mute, inglorious history, has served as nothing more than a corporate welfare program and (occasional) rubble bouncer, flying missions only after aircraft that can actually function in combat have wiped out the enemy’s defenses. Thank God for the B-2, eh?
Yes, the B-2, the stealth miracle, the plane of the future. The U.S. planned to buy 132 planes, but ended up with 21, suggesting a certain lack of enthusiasm for the B-2, which costs four times as much to operate as the 60-year-old B-52, which the Air Force expects to keep in the air into the 2040s.
With the Air Force’s track record, one might cast a skeptical eye on plans for the “Long Range Strike-Bomber” or “LRS-B” (for some reason, no one has the balls to call it the “B-3”). Especially since last year the Air Force told Congress that it intended to spend $33.1 billion on the new plane over the next twenty years. Except that this year, the Air Force said it would be spending $58.4 billion. When someone pointed out the rather large discrepancy, the Air Force “explained” that they really meant $41.7 billion. So we can all rest assured that a great tradition will be maintained.
Afterwords
Back in 2001, the New York Times noted the hardihood of the B-1. Time considers the Air Force’s $25 billion confusion here.
