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Quoted: It's going to take SIX years? Whose jobs program is this? View Quote Don’t be silly. It’s ESTIMATED to take six years. That means it will probably take between 12 and 20, with lots of extra cost. After 15 years, someone will decide that it could be done better with newer software and lasers, and then it will be re-bid. |
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Not all that atypical for there to not be a drawing
package on a new plane. The AF does not want to add the many millions of dollars for the drawing package. Despite being built as recently as the 1980s there is no government owned drawing package for the U-2. Lockheed uses 'as built' drawings and creates a package for each plane. Some of the drawings are one to one scale for things as large as the wings. Separate drawing for right and left. Rolled up and stored in largish cardboard tubes. When we needed to add some additional antennas the mechanics would "go exploring" to locate the exact spot we used. When we needed to put some UHF blades on the top of the fuselage we had to move them about 6 inches off the top center-line. Hydraulic lines ran down the top of the fuselage exactly centered. We had to move another antenna slightly to avoid the LOX lines from the tail to the cockpit. Needless to say the drawing package for that plane did not show their exact position. |
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Is cool, but aren't these supposed to be retired in a decade or so? So like 4 years of useful maintenance data if B21 actually gets bought and thee go the rest of the way away?
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Suck it Jimmy Carter.
Robins isn’t that far from Plains. I hope some of those pilots used to do high speed passes over Ole Jimmy’s farm on a regular basis. |
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I was at a football game where one of those flew over. I think I could still hear it ten minutes later.
It’s a cool plane, glad to see it get some love. And would they really need fly a terrain following combat mission now days? |
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Would it not be sufficiently pointless and wasteful of govt to simply ask the manufacturer for a set of prints?
It’s not like this is a plane stolen from another county that we have no other choice but to reverse engineer. |
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No former B-1 pilots here?
Seen guys who’ve flown many other military jets but not the bomber types. Odd bombers don’t seem to be represented in GD anyways But then I recall a old USAF col who was also one of the hostages in Iran back in 1979. He said fighter pilots are bold and warriors. Bomber pilots are lovers, he said. If I would’ve been blessed with great eyesight, maybe this is what I would’ve pursued flying |
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Quoted: Saw 2 take off at night in shiek isa airbase bahrain. Absolutely awesome and LOUD AS FUCK. They are probably the loudest airplanes in the sky. View Quote We used to live right in line w/ the runway at McConnel AFB in Wichita. It would rattle our windows sometimes then they took off our direction but they were still cool. |
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Quoted: Is cool, but aren't these supposed to be retired in a decade or so? So like 4 years of useful maintenance data if B21 actually gets bought and thee go the rest of the way away? View Quote I had the same thought. I'm hoping this means they might not be planning on getting rid of them in ten years after all. -K |
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Quoted: ... "On any given day, I probably can fly well over 20 of the B-1s," Ray said, referencing the fleet's mission-capable rate, or the ability to fly at a moment's notice to conduct operations. By comparison, only about seven of the bombers were ready to deploy in August 2019. ... View Quote A quick Google search revealed that the B-1B indeed has an abysmally low readiness rate. Why is the B-1B mission-capable rate so low? Much lower than that of the B-2 and B-52. Lack of parts or complexity of design perhaps? USAF Mission Capable Rate |
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Quoted: China gets the blueprints, Democrat Party politicians get payoffs via standard bribery/money laundering practices: book deals, speaking fees. Different day, same old treason. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: I see we’re all on the same page...great way to get B1 blueprints into chinas hands... China gets the blueprints, Democrat Party politicians get payoffs via standard bribery/money laundering practices: book deals, speaking fees. Different day, same old treason. Yup, and don't forget orange man bad, must destroy everything he wants. |
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Quoted: One of my favorites of all time . I remember going to airshows as a kid and you couldn’t even get near them . You could climb in and all over all kinds of military hardware but not those . It sat out there alone in the distance with barricades around it . You just looked at it from a distance. I remember them flying over the red dirt fields I played in and them flying so low it seemed like if you threw a dirt clod you could almost hit it . View Quote One of my earliest memories is standing under the wing of one at an air show. This would have been 1990 at the latest. |
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Quoted: That seems...alarming. A quick Google search revealed that the B-1B indeed has an abysmally low readiness rate. Why is the B-1B mission-capable rate so low? Much lower than that of the B-2 and B-52. Lack of parts or complexity of design perhaps? USAF Mission Capable Rate View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: ... "On any given day, I probably can fly well over 20 of the B-1s," Ray said, referencing the fleet's mission-capable rate, or the ability to fly at a moment's notice to conduct operations. By comparison, only about seven of the bombers were ready to deploy in August 2019. ... A quick Google search revealed that the B-1B indeed has an abysmally low readiness rate. Why is the B-1B mission-capable rate so low? Much lower than that of the B-2 and B-52. Lack of parts or complexity of design perhaps? USAF Mission Capable Rate My understanding is that it is a combination of not all that many airframes made, not enough spare parts, and chronic underfunding with chronic overuse during the GWOT. -K |
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Quoted: My understanding is that it is a combination of not all that many airframes made, not enough spare parts, and chronic underfunding with chronic overuse during the GWOT. -K View Quote Yep, they were used hard. It also doesn't help that they have an enormous variable geometry wing. That is going to cost you. |
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So one of the fun tidbits I've been told on the B1 was, that since it's only semi-stealth, extremely low to ground penetration missions are one of the key assets it has.
And with that, the onboard navigational computer can actually, with extreme reliability, fly the B1 at around mach 1.25 within 10 feet of the ground for an entire duration of a mission, essentially allowing the whole crew to do whatever they need to when dealing with threats & weapons on the mission. Flying so low, so obscenely fast was one of the ways to penetrate soviet airspace as they had very, very minimal ways to stop it. |
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When I worked for USMC MRAP project, we had 3D CAD files of most MRAP models thanks to a lengthy strip down and digitizing of parts/trucks by a government agency.
It's really fucking cool what you can do with that kind of thing. Takes a beast of a PC to work with the files, if you don't want to wait 15 minutes between changes... |
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I was actually listening to a lecture from one of the B1s original design engineers this morning.
The topic of skin buckling came up since the lightweight structure of bombers tend to show signs of it. The B1 was one of the earliest aircraft to expose buckled skins to supersonic air speeds. The initial test aircraft aparently had supersonic flutter issues with sections of the buckled skin that made a terrible noise on early test flights. I think the issue was quickly resolved by adding additional stiffeners to that aircraft and subsequent ones. It was a cool story to listen to |
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Quoted: I worked for Rockwell in Palmdale 86-87 as a flight test/checkout mechanic on them. When they did the acceptance flight and had no squawks they would do a flyover in full augmentor with the F106 chase plane indicating AF acceptance of the aircraft. It was wild to be up on the backbone of one ship while they fly over. The city bitched about the noise enough so they stopped that. That being said I wonder why they can’t just use the assembly blue prints to do the same as scanning. Probably a good reason but just curious. View Quote Part of the scanning is to examine fatigue and structural wear and map how it develops and spreads. Need an actual airframe to do that. |
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Quoted: I was at a football game where one of those flew over. I think I could still hear it ten minutes later. It's a cool plane, glad to see it get some love. And would they really need fly a terrain following combat mission now days? View Quote |
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Quoted: they should do this as they are building new airplanes real time coming down the assembly line. 10 years later do it again with the airplane with the highest flight time and compare the 2 View Quote I don't build airplanes but everything we do now is in 3D. I assume it's not much different for the AeroEs. They didnt have the tech, back in the day. |
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I hate to be the voice of reason but there are already 3d models and "blue prints" of every part of the aircraft. They aren't taking it apart to build a model. They are disassembling it to measure the wear on each part. A "digital twin" is built up predict failures before they happen.
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Quoted: https://www.thedrive.com/content-b/message-editor%2F1587742889226-mission-patch.jpg?quality=60 https://www.thedrive.com/content-b/message-editor%2F1587742992407-wings.jpg?quality=60 How does the scanning work? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9IYQl82m8c View Quote I remember Apocalypse. We had some cool nose art. I particularly liked Georgia Guardian, Apocalypse, and Midnight Train from Georgia. |
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Quoted: So one of the fun tidbits I've been told on the B1 was, that since it's only semi-stealth, extremely low to ground penetration missions are one of the key assets it has. And with that, the onboard navigational computer can actually, with extreme reliability, fly the B1 at around mach 1.25 within 10 feet of the ground for an entire duration of a mission, essentially allowing the whole crew to do whatever they need to when dealing with threats & weapons on the mission. Flying so low, so obscenely fast was one of the ways to penetrate soviet airspace as they had very, very minimal ways to stop it. View Quote I don’t think the -1B can fly that fast, especially that low. |
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Quoted: I don’t think the -1B can fly that fast, especially that low. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: So one of the fun tidbits I've been told on the B1 was, that since it's only semi-stealth, extremely low to ground penetration missions are one of the key assets it has. And with that, the onboard navigational computer can actually, with extreme reliability, fly the B1 at around mach 1.25 within 10 feet of the ground for an entire duration of a mission, essentially allowing the whole crew to do whatever they need to when dealing with threats & weapons on the mission. Flying so low, so obscenely fast was one of the ways to penetrate soviet airspace as they had very, very minimal ways to stop it. I don’t think the -1B can fly that fast, especially that low. Maybe the A model that got canceled |
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Quoted: Would it not be sufficiently pointless and wasteful of govt to simply ask the manufacturer for a set of prints? It’s not like this is a plane stolen from another county that we have no other choice but to reverse engineer. View Quote Skynet needs a digital model so it can build new ones once it becomes self-aware. |
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Quoted: Quoted: Great, now China will have a B-1 Rancer This was my first thought as well. What engines will they hang on it? Supposedly they have the F-35s data package, but we haven’t seen any Chinese F135s. In fact, all we’ve seen are shitty copies of shitty Slav engines. |
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I was at Ellsworth a few years ago and there were several doing takeoffs and landings. My boner lasted for days.
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Quoted: No former B-1 pilots here? Seen guys who’ve flown many other military jets but not the bomber types. Odd bombers don’t seem to be represented in GD anyways But then I recall a old USAF col who was also one of the hostages in Iran back in 1979. He said fighter pilots are bold and warriors. Bomber pilots are lovers, he said. If I would’ve been blessed with great eyesight, maybe this is what I would’ve pursued flying View Quote I met a Bone Pilot. We were talking and he thought it was cool that I am an engineer and he said he always wanted to be an engineer. So I asked what he did, he was a B-1 pilot. Hmmm, nerd sitting in an office < USAF aviator. |
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