The U.S. Air Force is slacking when it comes to the B-1 Lancer fleet, with less than ten operational units out of a total number of 62.
The fast-moving, low-level bomber was once the pride of the USAF but now problems are beginning to manifest as the Air Force neglects them in favor of newer airframe and projects…
The B-1B was used to the point of exhaustion in Afghanistan, where high demand for close air support and a higher mission tempo kept the non-nuclear bomber overworked.
According to Popular Mechanics, the USAF has reassigned crews of non-flyable Lancers to other aircraft, and the remaining planes have been tasked with jobs such as long-range strike and maritime missions against enemy ships.
That’s an availability rate near 16 percent, from a short piece at War is Boring.
This comes on the heels of former SecDef’s 2018 command to the Air Force to get fighter aircraft readiness up to 80 percent, from ~50 percent for F-35A and F-22 and 70 percent for the F-15. It is a good example of how when you incentivize one thing (fighter readiness), you disincentivize another (bomber readiness) — perhaps creating other unintended consequences throughout the organization.
It’s not like the Air Force wants to have low readiness rates, but their performance and funding are constrained. Some have referred to Sustainment activities as a “pressure relief valve,” where you only do as much as funding is available.
The thing is that the services always want more money in R&D and procurement — and are often happy to squeeze it out of O&M — but the money flows to projects that promise, but never deliver, on lower sustainment costs. However, when you shovel money to procurement, you should at least expect a decline in the average age of aircraft.
Yet despite the shoveling of funds to procurement, the Air Force is left with, for example, F-15s whose airframes have lasted twice as long as planned, with the consequent effects on sustainment procedures. Still, the F-35A’s sustainment cost per flying hour is twice that of an F-15. The plight of readiness reaches back into all phases of the acquisition process.
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