Just remind me of how many CFM-56's there are operating today in continental USA? Money talks and the French portion of that alliance understand that
and wont have a problem. Neither will Congress when you point out all the "foreign DNA" in other strategic platforms, a la all BaE.
I have to say I was fascinated by the mention of the B-1R. It's not normally my thing, but I must admit I felt a rising curiosity at the mention of
this concept. Tell me, what upgrades would the B-1R include? It sounds like something that might allow us to more deeply and effectively penetrate
foreign assets. I hope they can keep the B-1R coming with a rigid development schedule, I'm curious to see what might be milked from that effort. Or
have they already shot their wad; in other words, has development of the concept been completed already or stalled due to lack of funding? Also, is it
worth the effort that would be invested to see the B-1R fly in your opinion?
Probably would be cheaper and better all together to simply restart production of the bird with 25 units and use all modern manufacturing, electrical,
mechanical, etc etc etc instead of trying to bandaid the current fleet with upgrades.
Spend a year engineering the bird for the F-119 and whatever else and then fire up the production.
The design was already done for the B-1A at Mach 2.2+ so shouldn't be too hard to make it Revision C and get them out the door soon.
They basically made the B-1 an air to air platform. They replaced the engines, they named several options from the F119 to the F136, replaced the
basic radar with an AESA unit, reactivated the wing stations, and modified the weapons bays to hold AIM-120s or other M/LRAAMs. It increased the top
speed slightly, but more importantly gave them much more electrical power, and theoretically improved the reliability, as they rebuilt the aircraft to
include the modifications.