B1 gets a face lift

so im sure not many people knew about this but the bone got a large weapons upgrade

letting it carry 100's of SDB/storm breakers/tons on A2A missiles/now can carry 5000 pound class weapons and hypersonic weapons

a reply to: noscopebacon

Now if they can take care of the maintaince issues so that they are flyable, they might have something.

a reply to: JIMC5499

It needs to be retired. It's been a problematic bird from the start.

a reply to: anzha

No argument here.

a reply to: noscopebacon

Look at the scale of that Missile .

It's huge .

a reply to: asabuvsobelow

Which missile? JASSM?

I think any swing wing has high maintenance issues.Seems to be an inherent side effect of the configuration.

a reply to: Zaphod58

they said later it was going to have the naval variant

i totally forgot the LANTERN pod folded up like that on the door

a reply to: noscopebacon

all the glide weapons are pretty big compaired to just a tube, fins and a warhead/seeker

a reply to: Blackfinger

As far as I know the Tomcat didn't have too many problems with theirs. They had more engine problems than anything because the engine designed for it wasn't ready and was replaced.

apparently the first B21 is done and has been flown.

a reply to: noscopebacon

Can you add up the speed of the plane and the hyper sonic rocket when released?

a reply to: zatara

if the missile is slower than the aircraft firing it they usually have to slow down to fire it, i know they have to slow or speed up as well as AOA when releasing glide weapons, but with all these new high off bore missiles i thing as you can keep a lock it wont matter.


all the new missiles are going to be Mach 3+ if not outright hypersonic.


once the aircraft releases the weapon it has the momentum of the aircraft but that will only take it so far and it will slow down

a reply to: JIMC5499

i would think being carrier based, or the ones that were would break down much much faster all over the aircraft and especially the engines.

the F-14B if remember correctly had the best engines even including the replacement ones



i don't remember if the Phoenix rails needed to be added specially so that the missile could have a data links before launch and help 'spin' up the missiles electronics


the F14 was way under rated