- The Air Force is recalling a bomber sent to a desert retirement back to energetic duty.
- “Lancelot” enjoyed a transient vacation in Arizona before a emptiness within the fleet needed filling.
- The bomber is currently undergoing preparations to return her to the 45-strong B-1B force.
The U.S. Air Force is bringing a bomber back from the dead—or, relatively, from the Boneyard. The B-1B bomber #85-0081, also referred to as “Lancelot,” is undergoing a refurbishment designed to ready the large, swing-wing bomber for energetic duty, replacing one other bomber lost in a fireplace. The method illustrates how “The Boneyard” will not be at all times a final resting place for America’s warbirds and the way planes is likely to be ‘reanimated’ to make up for combat losses.
Bomber Down
In 2022, Dyess Air Force Base mechanics were running the engines of B-1B Lancer bomber while fixing its hydraulics. A crack in an engine disc resulted within the #1 engine catastrophically disassembling, severing fuel lines in the method. The fuel caught fire and the engine was destroyed in a fireball, with parts landing as much as five hundred feet away from the parked aircraft. No injuries were reported. The event was captured on video and the bomber was written off as a complete loss.
The Boneyard
In 2021, the Air Force retired 17 B-1B bombers from the energetic force. The B-1B bomber force—stripped of its ability to hold nuclear weapons under the Recent START arms control treaty with Russia—was often utilized in Iraq and Afghanistan as a detailed air support aircraft. Its combination of high speed, long range, and skill to drop precision-guided bombs proved a significant asset for troops on the bottom. In consequence, the B-1B fleet had one in all the bottom readiness rates of all aircraft types, due its age (the bombers first entered service in 1986) and years of hard use.
The Air Force plans to retire all B-1B bombers by the early 2030s, replacing them with the brand new B-21 Raider bomber. The readiness problem, nevertheless, was so bad that the Air Force decided to retire some bombers early to avoid wasting the remainder. The service cut 17 of the bombers from a fleet of 62, flying them to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona.
Davis-Monthan is the house of the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, otherwise referred to as AMARG, or The Boneyard. The Boneyard is the house of hundreds of aging Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps aircraft retired from flying status. The high desert temperatures and low humidity prevent corrosion and rust, preserving the planes.
Usually, the planes are stored—awaiting some emergency which may recall them to energetic duty—and are eventually cut into scrap. Other planes, including B-52G bombers, are cut into pieces after which preserved to permit Russian satellites to confirm that they’ve been permanently retired from the nuclear force. Still other planes are slowly cannibalized for spare parts to maintain other planes going. That was the expectation for the retired B-1B planes.
Knight Resurrected
B-1B serial number #85-0081 was one in all the 17 bombers retired in 2021. The plane had been photographed by aviation enthusiasts for years—visiting Edwards Air Force Base, Misawa Air Base in Japan, Abbotsford Airport in Canada, and other locations. In 2004, the aircraft suffered a collapse of its nose gear after landing on the U.S. airbase on the island of Diego Garcia within the Indian Ocean. The plane, call sign SABRE 01, is well-known enough amongst plane spotters you can buy a reproduction of the nose art online.
4 of the seventeen retired B-1Bs were kept in flyable condition, in case there was a must bring them back. And because it seems, that happened ahead of anyone expected. Air Force officials immediately began plotting to bring one in all the bombers back, and Lancelot was chosen to exchange the bomber lost within the 2022 fire.
Lancelot was first flown to Tinker Air Force Base, where it underwent programmed depot maintenance on the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex. Based on Arnold Air Force Base, the bomber can even receive upgrades that it missed during its transient retirement to bring it as much as par with the remainder of the energetic fleet. Pilots from the tenth Flight Test Squadron flew the aircraft from the Boneyard to Tinker, after which flew test sorties with the rejuvenated plane before handing it over to the seventh Bomb Wing at Dyess Air Force Base.
A Lesson for Future War
America’s aging warplane fleet implies that, often, there are models of aircraft sitting within the Boneyard while the identical models are on energetic duty. While this is clearly not nearly as good as having the newest planes, there may be a significant, hidden advantage.
Within the event of a significant war, it’s inevitable that the armed services will take aircraft losses. It will take only five lost B-1B bombers to cut back the fighting force by ten percent. Bringing back planes from the Boneyard and refurbishing them to modern standards takes less time than constructing recent ones. The method also can count on a long time of institutional knowledge in regards to the airframe. In its press release, the Air Force mentioned one civilian analyst who helped with the resurrection—he had been a part of the B-1 program for 30 years.
In some ways, the Boneyard will not be a retirement community for airplanes—it’s a bank and insurance policy rolled into one. The Air Force, Navy, and Marines deposit less useful planes (which can be often expensive to operate) and wait. The aircraft sit silently within the desert, among the many horned toads, rattlesnakes, and scorpions, until someone decides that they’re value more as scrap than they’re as warplanes. Most never leave the Boneyard under their very own power. But a couple of, like Lancelot, activate their engines and roll down the runway to serve once more.