USAF to retire B-1?

[Stuart]

Basically, look at the cost-benefits ratio of it, ShadowDragon... for the sake of 66 bombers, we break a treaty and...

--Re-start a Cold War that is already over
--Lose a lot of diplomatic trust worldwide
--Get involved in an expensive arms race at a period of global financial insecurity
--Lose vital Russian co-operation on the ground in several regions
--Re-create an enemy where, at the moment, we have a powerful nation that is (at least) cautiously open-minded about us.

Congratulations on a nice, neat summary of the cost-benefit equation.

The reason why the Bone is up for the axe is that it's an expensive aircraft to fly and maintain. That's largely due to spares issues that in turn date back to the idiotic decisions of the Carter administration. Still, that's water under the bridge now. The B-52 in contrast does most of the things a Bone can do and is very cheap to fly and maintain. A B-52 costs around $925 per flight hour to maintain, the Bone costs $10,000 to maintain per flight hour (the B-2 costs over $14,000).

If we wanted to restore the Bone to full operational configuration, the best way to do it would be to negotiate a deal with the Russians. There's a lot of things they need (including deals on the Tu-160) that we could make a deal on. After all, we both know we're not going to be taking nuclear swings at each other.

[Simon_Jester]

Nah, probably not.

Isn't that kind of... Implied in that if we just say "fuck it, we're not bothering with this treaty anymore, it's cool whatever you do with your supersonic-missile jet," there's not much they can do about it between "harsh languages" and "World War III?"

...Well, plenty of other people have weighed in on how not-true this is.

I'd just like to distance myself from this position by pointing out that I'm talking about a renegotiation of these issues. Something more like what Stuart mentioned, and less like a demented infantile "I'm going to ignore my treaty obligations, try and stop me, nyah nyah!"

If the US unilaterally withdraws from a treaty and starts up-arming it's nuclear fleet, do you think China and Russia will just clap their hands? I see folks here are so fond of a new arms race - well, why not. Let's see if the crumbling U.S. economy can deal with another one.

I, for one, am not looking forward to this prospect. I think it might be justified to renegotiate a few specific points to give us more options (mounting external pylons on the B-1 is the only one I know of off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are others) in exchange for also giving the Russians more options.

[Kane Starkiller]

If the US unilaterally withdraws from a treaty and starts up-arming it's nuclear fleet, do you think China and Russia will just clap their hands? I see folks here are so fond of a new arms race - well, why not. Let's see if the crumbling U.S. economy can deal with another one.

Not that I actually support ShadowDragon's idea in any way but why would China be pissed that US violated a treaty made between Russia and US? After all China itself never signed any nuclear limitation treaties. Oh sure they wouldn't like it but it's not like US would be betraying them personally or anything.
Furthermore do you think that China would approve of a hypothetical Russian response to US rearming just to stick it to the US or would it view both Russia and US as growing threats regardless of who started the rearmamanet?
As for crumbling economy here is a chart of Russian/USSR GDP as a percentage of US economy:

If there ever was a time in the last 100 years for US to start an arms race with Russia now is that time.
Again not to say that I agree with starting Cold War 2 over some 30 year old bombers but it seems to me people greatly underestimate America's hand in this.

[Coyote]

Not that I actually support ShadowDragon's idea in any way but why would China be pissed that US violated a treaty made between Russia and US? After all China itself never signed any nuclear limitation treaties. Oh sure they wouldn't like it but it's not like US would be betraying them personally or anything.

Technically true, but a treaty that limits the US nuclear arsenal is something that the Chinese can appreciate. The Russians do all the heavy lifting and sacrifices and restrictions on their forces to provide the needed tit-for-tat, and the result is the US bomber force is limited-- a bomber force that could potentially be unleashed on China.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Helping Iran with their nuclear program would be retarded. For good reason, we've refrained from providing each other's enemies and likely future enemies with nuclear arsenals, because once you start down that path, it's almost certain to end up with Warsaw-pact nukes landing on NATO nations and/or vice versa. Likewise, giving Iran SAM missile batteries results in there suddenly being a lot of folks who're eyeing Russia warily - not only Georgia, they simply came first to mind - who suddenly find patriots made available to them.

As for being obstroperous in the UN, Russia has always been obstroperous in the UN - same UN which really amounts to what, exactly? What has the UN ever acomplished that wasn't entirely an initiative of NATO that Russia simply said "sure, we'll let you do this under the UN's auspices" about? About the only thing they could really do is complicate the Afghanistan affair and the European oil situation; which everyone should see is a pretty damn big overreaction to us saying "fuck it, we have these hardpoints on these damn bombers and a lot of insurgents who need ridiculous overkill applied to them."

Seriously. We are not going to nuke Russia. It would be suicide. We wouldn't try with the B1 or B2. We wouldn't try without the B1 or B2. We're not in the business of lobbing nukes around anymore, and we already have all the capability we need to do that.

[Coyote]

If that's the case, then, why go to the trouble to break the treaty?

[K. A. Pital]

Furthermore do you think that China would approve of a hypothetical Russian response to US rearming just to stick it to the US or would it view both Russia and US as growing threats regardless of who started the rearmamanet?

It's simple. Russian weapons end up in China. American ones end up in Taiwan. *smiles*

[ShadowDragon8685]

If that's the case, then, why go to the trouble to break the treaty?

Because pylons capable of holding nukes are also capable of holding considerable amounts of conventional ordnance - conventional ordnance we would very much like to use the prohibited platform to deliver, CoD, to people that Russia could not frankly give a damn about. Capacity that's going to waste thanks to a decades-old treaty which was originally negotiated with a defunct player and is now being held by a party that, frankly, we have no interest in going to war with in any event, much less nuking.

[Kane Starkiller]

It's simple. Russian weapons end up in China. American ones end up in Taiwan. *smiles*

The fact that Russian cash starved weapons manufacturers were very useful to China in the 90s and early 2000s as they were forced to sell even high grade military tech to them doesn't mean China will like the idea of a strengthened Russia any more than the idea of a strengthened US.

[Coyote]

If that's the case, then, why go to the trouble to break the treaty?

Because pylons capable of holding nukes are also capable of holding considerable amounts of conventional ordnance - conventional ordnance we would very much like to use the prohibited platform to deliver, CoD, to people that Russia could not frankly give a damn about. Capacity that's going to waste thanks to a decades-old treaty which was originally negotiated with a defunct player and is now being held by a party that, frankly, we have no interest in going to war with in any event, much less nuking.

But it also opens up an old can of worms that is already safely buried. We'd have to totally renegotiate everything on the B-1 system when it is already a plane that could use some replacing.

There are other ripple effects at work, too. Removing the B-1 from service puts us back at having a tiny handful of B-2s, and a fleet of decrepit B-52s. Once again, the focus of the spotlight will be back on the B-52s... and without a fleet of B-1s to fall back on, making a new strategic bomber program --looonnng overdue-- once again a relevant argument.

I believe that back when the B-1 was new, we should have moved on it and made it our mainstay bomber. But we didn't. To try to make it our centerpiece now would be like bringing back the M60A5 tank. We're better served by just making a new bomber that reflects modern needs.

[Sea Skimmer]

If there ever was a time in the last 100 years for US to start an arms race with Russia now is that time.
Again not to say that I agree with starting Cold War 2 over some 30 year old bombers but it seems to me people greatly underestimate America's hand in this.

You got to be crazy if you think right now is a better time for a nuclear arms race with Russia then the 1940s and 1950s were, and you certainly underestimate the budget crunch the US is facing on every single level of government. Plus the US is already decisively winning a conventional arms race against Russia, and anything that diverts money away from that is bad since those weapons are far more likely to be used. Nuclear weapons are important, but only so much that we have them and our deterrent is credible. That ensures we never use the damn things, and the details of deployment do not matter as a result. That's why the post cold war arms treaties got so much shorter and less detailed. Nor would ‘winning’ a nuclear arms race mean anything, since unless blowing Russia off the map is a near term objective it would just mean we waste a lot of money maintaining weapons we don’t need. Russia need not match us warhead for warhead to have its own credible deterrent meanwhile.

[Simon_Jester]

Not that I actually support ShadowDragon's idea in any way but why would China be pissed that US violated a treaty made between Russia and US? After all China itself never signed any nuclear limitation treaties. Oh sure they wouldn't like it but it's not like US would be betraying them personally or anything.

Technically true, but a treaty that limits the US nuclear arsenal is something that the Chinese can appreciate. The Russians do all the heavy lifting and sacrifices and restrictions on their forces to provide the needed tit-for-tat, and the result is the US bomber force is limited-- a bomber force that could potentially be unleashed on China.

The huge bonus of this for China is that they don't need all that big a nuclear deterrent. As I recall, they only have around 100 ICBMs (more or less); that's very small compared to the Russian and American arsenals, and in the event of an arms race they'd have to push pretty hard to get anywhere close to parity with us.

So it is very much to China's advantage to encourage the US and the Russians to stay away from the brink of a major nuclear arms race.

[Kane Starkiller]

You got to be crazy if you think right now is a better time for a nuclear arms race with Russia then the 1940s and 1950s were, and you certainly underestimate the budget crunch the US is facing on every single level of government. Plus the US is already decisively winning a conventional arms race against Russia, and anything that diverts money away from that is bad since those weapons are far more likely to be used. Nuclear weapons are important, but only so much that we have them and our deterrent is credible. That ensures we never use the damn things, and the details of deployment do not matter as a result. That's why the post cold war arms treaties got so much shorter and less detailed. Nor would ‘winning’ a nuclear arms race mean anything, since unless blowing Russia off the map is a near term objective it would just mean we waste a lot of money maintaining weapons we don’t need. Russia need not match us warhead for warhead to have its own credible deterrent meanwhile.

1940s and 1950s came after the Great Depression, Dust Bowl and WW2. What today can compare to that as far as US is concerned? Lehman Brothers collapse?
Obviously I didn't say US should start arms race (and I said arms race not specifically nuclear arms race) but that economically there was never a "better time" as a response to the claim that US couldn't handle it economically.
Russia today is barely over 10% of US GDP, even during the height of WW2 it didn't drop beneath 20%.
Again I didn't claim that US today has a reason to restart the arms race merely that economically it was never as powerful in relation to Russia as now.

[Sea Skimmer]

1940s and 1950s came after the Great Depression, Dust Bowl and WW2. What today can compare to that as far as US is concerned? Lehman Brothers collapse?

The point was it was a time when we NEEDED THE WEAPONS. We needed them because we had a very uncertain world and a huge communist Empire to face off with. If you have no realistic use for a damn weapon, its never a good time to buy it. All the more so when the US has so many other glaring problems it needs to spend money measured in trillions on. This is the worst economic crisis we are in since the Great Depression BTW, and we are heading for another Dust Bowl thanks to massive depletion of ground water. That's one of those things we really need to spend money to avoid, but nothings being done.

Obviously I didn't say US should start arms race (and I said arms race not specifically nuclear arms race) but that economically there was never a "better time" as a response to the claim that US couldn't handle it economically.

Considering budget cuts to the US military in the tune of 1 trillion over 5 years are being proposed, and the US is running up trillions in debt per year, how is this the best economic time ever? 1992-1998 would have been a hell of a fucking lot better when Russia was sliding into utter ruin, and the US was doing pretty darn well on a wave of cheap oil.

Russia today is barely over 10% of US GDP, even during the height of WW2 it didn't drop beneath 20%.
Again I didn't claim that US today has a reason to restart the arms race merely that economically it was never as powerful in relation to Russia as now.

I'd say we were in 1998, at that point the Russians literally just could not afford anything to the point that its military might as well have been based on a GDP of zero dollars per year. But none of that matters. Strategic requirements are not set by relative economic power, and a weapon bought with no point is a waste. Russia was poorer then the US throughout the entire cold war, and it was still able to exceed the US in nuclear weapons systems because it just spent more on them, and less on other stuff like aircraft carriers. That remains true, you don't see the Russians spending billions on projects like prepositioned forces in the Indian Ocean now do you? Focusing on a single criteria to the exclusion of all others is just pointless, and right now the US needs new water pipes more then it needs an arms race to ensure the nation doesn't decay into shit like Russia did.

The fact that Russian cash starved weapons manufacturers were very useful to China in the 90s and early 2000s as they were forced to sell even high grade military tech to them doesn't mean China will like the idea of a strengthened Russia any more than the idea of a strengthened US.

Actually Russia was never willing to sell a number of weapons the Chinese wanted, and the Chinese have no reason to give a damn about giving Russia money. International arms sales can run into the billions of dollars, but its still just not that much money to matter. Certainly the Chinese would not turn down a deal just because they feared it was funding Russia. Something the Chinese do anyway, by buying hoards of Russian oil and raw materials.

[Marcus Aurelius]

I believe that back when the B-1 was new, we should have moved on it and made it our mainstay bomber. But we didn't. To try to make it our centerpiece now would be like bringing back the M60A5 tank. We're better served by just making a new bomber that reflects modern needs.

The M60A5 was just a proposed M60 upgrade for the USMC that never really existed. Also, it's not quite the same thing. The M60 is completely out of service in the US and if I'm not mistaken even the support systems no longer exist. Some tanks still remain in storage, but they are trying to get rid of them, too. Bringing the M60 back now would be quite expensive at least by the standards of AFVs. On the other hand, based on Stuart's figures, operating the B-1b is pretty expensive as it is, and because of the variable sweep wings there is probably no way to make it significantly less expensive through modernization. (Ironically the B-52H would be even cheaper to operate if it had modern turbofans.)

[Lonestar]

Helping Iran with their nuclear program would be retarded. For good reason, we've refrained from providing each other's enemies and likely future enemies with nuclear arsenals, because once you start down that path, it's almost certain to end up with Warsaw-pact nukes landing on NATO nations and/or vice versa.

(1)You don't really know a lot do, you? Look up the weapons sharing agreements we have with various NATO countries(whereby, say, Dutch aircraft can drop US Nuclear weapons).


(2) Russia will make the argument that they are simply providing techinical assistence for a nuclear power program, which is what we did in the 50s and 60s(and now with India) under the "Atoms for peace" program.

Likewise, giving Iran SAM missile batteries results in there suddenly being a lot of folks who're eyeing Russia warily - not only Georgia, they simply came first to mind - who suddenly find patriots made available to them.

(1)So? To borrow a phrase from Coyote, Russia could invade Georgia with nothing but T-34s and Mosin-Nagants and they would win, as it was they never had numerical superiority on the ground and kicked the stuffing out of a military that had spent the past several years beign equipped and trained by the US anyway.

(2)Iran is going to be paying cold hard cash for their SAMs, soemone like Georgia is going to be entirely dependent upon us giving them the weapons and training for free.

(3)Unlike the United States, which has Global obligations, Russia typically only worries about stuff in "its" sphere of influence. While we have to worry about putting out fires globally, Russia is only going to care about the CIS...a large part of which is easily pressured by Russia anyway.

As for being obstroperous in the UN, Russia has always been obstroperous in the UN - same UN which really amounts to what, exactly? What has the UN ever acomplished that wasn't entirely an initiative of NATO that Russia simply said "sure, we'll let you do this under the UN's auspices" about?

Haiti. Korean War. Most of the Israeli-Arab wars.

Of course, you also fail to consider that the UN isn't supposed to be a one-world government, it's just suppose to be a place where countries can hash things out. It's kind of mutated into a place where countries can publically affirm that we do have global support...as we showed even during the runup to OIF.

About the only thing they could really do is complicate the Afghanistan affair and the European oil situation; which everyone should see is a pretty damn big overreaction to us saying "fuck it, we have these hardpoints on these damn bombers and a lot of insurgents who need ridiculous overkill applied to them."

Why would people see those responses to unilaterally withdrawing from a treaty "just because" as "overkill"? Bear in mind that the Afghanistan war isn't that popular in the United States any more, why do you think our illustrious allies would give a flying turd about taking Russia reacting to our intentionally antagonizing them, and then taking it on the chin because we just intentionally antagonized Russia? You do not treat peer nation states(which Russia IS, like it or not) that way.

Your problem is that you see the world as a zero-sum game. It isn't. If we do something to antagonize Russia, people are going to anticipate Russia doing something to antagonize us right back.

Seriously. We are not going to nuke Russia. It would be suicide. We wouldn't try with the B1 or B2. We wouldn't try without the B1 or B2. We're not in the business of lobbing nukes around anymore, and we already have all the capability we need to do that.

So? I know that you're a something of a man-child who has the life experience of a kindergartener, but even you have got to realize that appearences matter. Didn't you post a thread about the agony getting yelled at? And in your mind it's totally okay to act in a belligerent manner towards our peers?

Yelling and screaming and telling people to fuck off is only a bad thing when it happens to you personally, you snivelling little pussy?

[Shroom Man 777]

I like how in the Georgian War, the Americans whined and bitched like a pussy and had a complete hissy fit, but guys like Tricky Nick Sarkozy, Vladimir Putin and Medvedev just gathered around together and had smarmy shit-eating grins and did their diplomatic deals to totally fuck Georgia (and America) over while Condalezza Rice just stood around there being totally useless. In the end, Russia got what it wanted, and nobody - not even France and the other European guys - gave a fuck about how America's blubbering vagina named Georgia was chewing ties and shit.

oh no america can just tell the entire world to fuckoff indeeds! hahahahahaha

[Sidewinder]

I can't help but wonder if the USAF would be better served if they bought a variant of the P-8 Poseidon, with enlarged bomb bays capable of launching cruise missiles, to replace the B-52.

[Shroom Man 777]

B-52 has superior warload, speed, maximum altitude, and range. The performance parameters of a maritime aircraft is not the same as that of a strategic bomber.

[Lonestar]

Every now and again someone proposes to turn the 747 into a cheap bomb truck. The problem, of course, is that the structure of the airplane means that elaborate machinery would have to be built inside the fuselage to lower and fire missiles. Meanwhile the P-8 is much smaller, and will be carrying a lot less than, well, any of the bombers in terms of weapons payload.

[PeZook]

Shroomie!

Anyway, I'm pretty sure Boeing could just design a new cheap bomb truck if you asked nicely and shovelled some money at it, rather than do some kitbash conversions of airplanes not suited for the role which would ultimately cost much more per ton of bombs delivered...

[Thanas]

You have a very idealistic view of Boeing, PeZook. I have no doubt they would exploit such a contract to the fullest.

[PeZook]

You have a very idealistic view of Boeing, PeZook. I have no doubt they would exploit such a contract to the fullest.

Idealistic? How? I even wrote it right there that the US would need to shovel a pile of money their way, but they do make excellent planes. They'd also exploit a contract to convert 747s into bombers, but at least with a new plane, you'd get an actual bomber once all the pork and kickbacks and cost overruns are done

[Thanas]

You have a very idealistic view of Boeing, PeZook. I have no doubt they would exploit such a contract to the fullest.

Idealistic? How? I even wrote it right there that the US would need to shovel a pile of money their way, but they do make excellent planes. They'd also exploit a contract to convert 747s into bombers, but at least with a new plane, you'd get an actual bomber once all the pork and kickbacks and cost overruns are done

When you mentioned "cheap new bomb truck" and "some money".

Not words I would associate with Boeing.

[weemadando]

When I first saw the thread title I read it as " USAF to retire B-17" and I though "well it's about fucking time".

But as for retiring the B-1, it fills a niche that isn't strictly necessary anymore unless you are one of the folks who still believe that at any moment Lenin is going to come back and push the big red button. Having a BUFF that is cheaper to run and has longer loiter times is far more useful in the current world.

Though there was an awesome moment in an Afghanistan doco I was watching where a Bone did a show of force run. Seeing that plane doing a high speed, low level pass was beautiful and remembering that in the context of this thread made me think: "I wonder if the RAAF can get a deal on Bones the same way we did with F-111Gs?"