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B-1B readiness drops 4 years in a row

Even before the B-1B Lancer caught fire Friday after landing in the Middle East, statistics were showing that the heavy bomber of choice for missions in Iraq and Afghanistan has experienced a steady decline in mission-capable and availability rates since 2003.

The Air Force has 67 B-1Bs, most assigned to Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, and Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D. One from Ellsworth was the one that caught fire Friday, while taxiing after landing at al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar and “was involved in a ground incident,” according to the Air Force.

The fire was contained, but no other details were available. The incident was under investigation.

The availability rate — the overall percentage of B-1Bs available to fly, including jets out of service for depot-level repairs and inspections — fell to 51.1 percent in 2007, down from 2003’s rate of 56 percent.

The mission-capable rate — which measures the percentage of jets on a wing’s flight line that are ready to fly — sunk from 70.7 percent in 2003 to 61.2 percent in 2007, the lowest rate since 2001.

In contrast, the B-52H Stratofortress in 2007 had an availability rate of 65 percent and a mission-capable rate of 75.8 percent.

The B-1B is also experiencing worsening accident rates. In 2007, the “Bone” had 13 Class B accidents, which came out to 52.36 accidents for every 100,000 flying hours. Most of the accidents involved engine problems or parts sucked into the engines. Over the past five years, the B-1B averaged 10 Class B accidents for a rate of 43.59. A Class B accident is a mishap that cost from $250,000 to $1 million to repair.

The accidents produced a rash of aircraft emergencies. On Aug. 26, for example, the No. 4 engine of a B-1B caught fire over Afghanistan, prompting the crew to make an emergency landing at Kandahar Air Base. It took six weeks to get the jet back into the air.

The worsening maintenance and accident rates come as B-1Bs are in the sky more often. In 2007, the jets logged about 24,850 flight hours, compared with an average of 22,250 hours over the past five year, Air Force flight statistics show.

In March alone, deployed B-1Bs flew 83 combat sorties with the average flight lasting more than 11 hours.

Lt. Col. James Johnson, a B-1B weapons systems officer now assigned to Air Combat Command headquarters as chief of the B-1B system team, compared the increasing number of mishaps to driving a car in bad traffic.

“When you drive in the city, there are more chances you’re going to get in an accident,” Johnson said.

He said he sees the declining numbers as symptoms of wear and tear on individual mechanisms, not an indication of overall problems with the 20-year-old bombers.

For instance, a troublesome set of components are hydraulic pumps. Each B-1B has eight pumps that keep lines pressurized at 4,000 pounds per square inch. So, “when pumps fail, they fail catastrophically,” said Col. Michael Pelletier, who oversees Air Force-wide B-1B maintenance efforts and commands the 427th Aircraft Sustainment Group at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla.

The Air Force hopes to deliver new pumps soon and is scouring the supply chain for old pumps. Until those arrive, stateside maintainers have to work around the shortages. At Dyess, maintainers stripped one jet of five pumps to keep other B-1Bs flying, said Capt. Josh De Paul, officer in charge of the 7th Aircraft Maintenance Unit.

And even when a part is available, that doesn’t mean a qualified person is available to install it, said Senior Master Sgt. Chuck Klein, a career Lancer maintainer now assigned to ACC headquarters as the B-1B maintenance manager.

That’s proved by the rising percentage of B-1Bs on flight lines waiting for fixes. In 2007, the figure was 29 percent, compared with 20.6 percent in 2003, before the budget-driven drawdowns that have resulted in the elimination of thousands of maintenance positions.

Johnson and Pelletier cautioned that the availability rate of B-1Bs isn’t likely to improve in 2008 because upgrades will take each jet out of service for several weeks. The Air Force has begun installing Sniper Advanced Targeting Pods on the Bones.

The pod modifications require each jet to be out of service for about one month, including time for Russia to request that its inspectors have an opportunity to make sure the bombers aren’t reconfigured for nuclear missions that violate treaty agreements.

DISCUSS: Still ‘da bomb’ of bombers?