It Will Take Two Years to Fix B-1 Anti-Radar Gear, AF Chief Says

The Air Force chief of staff acknowledged Friday that it will take up to two years to correct shortcomings in the B-1 bomber’s electronic radar-jamming equipment, but he insisted the controversial plane can penetrate present Soviet defenses “without any problem.”

Gen. Larry Welch said also that the radar-evading stealth bomber, which is now being developed by the Northrop Corp., has shown in thousands of hours of wind tunnel tests that it is far more efficient than other Air Force bombers.

Aircraft Defended

In a breakfast meeting with Pentagon correspondents, Welch said he was satisfied with the progress of the B-1 bomber, a craft designed to evade Soviet defenses by flying at low altitudes at supersonic speed. “That airplane is capable of doing what it needs to do against today’s targets,” he said.

But, under questioning, he acknowledged that problems had developed in the defensive avionics system intended to foil Soviet radar. Each of the plane’s individual “black boxes worked perfectly in the laboratory,” he said, but, “when we put the whole system together and put it in the plane and began to test it,” the system did not perform properly.

“It now looks like we are somewhere between a year and a half and two years from having the kind of defensive avionics capacity we had hoped to have at this point,” Welch said. “ . . . We will have to go back and continue the flight-testing . . . so those black boxes play together like they are supposed to.

‘Tomorrow’s Threat’

“We obviously want to improve that defensive avionics system to handle tomorrow’s threat,” he said.

The Times reported last week that the radar-jamming equipment’s shortcomings mean that the bomber cannot safely fly over certain Soviet anti-aircraft sites. Welch said: “I hope to hell we don’t go flying over SA-10 sites,” referring to advanced Soviet anti-aircraft installations. “I hope I don’t have crews stupid enough to fly over any SA-10 sites. That is just not healthy.”

He said the B-1 can find such sites and either navigate around them or knock them out with short-range missiles. “The aircraft indeed can penetrate today to its assigned targets,” Welch said.

The plane, formally known as the B-1B, is intended to ease reliance on the 30-year-old B-52 bomber. The Air Force has ordered 100 of the planes under a $20.5-billion program, with Rockwell International as the prime contractor. Fewer than 20 have been deployed, and about 30 are now in production.

Stealth Bomber

The Air Force has also contracted with Northrop for a highly classified program to develop the stealth bomber, which uses new technology to reduce the aircraft’s radar image and protect it from detection.

The aerodynamic design of the plane is “markedly more efficient” than that of the B-1, Welch said. Although the Advanced Technology Bomber, as it is also called, “has not flown,” he said, “thousands of hours” of wind tunnel tests have shown that it will require far less aerial refueling.

“It carries a very healthy bomb load and has very good range,” he said.