Shortages of Parts Held Reducing Mission-Ready B-1s

Most of the Air Force B-1 bomber fleet is grounded on any given day because of spare parts shortages and other problems, sharply reducing the aircraft that can be kept on alert or used for training, the General Accounting Office reported Saturday.

A shortage of spare parts, created primarily by the Air Force’s efforts to push bombers off the assembly line on schedule, has grounded many bombers and forced maintenance crews to remove parts from some planes to keep others flying, the congressional investigating agency said.

In addition, efforts to improve design flaws in the $28-billion long-range bomber program have prevented crews from training adequately for some of the plane’s most critical missions, including high-speed, ground-hugging bombing runs, the study found.

At Dyess Air Force Base in Texas, the Air Force’s primary B-1 training facility, 54% of the bombers were not fully or partially capable of flying missions in April, Air Force records show.

“Alert status is the bomber’s reason for being,” said Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and an outspoken critic of the Pentagon’s management of the B-1 program. “If that’s adversely affected--and it is here--then you’ve got problems.”

The Air Force agreed this year that the shortage of mission-ready aircraft is a “serious problem.” But officials, noting that the 100th and final bomber was completed in April, blame many of the problems on a young weapons system that is still at least four years from reaching maturity.

Air Force officials note that the mission-capable rate has improved since its low of 17% of the bomber fleet in January, 1987. The Air Force and the GAO said most of the bombers and crews could be used in wartime, despite the problems that may keep them grounded in a more cautious, peacetime environment.

“The Air Force is making steady progress in ensuring adequate spare parts are available for the B-1,” the Air Force also said in response to the GAO report. “The Air Force has steadily improved the planned rate of B-1 training flights and expects the trend to continue as the system matures and spare parts are delivered.”

But even as the Air Force boasted that its 100th bomber rolled off the assembly line two months ahead of schedule, it was so short of parts for finishing the final plane that it stripped all of the usable parts from an old B-1A bomber at the Air Force museum to meet that date. The B-1A, built during the Jimmy Carter Administration, was the predecessor to the much-changed current B-1B model.

The report also stated that in its efforts to speed production, the Air Force has granted more than 1,000 waivers to B-1 contractors to deliver parts that have failed tests or may be substandard. Some of those parts have caused aircraft groundings and forced purchase of even more spares, the report said.

The Air Force, for example, accepted delivery of 57 bombers with windshields having distortions, night glare or scratches, the report said. The Air Force then had to buy 217 additional windshields for about $13 million.

The GAO study is the latest in a series of congressional and Air Force reports to reveal continuing problems with the B-1 bomber program. The Air Force discovered earlier this summer that the “brains” of the plane, its electronic countermeasures (ECM) system intended to provide protection for the plane and crew on bombing missions, is flawed and may not be repairable.