AF Seeking $1.2 Billion to Fix Troubled B-1B Bomber

The Air Force has proposed to spend $1.2 billion to repair and improve the troubled B-1B bomber over the next five years but has acknowledged that none of the $250-million planes may ever work as promised, congressional sources said Sunday.

One key lawmaker has balked at the cost of the fixes, most of which would be paid for by funds already approved by Congress more than four years ago.

Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told members of the panel that the B-1B’s inability to penetrate Soviet airspace as advertised at the outset of the program may force Congress to redefine the plane’s mission.

“Is this the time, then, to make the fundamental decisions about the role of the B-1B?” Aspin asked in a memorandum circulating Sunday among committee members. “Should funds be spent on it to maintain its role as a penetrating bomber, or should it be used in a standoff role?” Aspin said.

Delivery of Missiles

In a standoff role, the aircraft would be used as a delivery platform for cruise missiles, which would be fired at targets within the Soviet Union from outside Soviet airspace.

The Air Force has informed Congress that it will use $725 million in appropriated but unspent Pentagon funds to correct problems with the plane’s electronic jamming system--almost $200 million more than anticipated just two months ago.

In addition, the service has proposed a $489-million “improvement program” in which new radar warning receivers would be installed in the nation’s 97 B-1Bs over the next five years.

A radar warning receiver would alert B-1B flight crews to potential attackers on the ground below or in the air ahead.

The Air Force has argued that neither proposal would breach a $25-billion cost limit that former President Ronald Reagan had imposed and Congress had approved for the program.

Technically Correct

By using $725 million in funds already appropriated and by defining the $489-million radar warning receivers as an “improvement” rather than as a repair, the Air Force is technically correct. But, Aspin said, if the proposed fixes are accurately characterized as addressing shortcomings in the Air Force program, they would amount to a breach of the cost limit.

Aspin and others have noted that decisions about repairs to the plane--as well as about the uses to which it would be put in a nuclear war--must be made now. If they are not, the B-1B may not be able ever to minimally perform its mission after 1994, Aspin said. The plane’s performance in 1994 has become more crucial since the Air Force began encountering technical difficulties in developing the successor to the B-1B, the stealth B-2 bomber, which is scheduled to be in service shortly after 1994.

Those difficulties became evident to Aspin’s committee from a recent Air Force request to shift $297 million from B-2 production funds back into research and development of the craft.

The Air Force has delayed the stealth bomber’s first flight, citing an accumulation of software problems. Gen. Larry D. Welch, the Air Force chief of staff, however, defended the program Saturday, predicting that the first flight of the B-2 would take place within 60 days.