- This is the B-1 Lancer, an aircraft that has the
speed of a fighter jet, the payload of a bomber, and the looks of a Transformer. It can fly at supersonic
speeds upwards of Mach 1.2, has four rocket ship-like engines with fire emitting afterburner, and is so maneuverable that even when weighing a
staggering 400,000 pounds it can roll upside down and fly inverted. And despite its nearly 150-feet in length, the B-1 was designed to
carry only two things, fuel and bombs. Well today, I'm out here
at Dyess Air Force Base with the 7th Bomb Wing
to take you up close to this incredible aircraft. And by the end of this video, I can promise you one thing, you'll know why the B-1
Lancer is considered by many to be one of the most
powerful aircraft to ever fly. (light rock music) (B-1 Lancer swooshing) (light music) (light rock music) - I'm First Lieutenant Davis Perkins, the pilot on the B-1B Lancer, aircraft also known as the Bone. This aircraft carries the
largest conventional payload of any US strike asset at 75,000 pounds, which allows us to do
global strike missions, putting air power anytime, anywhere. Because of our capabilities in air speed, we're able to integrate with the rest of the US Air Force inventory. Fighter is another fast mover's assets. - Now you may notice that the aircraft is often referred to as the B-1B Lancer, and that's because there were
actually two versions built. The original, the B-1A,
was developed in the 1970s as a replacement for
the B-52 Stratofortress. Four prototypes of this long
range, high speed bomber were developed and
tested in the mid 1970s, but the program ended up
being canceled in 1977 before ever going into production. Well, flash forward to the early 1980s when a new administration took over, the B-1 program was revitalized, this time under the designation B-1B. Improvements to the original A model included an increased
payload, improved radar, and a reduction of the
radar cross-section, a fancy way of saying how
easily the aircraft appears on enemy radar. The first B-1B was delivered right here to Dyess Air Force Base,
Texas in June of 1985. And just three years later, in 1988, a total of 100 aircraft had
been successfully delivered to the United States Air Force. So when you look at the
other two bomber aircraft in the Air Force, right, the B-2 Spirit, the B-52 Stratofortress, what would you say really
sets the B-1 apart? - So, things that set the
B-1 apart are its speed, maneuverability, and payload. It's 1.2 Mach capable aircraft, and with the wings pin we can pull 3 Gs, and it carries up to 75,000
pounds conventional weapons which is more than the other
Air Force strike assets. - [Sam] Now one of the most
iconic features of the B-1 can be found right here with the wings. The B-1 was built with what are known as variable swept wings, meaning the wings can actually move and reposition during flight. This is a feature you may
recognize from fighter aircraft like the F-14 Tomcat. For most airplanes, wing
designs are trade-offs. You either design the wing
for low speed stability, high speed performance, or something sort of in the middle. And for many aircraft
with a singular mission, that works just fine. But for something like the B-1 with a mission that requires
it to go both fast and slow, be able to maneuver,
and have high stability, flexibility in the wing configuration allows massive advantages
to the different missions the aircraft is able to perform. During takeoff, landings,
and other slow speed flight, the B-1's wings are extended
out to increase lift and drag in what's known as full forward with the wings almost perpendicular to the body of the aircraft. Then when the aircraft speeds up, especially during supersonic flight, the wings pivot to the rear
in what's known as full sweep, giving the B-1 an almost
delta wing-like appearance for full maneuverability. - So the variable wings on the B-1 can sweep anywhere from 15 degrees, which is full forward, or all the way to six to seven and a half, which is wings full up or as we like to call them wings pin. At 15 degrees, which is full forward the way you see the configuration now, this is where we put the wings for takeoff and landing or slow flight. Basically, whenever we want to use the least amount of fuel to stay airborne or we want to fly the
slowest air speed possible. Crews will actually bump back
10 degrees to 25 degrees wing, which is our most efficient for our max range configuration. And then for actual weapons employment, we'll sweep back to between 45 and 67 depending on the style
of mission we're doing. With the wings full up
at 67 and a half degrees, we can actually are quite maneuverable and the jet flies like a
fighter at low altitude. So it pretty fun to fly. - Now, I think everyone's
favorite feature on the Bone are these engines right here. We've probably all seen the
shots of the B-1 taking off, full burner, engines rattling, fire coming out the back. It's just crazy to me that they
put fighter jet-like engines on the back of a bomber. So from a pilot's perspective, what's it like to fly with these things? What can you tell us
about that performance? - It's incredible. (Sam laughs) It's a ton of fun. When you're in the airspace
and you plug all four into max, which is full burner, you can just feel the kick in your pants and you can just watch your airspeed just scroll up as you just speed up. Each engine makes about
15,009 pounds of thrust at mill power, which is our highest power
setting out of afterburner. Once you go into burner and push it all the way up to max, each engine's making about 30,000. So, it's about 120,000 pounds
of thrust in full afterburner. - Now, another cool feature is actually right behind the engines, and I've always found
this fascinating, right, the rolling stabilizers. Can you talk a little
bit about their design and what they allow the B-1 to do? - Sure, so the rolling stab or split stab actually allows each side
of the horizontal stab to move independently. So if you can imagine, if you're looking at
the jet from the back, you'll have one doing this
while the other does this. And what that does for us is it plays into that maneuverability
factor I talked about earlier that sets us apart from other strike, little strike assets, and that it gives us a
lot more roll authority. So, our spoilers that
we have in the wings, since we don't have ailerons we use spoilers to spoil the lift and that'll drop the wing on either side. At high speeds, those
spoilers aren't as efficient and they don't provide
as much roll authority just because they get blown back. So the stab kind of
takes over at that point and we're going really fast, full burner with the wings pinned, that's when we need that
extra roll authority that the split stab gives us. - [Sam] Now, the typical
crew for a B-1 mission includes four total personnel, your standard pilot and
co-pilot, but also two WSOs, which stands for weapons systems officer. Their role, just like
their name indicates, is to operate the weapons
systems on the B-1 in addition to integrating with the pilots to help ensure that they have
good situational awareness at all times. - All right, hey, I'm Lane Musgrave and I'm a weapons systems
officer on the B-1 Lancer. So we're dual qualified as
an offensive systems operator or a defensive systems operator. On the offensive side, we're responsible for weapons employment, sensor operation, navigation, and communication. And then on the defensive
side we're responsible for managing our defensive avionic system, deploy expendables, and
managing all of our receive and transmit capabilities. All right, so for a weapon systems officer the main things we're focused on are our sensors and our weapons. So as you can see, we've
got a radar on the front, so the APQ-164. We've also got our advanced
sniper targeting pod, and then we have three weapons
bays that can be configured to carry different types of weapons depending on our mission set. ♪ Get ready, set, go ♪ ♪ It's that time ♪ ♪ Everybody kick it into overdrive, go ♪ - Oh wow! It's a lot
bigger than you'd expect. - Yeah, so this is the main
attraction for the bombers. So we've got three bays, a forward, intermediate, and an aft bay. Currently our forward bay is configured with the stores bay tank. It adds an additional
20,000 pounds of fuel for our ocean crossings
or long duration sorties. In the intermediate bay we
currently are configured for a 10 carry, an SBM-10 launcher. So this can carry 500,000 pound munitions including our laser guided JDAMs. And in the aft bay we've currently got a conventional rotary launcher or a CRL, which carries a 2000-pound class weapons including JDAMs, our GBU-31s as well as JASSM and LRASM. - Now one thing to note is that unlike the B-52 Stratofortress
and the B-2 Spirit, the B-1 Lancer does not
carry nuclear weapons. However, that wasn't always the case. The B-1 was originally
designed as a nuclear bomber and was used to sit nuclear alert missions throughout its early Cold War years. However, in 1994, the
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the United States and Russia limited the number of
nuclear capable bombers each country could have. And to comply, that meant the
US had to withdraw the B-1 from its nuclear mission. Now, a question I know I was wondering was whether or not the B-1 could still technically carry nuclear
weapons if it wanted to. And what I found out is that
the answer is actually no. Once the START treaty was signed, the aircraft was physically modified to remove the special wiring
and external hard points that made carrying
nuclear weapons possible. So even though this aircraft
is nearly 150-feet long and has a wingspan of 137-feet, the only way in or out is
through this ladder right here on the belly of the aircraft. Like I said earlier, they designed the B-1 to carry two things, fuel and bombs, and in order to fit as much
of those two as possible, that meant cutting out
pretty much everything else. So with that, I say we head up this ladder and go take a look inside
the cockpit of the B-1. As I made my way inside the
Bone for the first time, first impressions were that, yeah, it's definitely tight. Just enough space to get the mission done while leaving as much room as
possible for the business end. Upfront, you have your
standard side-by-side seats for both the pilot and co-pilot and in the back, separated by this small hatchway-like opening are your seats for the two
weapons systems officers. Because of the large panels of
screens, dials, and buttons, the two WSOs can't actually see the pilot sitting in front of them and their only physical point of reference is the small window on the left
and right side of each seat. Meaning they're forced
to rely almost entirely on their instrument panel to know their location. Now in case you're wondering,
there is a restroom, a latrine as they call it, that's installed for long missions. But it's small, and the only space you can really stand up to stretch your legs is the small aisle right above the entrance hatch that's between the two WSOs seats. - All right, so this
is the bomb knob panel. This is where we release weapons. So when we're flying and we're
about to release a weapon, we have a launch acceptability
region, or a LAR, where the jet has done computations to say that in order to hit a certain target we can release in this
area and hit the target. So, we'll go auto 20 to 30
seconds prior to release and after opening the
doors and press auto, and then the jet will release
the JDAM automatically to hit the target we wanna hit. (upbeat music) - All right, Sam, welcome
inside the cockpit of the B-1. As you can see, it's nice
and spacious in here. From where I'm sitting up here, these are the pilot seats. So left seat, right seat. And our job up here is to manage the systems of the aircraft. So, we commonly use the acronym HEFOE, which is hydraulics, engines,
fuel, oxygen, and electronics. And so we have all sorts
of readouts and ways to manage those systems from these seats. So basically, we keep the
jet healthy and monitor, make sure the jets health is good while we drive the jet to the target that we're gonna strike, put the jet in a position
where we can strike the target, and then fly home safely. - What about the wings? I know everyone's wondering
how you kinda control the wings from up here. Where's that at?
- Sure. So, the wing sweep's
actually a manual control. So if you look on your left side and on my right side we have a lever. And you can see there's
demarcations on the side here for where you're actually
sweeping the wings. And then we also have a duplicate
readout here that'll move that shows you the actual
position of the wing. So you can put your set point here and monitor to make sure that it gets, they're getting where
you intend them to go. - Now you guys can obviously
drop a lot of bombs, but I imagine once you drop those bombs, I mean, that's a lot of weight
that's leaving the aircraft. I imagine the center
of gravity's changing. So, I guess first what's that feel like when all that weight comes off and how do you guys kinda handle that to make sure the aircraft can still fly? - As weight leaves the jet the CG is gonna shift and change, which with the variable sweep wing that's something we have to
keep a very close eye on. So we actually have our
fuel management panels here, and our fuel management
system is a bunch of computers that can actually pump fuel
forward or up in the jet to help maintain the CG where we want it. And the system is actually
able to look forward 15 minutes to see, "Hey, am I gonna drop any
weapons in the near future? What do I need to do with the fuel now so that when the weapons leave the jet, the CG is where I want it to be." - And I know with an aircraft this size not everyone would know or assume you guys actually have ejection seats to punch out, you know, knock on wood,
if something happened. How is that kind of sequence, 'cause I know it's kind of intricate? - The system is sort of complex, works in a couple different ways. Depending on where we have this knob, so it's on your left and it's to my right, we've got an ejection mode knob where we can select auto and/or manual. So in manual, if you pull, your seat goes. And that's it. In auto, everybody else who is in auto is part of an ejection sequence. So typically in critical phases of flight, our checklist drives us to
have all crew members in auto. That way if one crew member punches out, it starts a sequence
that starts in the back with the O and the D, then moves up front with
the co and the pilot. And then in that way,
we can eject everybody and worry less about interactions
outside the aircraft. ♪ 'Til we lose all control ♪ ♪ Turn it up ♪ ♪ Until we feel it down in our soul ♪ ♪ Turn it up ♪
♪ Up ♪ ♪ Let's get your heartbeat ♪ - Hey Sam, how you doing? I'm Tech Sergeant Adam Sneve. Welcome to the conventional
maintenance shop. We're out here at the MAC pad. This is the munitions assembly conveyor. For conventional maintenance we like to think of it as Santa's workshop where they build the bombs
and everything, you know. So this is the bread and butter of where we make weapons go boom. Well, not here, but, you know, hopefully down the line and they act as they're supposed to. - Yeah, so in munitions
it's literally your team that builds the bombs
that go onto the B-1, which, you know, I just got to see. - Yes.
- I mean, what's that experience like? That's a lot of responsibility. - It's probably the best part about it. I'd say this is, you
know, actually doing it, seeing a product built
at the end of the day, there's a lot of other
systems that go along in running munition squadron to make everything run smoothly. But this is where you get
to see your final product and this is the most gratifying to me. - All right Sam, so
today what we're gonna do is we're gonna build a GBU-31 version one. It uses a 2000-pound bomb body. This one is inert. You can tell because it's blue. - That makes me feel safe. (both laugh) - There's no specific order
that you have to go in with building these, but what we're gonna do is we're
gonna start with the front. - [Sam] Okay.
- This is our nose plug. - Gotcha.
- And all I need you to do is just screw it into the front there. - [Sam] This is quite heavy actually. - They are very heavy. - Is this literally the
first step y'all do, is the nose plug or is this kind of the last thing? - When we start to actually assemble it, this is one of the first
things that we'll do. It's the easiest part of a build. We have to pull out all of these items. An inspector has to inspect them, we'll lay everything out, the fins back there,
which we'll get to later. What you wanna do is you wanna kind of - Yeah.
- get in front of it, hold onto it, the back of your hand - I gotcha.
- on there, and you screw it down.
- Okay. Nice. Okay. Cool. Is it tightening, or? - Yep! - Sweet.
- There you go. And as long as you can't
remove it with your hand, it is tight. - So that's gonna stay on there. - It's gonna stay on there. - Until it splits.
- Yeah. So, now that we're on
the tail end of the bomb, this is our fin. It's a KMU-556. This is what goes with GBU-31 version one. These are our strikes arrow surfaces. These are gonna go around the bomb to guide the bomb as it's
falling through the air. One of the steps I was
talking about earlier is when we take these
out OF the container, we actually have to
test them on a computer. It's called a Cambry. Make sure the software
is updated on everything and make sure it's good to go. So yeah, if you're ready
we will grab the tools and we'll start putting
this thing together. ♪ Turn it up ♪ ♪ Let's just see how high we can go ♪ ♪ Turn it up ♪ ♪ No stopping 'til we lose all control ♪ ♪ Turn it up ♪ ♪ Until we feel it down in our soul ♪ ♪ Turn it up ♪
♪ Up ♪ ♪ Turn it up ♪ - Now as the day turned to dusk and the sun began to
set here in West Texas, there was one thing I
still had left to do, catch the B-1 in action during one of its iconic burner takeoffs. Lucky for us, there
was a nighttime mission scheduled to fly, which meant we were going
to have the opportunity to capture just that. All right, brief now complete. The crews here in air
crew flight equipment to grab their gear, last stop before they head
out to the flight line to get ready for the takeoff. Should be pretty sweet. (light rock music) (rock music) Now, because of the classified
nature of the mission, I'm not able to join them
for the flight tonight. However, I told you that my goal is to get an up close shot of the B-1, taking off at night in full afterburner. And the crew has graciously allowed me to join them in the cockpit to get the best seat in the house. So, I've got my headset ready. Why don't you join me? Let's see the B-1 in action. (air swooshing)
(light rock music) All right, crew and taxi pilot and co. - [Co-Pilot] Ready-o. Pretty deep. - [Pilot] All right, you want a taxi? - Walk me through it again, yeah. - Excellent. So, nozzle steering. So just push right to go right, push left to go left. So you see that yellow
taxi line in front of us? You can see where it is right now, it's kind of like
underneath your left leg. If you draw a line from your eyeballs to your left leg to the line, it's pretty much a straight line. Just keep it right there. - Okay, so just push the top of the pedal, or just any part of pedal? - Top of the pedal or the
brakes if you need to slow down. - Okay, all right. - And then you just kinda
gently push left right on the whole rudder pedal to taxi. So you have the aircraft. - [Sam] All right, my aircraft. There you go. - [Pilot] You don't
need to hold the stick. - [Sam] Oh yeah. - [Pilot] It's a hands-free maneuver. - Hands-free, there we go. Is this something that is
an acquired learning skill that attacks you the be one, or fairly easy? - Going straight ahead is pretty easy. Finessing it into a parking
spot takes a couple of reps. When students are learning
their first sortie or two, they generally screw it up. Sometimes it's so bad you get sent around. You have to do a victory
lap of the parking ramp and try it again. - [Sam] Just watching
of, I'm so impressed. Like, the turn radius seems
pretty tight for an aircraft. - [Pilot] We can pretty
much pivot on our main gear. - [Sam] Wow. - Yeah, the nose wheel will do a full 90 degrees left and right. And then we can use differential thrust. So if we're turning left, we
take the number four engine, the far-right engine, push it up, get a little differential
thrust going as well. - So to do that quick 180, is it just like a full
left press on the pedal or something or? - Yeah, it'd be a hard left turn and you'd wanna slow way down 'cause any forward speed you have is gonna be added into your turn radius. - [Sam] Do you prefer the night sorties or flying during the day? - [Pilot] I love flying at night. - [Sam] It's pretty sweet. - ATCs calm, there's no traffic. Generally, any thunderstorms
or weather cells tend to die down as it cools off. Especially in the summer,
flying at night is awesome. There's 20 knots, we'll just hold that. If you need to gently
tap the brakes, you can. Do you wanna try it out? See how the brakes feel. - [Sam] Do you tap 'em
both at the same time or? - [Pilot] Yep. Yeah, if you just tap
one the jet's gonna lurch to that side. - [Sam] Is that the brakes I'm hitting? - That's it! And you just feels gently slowing down. So the brakes on the B-1 they're, think of analog brakes in your vehicle. Same thing, they're anti-skid. So we can, at this gross weight, if we touch down at
say 160 knots on final, we could stop in about 3500 feet. 4,000 feet if we really
hammered on the brakes. All right, so let's slow it
down to about 10 knots here, and then we'll have a slight
left and a slight right turn and we're gonna split
the blue lights up here. So the taxi way narrows down. We start a gentle left turn. Yep, perfect. - Sweet. (laughs) This is honestly like one of the coolest things
I've ever done. (laughs) I've never gotten to
do something like this. (light rock music) (B-1 Lancer blaring) (B-1 Lancer swooshing) Well, there you go, the mighty B-1 Lancer. Now we've covered a ton of
aircraft on this channel, but there's something about
this one that stands out. It's in a class of its own. And I hope you enjoyed following along and learning more about
this incredible aircraft. Make sure to subscribe
if you haven't already. I don't think I'm going
to bed anytime soon based off how loud that was, but I'll make sure to catch
you guys in the next video. (light rock music)
