Wednesday, October
16, 2002
B-1s go to aircraft retirement center
By Sidney Schuhmann
Reporter-News Staff Writer
DAVIS-MONTHAN AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. - The
insides of "Sweet Sixteen" are raw and startling.
Dusty wires hang limply from sockets in
the first B-1 bomber to arrive at an Arizona facility nicknamed
the "boneyard." Seats have been wrenched from the floor.
Gone are weapons systems that could rearrange landscapes and scatter
enemy forces.
Other B-1 Lancers are readying to return
to the war on terrorism in the Middle East. The only desert view
seen from "Sweet Sixteen's" cockpit is of the Santa
Catalina and Tucson mountains that surround the Aerospace Maintenance
and Regeneration Center at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
The B-1 bomber is the latest addition to
the almost 4,500 planes stored at the facility about 100 miles
south of Phoenix near Tucson, Ariz. AMARC has stored military
aircraft since World War II ended.
"Sweet Sixteen" arrived in August.
Twenty-four of the sleek, dull gray supersonic bombers - some
from Dyess AFB in Abilene - will be at AMARC by next year.
Some will be painstakingly preserved, perhaps
to fly again. The rest will be gutted, their parts stripped to
help keep the remaining B-1s airborne.
The Cold War-era bombers, worth about $300
million each, have arrived at what could be their final resting
place after decades of criticism and controversy. B-1 supporters
fear retiring one-third of the bomber's fleet spells doom for
the remaining bombers.
The Air Force estimates it will save $1
billion over five years by retiring 32 of the nation's 92 B-1
bombers and shrinking the number of B-1 bases from five to two
- Dyess and Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota. The savings will be
plowed back into the B-1 program for upgrades and maintenance.
The Air Force announced the B-1 plan last
year.
Since then, the bomber has proven a formidable
force in the war on terrorism. Blasting enemy targets made it
a favorite among ground troops, said Col. Mike Moeller, who oversees
all B-1 operations and training at Dyess.
Special forces have asked to train with
the B-1, and requests for the bomber to appear at functions have
flooded Dyess, base officials said.
"We're at high tide for the airplane,"
Moeller said.
The bomber's performance in the war did
not deter plans to retire part of its fleet, however. Inferior
B-1s were weeded out this year based on their age, accident history
and maintenance record. Or, as Moeller put it, "Was it a
top performer or was it going to break next?"
B-1s were built between 1983 and 1986. The
first B-1 arrived at Dyess 17 years ago.
The bombers built in 1983 were automatically
on the retirement list, Moeller said. Some of their parts were
not interchangeable with later-model Lancers, he said.
The planes selected for retirement were
tagged to be an air park display, preserved for possible future
use or stripped for parts.
At AMARC, the B-1s are put through a similar
process that all planes endure.
The first stop is the "flush farm,"
where the plane's fuel is drained and recycled. A lightweight
oil is then run through the engine to keep it from corroding.
Next, the planes are washed to remove oil
and dirt. Then they move to the "reclamation shelter."
Here, engines are removed and the planes are stripped for parts
or mothballed intact.
The sorry sight of the stripped down "Sweet
Sixteen" would probably bring B-1 mechanic Bobby Blake to
tears. The Dyess staff sergeant spent six years in the Air Force
working on "Sweet Sixteen," a training plane he said
needed "a lot of blood, sweat and tears" to keep it
flying, he told the Dyess newspaper.
Saving, selling B-1s
Ten B-1s will be preserved at AMARC. These
planes will be kept in good condition so they can fly again if
needed.
"If we lost one, they would pull one
out, clean it up and put fluids in it, and send it back to us,"
Moeller said.
The preservation process is unique to AMARC,
which is staffed mostly with Department of Defense civilian employees.
Employees said they can think of no one anywhere who can preserve
and store aircraft like they can.
First, the airplane's seams and windows
are taped. Next, the plane is covered with black liquid rubber
called Spraylat. The liquid hardens and protects the airplane
from the rain and other elements. Lastly, a white coating is sprayed
over the black to reflect the sunlight.
Once finished, the plane will join rows
and rows of fighters, cargo planes and commercial jets stored
at AMARC. Every four years, preserved planes are cleaned up and
the Spraylat process reapplied.
It takes about 600 hours and $54,000 to
preserve one B-1, AMARC experts estimate.
Tucson's desert heat - up to 115 degrees
in the summer - is the best environment for storing planes, said
Col. Kenneth Lewandowski, commander of AMARC.
"The dry climate minimizes corrosion,"
he said.
AMARC's low-acid caliche soil does not hurt
the plane's metal and is firm enough to keep planes that weigh
several tons from sinking into the ground.
Fourteen B-1s will be stripped of parts
and stored at AMARC.
The parts will be used to keep active-duty
B-1s flying. Parts from other planes at AMARC are often sold to
the many scrap yards that surround the base.
AMARC is not just a place to store and strip
planes, and base officials discourage people from calling it a
"boneyard." The facility also regenerates and modifies
aircraft to return to active service.
Twenty-one percent of the planes that have
landed at AMARC have returned to active service, Lewandowski said.
F-4 Phantom fighters at the base are being converted to remote-controlled
drones.
Old planes are sometimes sold to allies.
One sale put the base in hot water two years
ago during a trial of suspects in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings
in Kenya and Tanzania, the Tucson Citizen reported last year.
At the trial, a witness said one of the suspects, who had ties
to terrorist Osama bin Laden, purchased a jet from a "boneyard"
in Tucson to transport missiles.
The suspect, who was convicted, said the
plane later crashed in a test flight.
Efforts to sell retired B-1s have met with
little success. Australia and the United Kingdom recently rejected
proposals from Boeing Co., the B-1's manufacturer, to buy the
retired bombers because they would be too expensive to merge into
their arsenals.
 Tune
in tonight n On KTXS-TV, channel 12 or Cox cable channel 4, Reporter-News
military writer Sidney Schuhmann and Reporter-News photographer
Thomas Metthe report from "the boneyard." At 6 p.m.
they take viewers on a guided tour. At 10 p.m., they give a glimpse
of how a B-1 bomber is gutted.
Contact military writer Sidney
Schuhmann at 676-6721 or schuhmanns@reporternews.com
B-1 bomber fleet
Active duty
Dyess AFB: 32
Ellsworth AFB: 28
Retired
Air park displays: 8
Preserved: 10
Stripped for parts: 14
Total B-1 fleet: 92
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