The B-1 bomber’s ability to engage adversarial defenses with hypersonic cruise missiles will guarantee its relevance.
The race to acquire new hypersonic capabilities is heating up, and the United States is looking to its B-1 bomber to help advance its deep-strike capabilities. Last summer, these formidable bombers began flying with a new type of external pylon, known as the Load Adaptable Modular pylon (LAM), enabling them to accommodate a wider array of munitions, including hypersonic cruise missiles. While the B-1 “Lancer” bomber is not stealthy like its successors, the Cold War-era bomber’s ability to effectively engage adversarial defenses with hypersonic cruise missiles will guarantee its retained relevance in the service.
An Overview of the B-1 Lancer
The Lancer was born from the U.S. Air Force’s need to field a modern bomber after World War II. Specifically, the service was seeking a platform able to match the firepower of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress and the top speed of the Convair B-58 Hustler. As the Cold War began to heat up around this time, the USSR’s newly developed anti-aircraft surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) were becoming a problem. The B-1 bomber program was initially conceptualized to confront this threat head-on. North American Rockwell (later renamed Rockwell International) secured the bid to develop the bomber and introduced a prototype featuring large variable sweep wings.
Ultimately, the B-1A was scrapped, and a B-1B alternate was given the green light by the Ronald Reagan administration in the early 1980s. This upgraded variant was slower than its predecessor but hosted an additional structure which increased its overall payload, improved its radar, and reduced its ability to be detected by adversarial aircraft. Equipped with a synthetic aperture radar, Combat Track I radios, and a Global Positioning System-aided Inertial Navigation System, the B-1s are considered formidable bombers even without the addition of the LAM.
The Air Force’s 412th Test Wing tested its LAM on Lancer aircraft for the first time in 2023. In a press release, the service stated that the new pylon was installed on a B-1 bomber but that the LAM features the ability to be integrated on a variety of other aircraft as well. At the LAM’s debut, manufacturer Boeing detailed that the newly-equipped B-1B could carry two dozen Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missiles internally and up to one dozen externally for a total added armament load of thirty-six weapons. As explained by Air and Space Forces, “Likewise, it could carry 36 AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSMs) in the same configuration. The JASSM is physically and functionally similar to the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), and Air Force officials have increasingly talked about the B-1 taking on an antishipping role in recent years.”
About the Author: Maya Carlin
Maya Carlin, National Security Writer with The National Interest, is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin. Carlin has over 1,000 articles published over the last several years on various defense issues.
Image: Karolis Kavolelis / Shutterstock.com
