Key Words and Summary on B-1B Lancer Updates – The U.S. Air Force is breathing new life into its aging B-1B Lancer bombers by equipping them with new external pylons, a move that will dramatically increase their weapons payload.
-This upgrade, part of the “External Heavy-Stores Pylon” program, will allow the B-1B to carry a variety of large munitions, including the AGM-183A hypersonic missile, effectively turning it into a “missile truck.”
-This modernization serves as a crucial stopgap to counter threats from China and as an “insurance policy” against potential delays in the next-generation B-21 Raider stealth bomber program.
The B-1B Lancer Bomber Just Keeps Going
After years of experimentation, the United States Air Force (USAF) is going to add new external pylons to the B-1B Lancer bomber force. These new pylons will permit the B-1B to carry larger and greater variety of payloads.
What has been driving this requirement, among others, is that the service wants a large platform the size of the B-1B that can carry and launch hypersonic weapons.
But other USAF sources and Department of Defense planners are also saying that creating an option for the B-1Bs to carry larger payloads is also an “insurance policy” of a sort, should there be program setbacks that push deliveries of the next-generation stealth bomber, the B-21, off to the right.
The Northrop division of Northrop Grumman also builds the B-1B. The aerospace and defense giant designed and built the United States’ first-generation stealth bomber, the B-2.
The B-21 will eventually replace not only the B-2 but also the B-1B. However, as one retired USAF general officer pointed out to National Security Journal, “This will depend a great deal on how many B-21s actually end up being built.”
“If you remember, we were supposedly going to procure 100 of the B-2s, which would be nice to have about now, but it was the end of the Cold War. There supposedly was a ‘peace dividend’, as we were told, that made stealthy bombers with intercontinental range obsolete, so 100 became only 21,” he continued. “Let’s hope history does not repeat itself.”
External Heavy Stores Pylon Program
The design of this new weapons carriage system is called the External Heavy-Stores Pylon program. The USAF requested $50 million to design and build a new weapons carriage, slated for inclusion in the 2026 budget.
The “External Heavy-Stores Pylon program expands on the accomplishments of the Hypersonic Integration Program, a Congressional Add, by providing increased carriage capacity of standoff munition [sic] on B-1B aircraft,” reads the USAF budget request.
“Maximum carriage of existing standoff munitions on the B-1B provides near-term increased volume of fires from standoff ranges and serves to mitigate transition risk of the Air Force bomber fleet prior to the emergence of the B-21 as a combat bomber,” the request continues. “The Hypersonic Integration Program successfully demonstrated the B-1’s ability to execute a captive carry of a 5,000-pound class store and the release of a proven weapon shape from a Load Adaptable Modular (LAM) pylon,” the budget documents also detail.
The request does not specify how many LAMs will be integrated onto each B-1B. However, the B-1Bs were initially designed with six original hard points, which the USAF has conducted tests with since the end of the Cold War. This LAM concept has been in development at Boeing since 2023 or earlier.
The utility of this pylon is that it has a very high load capacity, which is what has made the proposed changes to the aircraft’s external weapons carriage capacity possible.
The hard points were part of the aircraft’s 1980s configuration when it was first designed so that the B-1B could carry air-launched cruise missiles (ALCM) with nuclear warheads.
After the collapse of the USSR and subsequent arms limitation agreements, those hard points were more or less idled since the nuclear mission was no longer part of its portfolio. However, one of them has been adapted to carry a Sniper targeting pod.
Hypersonics and More for B-1B Lancer
The official numbers are that this pylon is rated for loads of up to 7,500 pounds. If the modifications allow for carrying such heavy weapons and if the new weapons proposed for the airframe do not degrade aerodynamic performance, the B-1B could carry several types of weapons not originally envisioned for it. Among these is the AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW).
The ARRW is a hypersonic weapon designed as the initial booster stage for an unpowered boost-glide vehicle. The option has already been tested by the USAF on the B-52, but the next phase would move the testing to the B-1B. There have been previous reports suggesting that by utilizing both the new LAM pylons and the internal bomb bays, one B-1B could carry up to 31 AARWs.
Several other weapons and mission options are being explored for the B-1Bs, but the overall ambition is to turn the aircraft into the heavy bomber community’s version of a utility infielder. To do so, however, the aircraft will have to undergo an extensive program of upgrades that will involve new-generation on-board systems for almost every one of the aircraft’s functions – communications, self-protection, and satellite datalink.
This will make the bomber a formidable anti-ship platform, as well as being capable of flying close air support missions. But, like so many other modernization programs for US weapons platforms, many of these upgrades are primarily aimed at missions that would be carried out against the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
For an aircraft originally designed to fight a nuclear war against the Soviet Union, the missions it is being envisioned for in the Indo-Pacific theatre are a tribute to the adaptability and longevity of the platform.
About the Author:
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs and Director of the Asian Research Centre with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
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