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TIPping Point:
B-1 Has a BackBONE

What does the Department of the Air Force (DAF) normally do when we have an aircraft that needs repair? Our program office designs the repair, and our maintenance experts implement it. In more drastic cases, we’ll call on our industry partners, often the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), to assist with additional engineering expertise, technical data, and analysis. But what do you do when even that’s not viable?

The B-1 System Program Office (SPO) faced this exact challenge recently. With our usual methods, their only remaining option would’ve been to scrap the aircraft. In addition to the obvious—we have planes because we need them to fly, not so they can rust on the ground—the SPO needed a better answer, especially since other aircraft were starting to show signs of similar issues.

Rather than seeing only all the ways they could fail, the B-1 team thought outside the box. The SPO has been working with the National Institute of Aviation Research (NIAR) to create 3-dimensional, digital technical data for the B-1. Since these aircraft were designed with 2-dimensional, paper drawings, having enhanced data improves our ability to support aging weapon systems. The B-1 team enlisted NIAR’s help to see if there really wasn’t some way to fix this plane.

Not only did NIAR and the SPO design the repair, they also designed the tooling and process needed to install it. This is not as simple as it might sound. These aircraft are old, and they’re increasingly unique over time due to differences in manufacturing, use, and maintenance—so any repair design has to account for all unique aspects of that specific tail number. This brings us to today. The team has used a full digital prototype to verify the repair will return the aircraft to full mission capability, but as the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding. In the next several months, the repair will be installed on a retired B-1 to prove out the concept. Assuming the repair approach works, the Air Force will have gone from having several future grounded B-1s to having a proven approach to keep our aircraft mission capable—and all due to the B-1 SPO’s ingenuity in using digital tools and non-traditional partnerships!

We look forward to seeing what comes next, and we’ll keep you posted as we learn more through this process!

Many thanks to Ms. Stacey Elder, Digital Materiel Management Lead for the B-1 SPO (AFLCMC/WBN), who provided the information for this story. If you have any additional questions, please reach out to her at [email protected].

This material was cleared for public release on 20 December 2024, case number AFMC-2024-
0054.

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