On Wed, 08 Oct 2003 22:43:40 +0100, Greg Hennessy
wrote:

On Wed, 08 Oct 2003 18:08:00 GMT, Mark Schaeffer
wrote:

From the online Los Angeles Times, Oct. 8, 2003:

"The Air Force also is considering putting new engines on the B-1 to
double the speed of what is already one of the fastest bombers in the
world."



I thought the speed of the B model was limited due to the inlet design ?
Changing the engines wont change that I would have thought. What did they
have in mind, 60000 lb Kutzenovs off the blackjack ? Or something clever
with inlet redesign and engines from the F22 ?



There are lots of possibilites but most of them have drawbacks. IIRC
the F101 in the B-1 has about a 2:1 bypass ratio making it more
efficient than members of the F100 and F110 family so it would seem to
eliminate those. They could redesign the intakes and use F119s but
from the AW&ST article a while back about DARPA's experimental
satellite launcher F119s are not in large supply and are expensive to
boot. They could do something like redesign the intakes AND use a
version of the F135 used on the X-32. The non VTOL version put out
about 52,000lbs of thrust in afterburner and then there's the RR claim
of the F136 putting out 56,000. But all of these options would cost
big $$$ and if they've talked about reengining the B-52s as long as
they have with no action I'm skeptical about them doing it with the
B-1, especially since they're reducing the numbers in service and
there are even those who would like to retire it altogether. Unless
they wanted to do a complete redesign of the engine nacelles there are
going to be problems simply because the possible engines are different
sizes and have varying airflow requirements. One possibility would be
taking say the 36k version of the F110, using extra fuel tanks in TWO
of the bays, filling the front bay with SDBs and/or a variety of
JDAMS, and redesigning the intakes for higher speed. Who knows?