"BUFDRVR" wrote in message
...
Anyway
do you have any doubts about the question asked
"Could Blackjack bombers reach USA?"

Perhaps, but only a very few. Their mission capable rates were as low as
25%,
and that was in 1995.

I've told this story before, but its a good one and still makes me
chuckle. In
1995 Barksdale AFB was host to two Russian Bear Bombers (Tu-95), their
crews
and leadership. On the second day of their visit, several BUFF and Bear
crews
were out on the flightline exchanging tours of their respective aircraft.
A
B-1B from Dyess had weather diverted into Barksdale the previous night and
as
the BUFF and Bear crews were doing their exterior tour of the Bear, the
B-1B
attempted to leave and head back to Dyess. Due to the tremendous noise the
B-1
created as it took off, all conversation, both Russian and translated
English
stopped and everyone diverted their attention to the B-1 taking off. As
the
B-1 got halfway down the runway, and almost directly in front of the
Bears, a
puff of white smoke appeared and the throttles were brought back to idle.
Everyone continued to watch as the B-1 taxied to the end of the runway
where it
was joined by emergency response vehicles. As the B-1 made the turn off
the
runway, hydraulic fluid could be seen, literally, pouring out from
underneath
the aircraft. The B-1 stopped, the entry hatch opened and the crew
performed an
emergency egress. With the noise now gone, both BUFF and Bear crews
returned
their attention to the exterior of the Bear. Before the tour could resume,
one
of the Bear crewmembers looked at the others and uttered something in
Russian
which made the rest of the Bear crewmembers burst out in laughter. When a
BUFF
squadron commander asked what the joke was, the translator looked afraid
to
answer. Just then in pretty good English, one of the Bear crewmembers
pointed
to the B-1B, now in the hammerhead and surrounded by emergency vehicles
and
said; "Just like Tu-160....piece of ****". At that, all the BUFF crews
began to
roar with laughter, which made the Bear crews, and their concerned
translator,
more relaxed and they began to laugh out loud again. It was truely a
moment of
international bonding, crews of bombers built in the 1960s having a laugh
at
the expense of their newer "replacement aircraft". Any way, when asked
about
the Tu-160's mission capable rate, a rather gruff Russian Colonel said
less
than 1 in 4 is flyable at any given time.


BUFDRVR

That's a great story! Here's another.
In late 1989, my crew was selected to fly a B-1B to Luke AFB for a kind of
static display. This display was arranged as the reciprocal for the
Minister of Defense of the USSR and his staff. You might recall that our
CJCS visited the USSR in the middle/late '80s and this was the U.S. turn to
reciprocate this unprecedented, high-level military exchange. On the ramp
at Luke, arranged in a semi-circle, was a KC-10, C-5, F-15C, F-16, B-1B and
B-52H. At the arranged time we all trooped out to our jets and waited.
Soon, a caravan of civilian stretch limos, suburbans and staff cars pulled
up and out gets a big crowd of military, U.S. & USSR, and civilians. After
some milling about, the civilians (wives of the visitors and their hosts)
head off and the military types walked slowly into the lare semicircle of
aircraft. A couple of minutes later, they come walking with purpose
straight over to us, a Major and three Captains. Sooo, this is my 15
minutes of fame I figure and I stride out to greet the highest ranking
military member of, arguably, the 2nd strongest nation in the world. We
exchange salutes, shake hands, he looks over the Bone, and I ask if he'd
like a tour inside. A hush falls over the crowd, the MoD looks pensive and
says........ "Nyet!" I was relieved since he was a big dude and I'm not
sure it would have been that easy getting him up there. Anyway, he sent two
staff members with me to go inside, and several others with the Co, O and D
for a tour of the outside. I have no idea what rank the two officers were
that went up with me, just that they were bomber pilots who were now working
in the MoD. One of them spoke good English so he translated for the other
guy and me. The Russian only speaker asked pretty innocuous questions about
how the aircraft worked, how it was to fly, my thoughts about its
performance etc. I told him the general P.R. answers but gave him a fairly
detailed description of our mainteance and birthing-of-a-new-weapon system
problems (those were in the news a lot at that time) that our Ops and MX
people were battling through. He listened and said that they were having
the same problems with the Blackjack only much worse. They had difficulty
getting more than a couple of sorties a day off the ground. I told him that
we were getting a lot more off the ground than that and were flying, fleet
wide, several dozen sorties a day. He responded that they knew that in the
MoD and were convinced that the "American Air Force" would solve the
problems and the B-1B would be their biggest air breathing threat. I then
said that I had flown the B-52 for 5 years and that there were many more
B-52s on alert than B-1Bs and he waved his hand and said "...not a problem,
we can shoot down slow B-52, we are not sure about shooting down B-1". (Of
course, the whole world knew that a C-172 could fly into Red Square unharmed
so I took that statement with a grain of salt). After some more
pleasantries, we climbed out and he handed me a couple of little boxes with
hero of the soviet union type trinkets inside and they went on their way to
the next aircraft. I noticed that the MoD and the crew looked in the
fighters, talked to the crew of the Buff and the other heavies but didn't go
inside any off them, and then trooped back to their caravan. They drove out
to some bleachers at midfield and soon the TBirds showed up and did a show.
Before the group left, a Lt Col came up to us in a hurry and asked if we
wanted our picture taken with the VCJCS. I said sure, bring him on over.
LOL. Pretty neat day. Anyway, I got the distinct impression that even in
the early days of the B-1B fielding, the people responsible for planning the
defense of the USSR knew of the teething problems the Bone was going
through, but were distinctly worried about the Bone making it through their
defenses. So I guess the Piece-of-**** scale is proportional and sliding
based on rank and seriousness of the job of the observer.

Regards,

Jim