🇺🇸 Rockwell B-1 Lancer Bombers Takeoff at Night With Badass Blue Afterburners.

There are few things more awe-inspiring than seeing our military’s aircraft in action. One of the most under-appreciated craft in our military fleet is the B1 Lancer, a long-range bomber that just happens to be capable of flying well above the speed of sound, while carrying a full array of weaponry on board. One of the most powerful aircraft to take to the skies, the Lance has two pairs of GE F101-102 engines, each of which give the bomber a total of 120,000 pounds of thrust to propel it on it’s missions.

When these bombers take off, the massive weight of the fuselage requires the pilot push the throttle tow wide open and kick in the afterburners, spewing massive blue flames from the exhaust of the engines. According to online sources, the plane’s top speed is Mach 1.25, or approximately 950 MPH. The current iteration was introduced in 1981 and first delivered into service in 1986 as part of the Strategic Air Command.

The B-1 was originally built as a nuclear bomber, but was later converted to a conventional bomber for duty in the early 1990’s. While it was never called up on to deliver a nuclear strike, the B2 was used heavily as a conventional bomber in Afghanistan, where the 9th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron kept a B1 in the air at all times and accounted for 1/4th of the bombing sorties, a total of 770 during a six month period. They have also been used against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. During the operations against ISIS, the bomber was used extensively, accounting for thousands of bombs dropped and over 1,000 ISIS fighters killed. The fleet was returned to the states in February of 2016 for cockpit upgrades. We’re excited to learn more about these badass bombers and hope you guys and gals appreciate our military as much as we do.