The Air Force Built Digital Twins Of Its B-1s To Keep Them Flying Toward The B-21 Era
The US Air Force’s long-term bomber strategy rests on an as-of-yet-untested aircraft, the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider. To secure the future of its strategic strike platform until the sixth-generation fleet is online, the service is pouring engineering resources into the opposite problem. Those bombers are the Rockwell B-1B Lancer supersonic, swing-wing jets that are both the fastest aircraft in the Air Force Global Strike Command and haul the heaviest payload.