US completes first B61-12 LEP flight test

[Zarvan]

B61 weapons (shown here at the Department of Energy's Pantex assembly facility, Amarillo, Texas) are one warhead option for the LRSO cruise missile that will arm the USAF's new and legacy bomber fleets. Source: NNSA
Key Points

• The USAF and the NNSA successfully completed the first development flight test of the B61-12 LEP
• The bomb is one of the three warhead candidates for the USAF's LRSO

The United States Air Force (USAF) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) completed the first development flight test of the B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb Life Extension Programme (LEP) at Tonopah Test Range in Nevada on 1 July, the agencies revealed the following week.

"This test marks a major milestone for the B61-12 Life Extension Programme, demonstrating end-to-end system performance under representative delivery conditions," the NNSA's deputy administrator for defence programmes, Don Cook, said in a 7 July statement.

The event entailed the release of a test unit from a USAF F-15E Strike Eagle and B61 flight in "realistic" environments, according to the NNSA. Telemetry, tracking, and video data were collected.

"This test provides confidence in the weapon system and instrumentation system designs and the hardware at its current state prior to going to a baseline design review in 2016," the agency said. The bomb hardware for the trial, designed by the Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories, was mated to the tail kit designed by Boeing, according to the NNSA.

The 1 July test is the first of three development flight tests for the B61-12 LEP. The next test, scheduled for August, will again test the tail kit, an NNSA spokeswoman told IHS Jane's on 8 July. When asked if a B61-12 release is planned from the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, she said the government is "looking at that option", but referred further queries to the USAF. USAF officials did not respond by press time.

The B61-12 LEP refurbishes both the weapon's nuclear and non-nuclear components to extend service life and to improve reliability. The B61-12 is expected to replace B61-3, -4, -7, and -10 variants. Development engineering of the B61-12 LEP began in February 2012 as a joint USAF-NNSA programme.

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US completes first B61-12 LEP flight test - IHS Jane's 360

 

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