When I was a young lad in the USAF, I worked on the defensive testing for the B-1b at Edwards.
I can tell you, when it flys over your head at .95 mach at 500 ft off the ground, its really impressive. You don't hear it till its right on top of you.
Lot of soiled sheets in the Sunni neighborhoods today.
Elsewhere, it's being reported that blind people are having the same problem with the Toyota Prius.
When it flys over SE Tennessee at Mach 1+ the shock wave knocks stuff off the walls of my hangar......
"When I was a young lad in the USAF, I worked on the defensive testing for the B-1b at Edwards.
I can tell you, when it flys over your head at .95 mach at 500 ft off the ground, its really impressive. You don't hear it till its right on top of you."
There's a proposal for a B1-R upgrade, which would upgrade the engines, avionics, and external hardpoints. It would get the B1 back into the Mach 2.0 regime, with massive payload AND the ability to carry a swarm (32 IIRC) of AAMRAM air-to-air missiles.
Seems to me to be a very cost effective and interesting upgrade... After all we only have what, 12 B2s?
I saw a fly-by when the Sec-Def delivered the first B1 to CinC-SAC at Offut AFB. You didn't hear a thing until it was too late, then you heard a sound that makes you want to pull your ears out.
That's without any bombs - just the engines.
One impressive airplane.
OK, so the fact that the first one needed some spare AC parts flown in and CinC-SAC had to get a second plane to deliver to the oprational base was a little less impressive, but glitches happen.