Referring to the B-1B by its nickname, "the Bone," US Air Force Central Command announced via Twitter on Sunday that a pair of the warplanes from Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota arrived in Qatar on March 31.
— US AFCENT (@USAFCENT) April 1, 2018
— US AFCENT (@USAFCENT) April 2, 2018
"It's a bird! It's a plane! This #tailTuesday we welcome the B-1 Back to Team Al-Udeid," the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing of the US Air Force said in a Tuesday Facebook post.
According to Military.com, the bombers will primarily support Operation Inherent Resolve, the anti-Daesh mission in Syria and Iraq, as well as Operation Freedom's Sentinel, the nickname for US operations in Afghanistan.
In 2016, US Air Force Col. Gentry Boswell, the commander at Ellsworth AFB at the time, told Fox News that the bomber "can put a 2,000 pound weapon on a doorknob from 15 miles away in the dark of night, in the worst weather."
But the jet, which entered service in the 1980s, is beginning to show its age, too. According to Master Sergeant Bruce Pfrommer, who has worked on the Bone for 20 years, "The [B-1B] I worked on 20 years ago had 1,000 flight hours on it. Now were looking at some of the airplanes out here that are pushing over 10,000 flight hours… The jet is breaking more today than it did 20 years ago."
