source: gulf times

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A B1 bomber in air over Wyoming, Us

 

A B-1 BOMBER belonging to tForce caught he US Air fire last night at the Al Udeid Air Base, 35km south of Doha.
A spokesperson for the US Air Force Central Public Affairs Office, South West Asia, said: “The US Air Force B-1, while taxiing after landing at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, was involved in a ground incident and caught fire at 21.10 local time on April 4.
“The crew evacuated the aircraft and is safe. The fire was contained. A board of inquiry has been appointed and will investigate the incident.”
At the time of going to print, officials in Qatar were not confirming the incident and the Air Force Public Affairs Office was looking into local reports that a number of explosions had been clearly heard in parts of Doha at the time the B-1 caught fire.
An earlier report from Al Jazeera English said the B-1 had crashed.
Reuters also reported the incident citing a US Defence official as saying: “A B-1 crashed. We are investigating. We don’t know how many people were on board or what mission the bomber was conducting.”
Meanwhile, AFP said another official, who was travelling with Defence Secretary Robert Gates in Oman, had denied that the bomber had crashed, claiming there was “an explosion aboard a B-1 bomber on the ground”.
However, this failed to explain local accounts in and around the surrounding area of the base.
One source told Gulf Times: “I heard repeated loud explosions and the ground beneath my feet was shaking. When I ran out of my accommodation to see what was going on, I could see smoke billowing into the sky.”
Another source said: “I was at home when I heard a deep rumble like thunder. A few seconds later I heard it again, and then one more time. When I went outside I could not see anything, but I did hear a number of emergency sirens. I assumed there had been some kind of major accident on the roads.”
Although there was no comment from the authorities, the roads leading to the air base were closed to traffic, indicating an incident of some sort had occurred. Ambulances and police vehicles were also seen racing through Doha in the direction of the base.
Despite all the signs pointing to a major incident having taken place at Al Udeid, there was never any suggestion that there was a direct threat to the security of Qatar and no civilian flights were disrupted at Doha International Airport as a result of the incident.
The B-1 is a long range bomber capable of flying intercontinental missions without refuelling and is able to penetrate sophisticated defensive networks.
The B-1, which was estimated to cost $283.1mn in 1998, was conceived as part of the Advanced Manned Strategic Aircraft (AMSA) programme around 1965.
AMSA was the last in a series of programmes through the 1960s that looked at replacing the B-52 Stratofortress with a multi-role supersonic aircraft capable of long-range bombing and missile launching with nuclear weapons.
A series of cancellations led to its service introduction being greatly delayed, until the later half of the 1980s, over 20 years after the programme first started.
Last month, a B-1 bomber slid off the runway at Anderson Air Force Base on Guam, crashing into a group of emergency vehicles. The military reported that there were no injuries and no fatalities as a result of the accident.
The $1.4bn Al Udeid Air Base is the home of the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing of the US Air Force. It has the longest runway in the Middle East — 3,751m.
It is estimated that about 3,300 US troops, mostly army, plus pre-positioned equipment, are stationed in the base.
The base can accommodate up to 120 aircraft. Early in the Afghanistan campaign, F-16 fighters and E-8C Joint Stars reconnaissance planes that monitor ground units were based here, along with refuelling tankers.
Military research group Globalsecurity.org states that the base also houses the 44th, 340th and 379th Expeditionary Air Refuelling squadrons; 434th and 911th Air Refuelling Wings; and 93rd Air Control Wing.