B-1 radar replacement mod completes first flight: "After five years of development and ground testing, the B-1 Lancer bomber radar replacement program successfully completed its first test flight April 20, launching from Edwards and landing as planned at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas. The Radar Reliability and Maintainability Improvement Program upgrade is required to avoid fleet grounding because of radar component obsolescence.
'The current B-1 APQ-164 radar has multiple parts that are becoming obsolete and unsupportable,' said Bill Wu, RMIP program manager. 'We are replacing them with the modern components so our customer can repair and operate the radar system, which is critical to B-1 operations.'
In addition to the hardware effort, the program upgraded most of the radar software from a 1970s era Jovial to the modern supportable C++ computer language."
