Originally Posted by
Bucking Bar
The back story was that President Carter had been briefed on stealth technology and was advised the B1 would rapidly become obsolete. He cancelled the program, but could not defend his logic due to the classified nature of the stealth program at that time. Reagan (not yet President) did not know about stealth and saw the B1 as a populist jobs program. Once elected, he kept his promises.
The B1B has been adapted to fight in ways not envisioned by its creators. If this aircraft had stuck to its original mission profile (high altitude bombing over the Soviet Union) it would have been target practice for trailer dwelling missile swine.
IMHO Carter was a submariner and stealth resonated with his ideas about war fighting.
The B-1 was designed for low-altitude penetration, which was a follow-on to the failure of the XB-70 mission, which was a 6-engine trisonic high altitude penetration bomber. After Francis Gary Powers was shot down in his high altitude U-2, the USAF scrapped plans for the XB-70 and designed the B-1. It has a low radar cross section for an aircraft it's size (1/100th of a B-52), but it's definitely not stealth.
I agree that the B-1 has adapted to missions not envisioned by its creators. When low altitude surface to air missiles got more effective at lower altitudes, that mitigated the low altitude threat.