Opinion: Ellsworth has failed the USAF so B-21 should be based elsewhere

It's remarkably rare when the news compels this writer to put up three posts on one day but here goes. 

After the 1997 crash of a B-1 in Carter County, Montana a responding volunteer firefighter from Alzada told this reporter the multi-million dollar aircraft was brought down by a rancher with a .30-30 Winchester. In 2005 as part of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) Republicans like Bruce Rampelberg helped to make Ellsworth Air Force Base an even bigger target for retaliatory attacks but today exercises over the Powder River Training Complex are suspended in part because of the poor condition of B-1 bombers stationed at Ellsworth. 

This interested party was in Rapid City when the last B-1 bomber based at Ellsworth augered in then it was revealed that on average it costs over $14,000 per hour in fuel alone to fly a B1 Bomber and averages over $43,000 dollars/hour to fly. In 2016 Republican former legislator Steve Hickey called for Ellsworth to be shuttered. 

The Trump Organization had planned to spend at least half a billion taxpayer dollars on each new B-21 bomber and some $1.4 TRILLION on a proposed Defense Department budget instead of really making America great again. Trump wanted to put the B-21 in red states to avoid confrontations with Democratic governors but Republicans are whining about the poor condition of the obsolete B-2 and the B-1B Lancers some of which are stationed at EAFB in occupied South Dakota. Why? Because the Republican government shutdown and the 2013 sequester to embarrass President Barack Obama ripped into military readiness. 

Meanwhile, deteriorating B-1B Lancers are eating up resources and the seventy year old B-52 continues to rain death on civilians in war torn countries on stages in the usual theaters of war. Instead of rattling impossibly expensive sabers Trump should have been accelerating the cleanup of the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contaminating nearly every military base in the United States and in the other countries subjected to American imperialism.

Incidents have plagued the aircraft now the squadron based near Rapid City has shown to be an exceedingly poor location for the B-1 tying the number of crashes with Dyess AFB at five. 

Contractors say the B-21 Raider isn't expected to be delivered until maybe 2030 so which will it be: a bomber base in South Dakota with an exceedingly poor flying record or will President Joe Biden pick New Mexico which has the bases for the aircraft and the space for women’s rights, too?