Unlike many U.S. Air Force call signs that refer to an embarrassing incident in an airperson’s history, Major Chandler Anderson’s call sign, Mister, is benign. The name is a reference to The Matrix, whose protagonist Thomas Anderson is often addressed by the film’s antagonist as “Mr. Anderson.”
“The way the call sign was explained to me was, ‘You’re calm, cool, and collected. You’ve always done a good job. You’ve never done anything terrible—and so ‘Anderson,’ ‘Mister’—it just went hand in hand,” Anderson explains.
A “calm, cool, and collected” demeanor, like the one exhibited by The Matrix’s protagonist at the movie’s climax, is key for someone in Anderson’s line of work. Beginning in 2013, Anderson spent the better part of a decade as a weapons systems officer on a B-1 Lancer, where he was tasked both with dropping weapons and ensuring that his aircraft returned safely to base.
In the summer of 2023, Anderson and his family relocated from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, where he’d been stationed since 2020, to Los Alamos, New Mexico. Each year, Los Alamos National Laboratory hosts two members of the Air Force for a yearlong fellowship that aims to foster collaboration between those who design nuclear weapons and those who are tasked with potentially using them. Having been selected as the junior Air Force Fellow, Anderson came to New Mexico to learn about all of the ways in which the Laboratory supports the nation’s security.
Those who are familiar with the Air Force might be surprised by Anderson’s selection as a fellow at a nuclear weapons laboratory. After all, the B-1—or “Bone,” as the bomber is nicknamed (a phonetic pronunciation of “B-one”)—stopped carrying nuclear weapons in 1994, well before Anderson ever flew in the aircraft.
Anderson, however, sees the B-1 as part of the United States’ broader endeavor to deter its potential adversaries. And the Air Force Fellow program helps prepare a new generation of leaders, like Anderson, to field the United States’ nuclear weapons.
In fact, the arc of Anderson’s career—his experience onboard an aircraft, followed by a transition to nuclear strategy-making with an emphasis on deterrence—reflects the shifting geopolitical environment that the United States faces, and the evolving role that the nation’s nuclear enterprise is liable to play in helping to keep the country safe from potential adversaries.
“This is a phenomenal opportunity for us fellows, because we warfighters—the tip of the spear, as they say—are the ones potentially dropping the weapons,” Anderson says. “But the folks at Los Alamos are the ones who make that happen for us. It’s a great opportunity to bring that full circle.”
By land, sea, or air
The United States’ nuclear weapons can be delivered by three avenues that, taken together, are referred to as the nuclear triad. Aircraft that carry nuclear bombs and cruise missiles constitute the air leg of the triad, while ballistic missile-bearing submarines are the sea leg, and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are the land leg. Both the air and land legs of the triad are administered by the Air Force, while the U.S. Navy operates the sea leg.
The air leg of the nuclear triad is considered the most flexible. Aircraft can be deployed in a crisis to indicate the United States’ intentions and to reassure the nation’s allies. Moreover, unlike missiles launched from silos or submarines, planes can be recalled. The B-2 Spirit stealth bomber and the B-52 Stratofortress, the Air Force’s two nuclear-armed bombers, are capable of carrying a mix of nuclear weapons: the B-2 can carry both bombs and air-launched cruise missiles, while the B-52 carries cruise missiles.
Today, all three legs of the triad are being modernized. The Air Force’s Minuteman III ICBM is slated to be replaced by the LGM-35A Sentinel missile, while the Navy’s Ohio-class strategic ballistic missile submarines will be replaced with Columbia-class vessels.
The Air Force’s heavy bomber fleet is undergoing a transition, too, with both the B-1 (Anderson’s former aircraft) and the nuclear-armed B-2 slated to be retired and replaced by the stealth B-21 Raider. Meanwhile, the B-52, which flew its first mission for the Air Force in the 1950s, is expected to remain in service until at least the 2040s.
This plan represents a departure from what the Air Force envisioned when the B-1 entered service in the 1980s. Indeed, the supersonic B-1 was intended to replace the relatively slow B-52 as the Air Force’s flagship nuclear-armed bomber. Yet the history of the B-1 captures some of the ways in which the United States’ nuclear strategy has evolved over the past half century.
A brief history of the Bone
During the first years of the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force focused on developing aircraft that flew at sufficiently high altitudes and speeds to keep them safe from surface-to-air missile defenses. But by the 1960s, advances in the Soviet Union’s air-defense technologies made high-altitude aircraft obsolete—a point emphasized in April 1960, when Gary Powers’ U-2, flying at an altitude of some 65,000 feet, was shot down by the Soviets.
In the 1970s, the Air Force’s strategy shifted to developing bombers that could deliver cruise missiles—including nuclear-armed cruise missiles—launched far enough from targets to keep the bombers from being detected by enemy air-defense systems. The B-52, which entered service in the 1950s, fulfilled this function. However, the Air Force argued that a supersonic jet bomber designed to fly at low altitudes and high speeds would be still less vulnerable to air-defense systems than the relatively slow B-52. For this reason, the Air Force continued to push for the B-1’s development.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the B-1 program ran into mixed political headwinds. After the Nixon administration reinstated the B-1 program, the Carter administration unceremoniously canceled the bomber’s development in 1977. It wasn’t until January 1982, after the Reagan administration revived the B-1 program, that the Air Force awarded a $2.2 billion contract to Rockwell International for 100 B-1s. The last plane was delivered to the Air Force in May 1988.
Of the three bombers in the Air Force’s arsenal today—the B-1 Lancer, B-2 Spirit, and B-52 Stratofortress—the B-1 is the fastest, with a max speed of Mach 1.2, or around 900 miles per hour. The B-1 can carry up to 75,000 pounds of ordnance—more than either the B-52 or the B-2—and fly at altitudes greater than 30,000 feet.
Although the B-1 was designed to carry nuclear weapons, the aircraft’s portfolio began to change when, in 1991, President George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the Soviet Union, signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (now known as START I). In keeping with the treaty, which limited the number of nuclear-armed bombers that each country could operate, the Bush administration decided that the B-1 would become a conventionally armed aircraft.
Beginning in 1994, the Air Force stopped maintaining the arming and fuzing systems that made the B-1 nuclear capable, and the bomber ceased carrying nuclear weapons. However, it wasn’t until 2007 that the Air Force began to remove the wiring and mounting points that had allowed the B-1 to carry nuclear bombs and nuclear-armed missiles, rendering the bombers permanently incapable of deploying those weapons. The conversion process was completed in 2011, under the New START treaty.
With this change, the responsibility for delivering nuclear weapons was left to the B-52 and the stealth B-2. The shift also meant that the B-1 wouldn ’t end up replacing the B-52 after all. Instead, in the next five years, the B-21 Raider will replace both the B-1 and the B-2.
The Air Force has decided to retire the B-1 and B-2 in part because these bombers have proven expensive to maintain and upgrade. Although younger than the B-52, the United States’ B-1s suffered significant wear and tear over the course of two decades of service in the Middle East, necessitating overhauls that could cost as much as $30 million per aircraft. Phasing out the B-1s in favor of the B-21 and B-52 will be more cost effective than upgrading all the planes, while still allowing the Air Force to meet its objectives.
Although the B-1 won’t end up replacing the B-52 as planned, the B-1 will go out on something of a high note, having belatedly found its niche not as a nuclear-armed bomber, but as a conventionally armed bomber that supported U.S. and allied military operations against groups such as the Islamic State. Anderson is well qualified to speak about the Bone’s capabilities in such missions, having flown more than 800 combat hours in a B-1 above the Middle East.
An airman’s progress
Anderson is a third-generation member of the United States’ armed forces, going back to his grandfather, who flew planes and served for more than two decades in the Air Force. While Anderson was a college student at Georgia Institute of Technology—he was admitted on a football scholarship and specialized in punting—he decided to follow his brother’s example by joining the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC).
From the beginning, Anderson felt that his path in the military would lead to the sky. “I decided I wanted to fly airplanes, and that was it,” he says. In 2011, Anderson completed ROTC and received a commission to the Air Force. At the beginning of 2012, he relocated to Pensacola, Florida, for flight school.
After earning his wings in 2013, Anderson was assigned to be a B-1 weapons systems officer—tasked with operating the sensors and weapons of an aircraft—in the 34th Bomb Squadron at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota. The 34th Bomb Squadron, nicknamed the “World Famous Thunderbirds,” is the fourth-oldest active squadron in the Air Force, having been founded shortly after the United States joined World War I in 1917. While with the Thunderbirds, Anderson completed two tours of duty, first at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar and then at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam.
This latter tour involved what is known as “continuous bomber presence” missions. These missions are conducted to deter potential adversaries of the United States by demonstrating America’s ability to strike targets around the world. For example, in 2017, after North Korea conducted an ICBM test, two B-1 bombers, escorted by Japanese and South Korean fighter jets, flew from Guam and over the Korean peninsula in what was intended as a show of force to the North Korean regime.
Anderson’s first tour of duty with the 34th Bomb Squadron to Al Udeid involved active combat. The United States began conducting military operations at Al Udeid in the early 2000s. Throughout the 21st century, the air base has served as a center of operations for American and allied forces in the Middle East, including during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. More recently, Al Udeid served as the center of U.S. operations for the American-led coalition against the Islamic State.
It was at Al Udeid that the B-1, now outfitted for conventional combat, came into its own. “For roughly 20 years, from the time that the United States started conducting operations out of Al Udeid Air Base, there was a B-1 in the sky 24/7,” Anderson says.
A B-1’s four-person crew comprises two pilots and two weapons systems officers, or “wizzos,” in Air Force slang. As a weapons systems officer, Anderson is qualified to sit in both the left and right rear seats, whose occupants operate the aircraft’s defensive systems (which protect the bomber from air- or ground-based threats) and offensive systems (which enable the crew to target and drop weapons), respectively.
When Anderson arrived at Al Udeid in 2015, the United States was still conducting regular bombing operations in the Middle East. For Anderson, a typical week would involve two sorties, or missions, with an average duration of 12 to 17 hours each. His longest sortie lasted some 20 hours.
That duration doesn’t include the several hours of preparation that precede each mission. Sorties would typically begin four hours before takeoff with an intelligence briefing and a review of the air tasking order that dictated the mission’s objectives. Two hours prior to takeoff, the flight crew would dress and gather its gear, arriving at its B-1 about an hour before flight time. Then the B-1 would take to the skies, remaining aloft until, after 12-plus hours, the plane would land and its crew would debrief.
“It felt like a time warp,” Anderson says. “You’re leaving at breakfast, flying, and coming back, and then the people you saw the day prior are eating breakfast again.”
Contributing to the “time warp” experience was the tempo of the sorties themselves. On a typical sortie, Anderson’s B-1 might fly east from Al Udeid over Pakistan and into Afghanistan, or north over Bahrain and through Kuwait into Iraq or Syria. At that point, the B-1 would need to refuel, accepting some 80,000 pounds of fuel in the air from a Boeing Stratotanker hovering above. Then there might be several hours “on station”—during which the B-1’s crew would drop ordnance onto targets—followed by another break for refueling, several more hours on station, and the journey back to base.
“After that, you’d get off, eat, and rest,” Anderson says. “Then, before you knew it, it’d been three days, and we’d go do it again.”
The B-1 has the largest internal payload of any Air Force bomber. In addition to 24 air-launched cruise missiles or 24 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM), the B-1 can carry up to 84 500-pound bombs. That capacity is why the six B-1s that flew as a part of Operation Allied Force—a 1999 bombing campaign by North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces against the Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War—delivered more than 20 percent of the operation’s total ordnance while flying less than 2 percent of sorties.
“The B-1 is a super complicated aircraft, and it’s America’s workhorse,” Anderson says. “Over the course of two combat deployments, I stopped counting after I dropped my 400th bomb.”
One of Anderson’s most memorable missions was in 2015. On that sortie, his B-1 flew in support of a group of A-10 Thunderbolts, or “Warthogs”—fighter jets that often provide close air support to friendly ground troops.
Having discovered a pocket of 30 to 40 enemy fighters, Anderson says, the A-10s were well poised to drop munitions onto, and deploy guns against, targets. But due to a mechanical malfunction, the A-10s couldn’t use their laser targeting systems. Fortunately, Anderson was able to carry out what is called a “buddy lase,” targeting the weapons that the A-10s would then drop.
“We were able to get rid of every target that was nominated for us,” Anderson says. “On that particular sortie, I flew with two colonels, and both of them said that it was the most dynamic sortie they’d ever been on. Everything that the joint tactical air controller requested of us, we did.”
Air Force bomber crews pride themselves on achieving a “Winchester,” which involves attaining a mission’s objectives to such a degree that a bomber returns to base without any munitions left onboard. That Anderson’s aircraft achieved a Winchester on that mission was icing on the cake.
Integrated deterrence
Although the B-1 no longer carries nuclear weapons, Anderson says that its dependability in combat and on Bomber Task Force missions means that the aircraft still plays an important role in deterring the United States’ potential adversaries. (Bomber Task Force missions are training and deterrence missions that ensure the Air Force’s ability to operate around the world and in collaboration with the United States’ allies and partners.)
In particular, Anderson says, the B-1 helps ensure the nation’s ability to achieve strategic deterrence, which involves coordinating a breadth of combatant commands, government organizations, and allied support to deter potential adversaries.
“The B-1 has a role in strategic deterrence because it is credible,” Anderson says. “The B-1 shows that the United States can strike any target, anywhere in the world, at the time of our choosing.”
“The B-1 shows that the United States can strike any target, anywhere in the world, at the time of our choosing.”
—Chandler Anderson
In 2022, the Biden administration released its National Security Strategy (NSS) report. A key concept in the 2022 NSS is integrated deterrence, which seeks the “seamless combination of capabilities to convince potential adversaries that the costs of their hostile activities outweigh their benefits.” According to the 2022 NSS, by integrating its capabilities in this way, the United States will be better poised to achieve its aim of achieving strategic deterrence.
Among other things, integrated deterrence involves leveraging the United States’ conventional and nuclear warfighting capabilities in tandem, according to the Biden administration’s National Defense Strategy (NDS), which was also published in 2022.
“A pragmatic approach to integrated deterrence will seek to determine how the Joint Force can combine nuclear and non-nuclear capabilities in complementary ways,” the NDS says. “Our goal is to strengthen deterrence and raise the nuclear threshold of our potential adversaries in regional conflict by undermining adversary confidence in strategies for limited war that rely on the threat of nuclear escalation.”
Anderson’s career began on bombers armed with conventional weapons. But as a budding expert in nuclear strategy, he is well poised to take a holistic view of deterrence and to consider how the United States can leverage both conventional and nuclear weapons to ensure the nation’s security.
In 2020, after a deployment to the 9th Bomb Squadron that involved a second combat tour at Al Udeid, Anderson decided it was time to take his career in a different direction. He applied for, and was accepted to, a highly selective Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) internship program at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
AFGSC oversees the Air Force’s nuclear weapons portfolio. The command is one of nine major commands in the Air Force and is a successor to Strategic Air Command, which oversaw the Air Force’s strategic bomber and ICBM fleet throughout the Cold War.
The AFGSC internship program marked a change in emphasis in Anderson’s career. “As an aviator, you’re very operational,” Anderson says. “The primary thing is to be an expert in the jet. That’s what instructors always preach, and then when I became an instructor, that’s what I preached. Once I got picked up for the internship program, I got to see things at a strategic level—to see what four-, three-, and two-star generals think about bombers and everything deterrence-related. I really gained valuable insight from those leaders.”
After finishing the AFGSC internship in 2021, Anderson spent two years working for the Eighth Air Force commander as an executive officer. The Eighth Air Force, which is part of AFGSC, is also headquartered at Barksdale and controls fleets of B-1s, B-2s, and B-52s, many of which are assigned elsewhere in the United States and deployed around the world.
In 2023, Anderson jumped at the opportunity to come to Los Alamos, the better to round out his education in nuclear weaponry. At the Laboratory, Anderson is working in the Weapons Engineering associate directorate, where he is “trying to get my arms around everything the Lab cares about,” he says.
Among other topics, Anderson is learning about science-based stockpile stewardship, nuclear weapons effects, and counterproliferation. “The Lab participates in, and is expert on, a bunch of different areas,” Anderson says. “I want to be immersed in that and continue to get educated.”
Much as the United States is leveraging its varied capabilities in the name of strategic and integrated deterrence, the Laboratory is a place where Anderson can draw on the full breadth of his career, ranging from his time as a B-1 “wizzo” to the years he has spent preparing to become one of tomorrow’s nuclear strategy-makers.
“Los Alamos is where it all started,” Anderson says. “If I were a B-52 air crew member or a B-2 pilot and a nuclear weapon was loaded onto my aircraft, it’s the national laboratories that make that happen. We can talk about strategic deterrence today because of Los Alamos.” ★