The things they REALLY have are so far advanced it's amazing. But will they ever use them to defend our soil??

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The U.S. Air Force has grounded its entire fleet of B1-B bombers after finding a problem with the plane's fuel system.

That takes out a third of the Air Force's entire fleet of bombers.

General Tim Ryan, commander of the Global Strike Command, said that he 'ordered a safety stand-down' on Tuesday.

The decision was made after a 'ground emergency' on April 8 at Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota - one of two bases where the B1-B is currently housed. The other is Dyess Air Force Base, in Texas.

The troubled aircraft, first brought into service under Ronald Reagan, are due to be phased out by 2030.

In the most recent incident engineers discovered what defense website The War Zone said was a 'massive hole' in the filter housing, which was leaking a large amount of fuel.

Of the 100 built, the U.S. Air Force decided in 2001 to retire 33, to pay for modernization efforts. In February, 17 more were retired, meaning that the force was down to just 45, according to FlightGlobal.

A year before, in April 2020, Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem (ret.) and Douglas Birkey had warned that America's bomber force was facing a crisis.

At the end of the Cold War, they wrote in DefenseNews.com, the USAF possessed 400 bombers designed to fight the Soviet Union. They said the figure by April 2020 had dropped to just 157 - down to 140, since the February retirement of the 17 B1-Bs.

The U.S. Air Force operates B-1s, B-2s and B-52s, and is one of only three countries to have bombers.

Russia, according to a February report by the Center for Naval Analysis, has 127 SU-34 fighter bombers, and one or two TU-160 strategic bombers.

China is by far the leader in bombers, according to a new count by plane-spotter Thomas Shugart, cited by Forbes in November.

Shugart found that the Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force possesses as many as 231 H-6s.

The B1-B supersonic bomber, known as the 'Bone', began service in 1985.