Commander at Ellsworth Air Force Base Fired Following Scathing Accident Report into B-1B Lancer Crash

The commander of the 28th Operations Group at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota has been fired from his job, after a damning report into a B-1B Lancer crash released last week blamed the training culture for contributing to the accident.

Col. Mark Kimball, the 28th Operations Group commander, was relieved of command Friday "due to a loss of trust and confidence in his ability to command, based on the findings of an Accident Investigation Board report into the Jan. 4 crash of a B-1B bomber at Ellsworth," according to a press release from Air Force Global Strike Command. A permanent replacement has not yet been named.

The report examined the factors that caused a $450 million B-1B Lancer to miss the runway by 100 feet and crash Jan. 4, causing the four crew members to eject. As a result of the incident, two of the crew members were injured, the runway was damaged and had to be temporarily closed, and some of the base's bombers and crew were temporarily relocated to Texas.

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While the report pointed to a range of factors in the accident, including the weather, it also identified "an unhealthy organizational culture that permitted degradation of airmanship skills."

One injured crew member was not wearing proper flight equipment, and another, weighing in at nearly 260 pounds, was over the Air Force's weight limit for the ejection seat, something that "likely contributed to the severity of the injuries noted from the mishap," the report said.

The report pointed to issues in the 34th Bomb Squadron and the 28th Operations Support Squadron, both of which were underneath Kimball's command as subordinate units of the 28th Operations Group.

"The preponderance of the evidence revealed an ineffective and unhealthy culture, which directly contributed to the mishap," Col. Erick Lord, the accident board investigation president, wrote in the final accident report. "Specifically, the [34th Bomb Squadron's] overall lack of discipline, inadequate focus on basic airmanship skills, and failure to properly identify and mitigate risk, coupled with the [28th Operations Support Squadron's] ineffective communication, inadequate program management, and lack of supervisory oversight, set conditions that allowed this mishap to occur by directly leading to the mishap's cause and its three non-weather-related, substantially contributing factors."

Kimball did not immediately return Military.com's texts or voicemails seeking comment left at phone numbers listed for him in public records.

He previously served as the chief of Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Policy Division with the Joint Staff J5 at the Pentagon, and had been the deputy commander of the 28th Operations Group at Ellsworth between March and June 2020, according to his service biography.

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