Posted on 01/24/2021 7:03:26 PM PST by DUMBGRUNT
To sneak through sophisticated enemy air defenses, the service is developing the futuristic B-21 “Raider” bomber: a stealthy flying wing. To fill out its fleet, it is also counting on the B-52 Stratofortress, an aircraft designed in 1948 with a slide rule.
So essential is the B-52 to the Air Force’s long-term plans that 76 of them will fly until at least 2050. By then, the youngest will be nearly 90 years old. Some generals say the plane might live to celebrate its centennial, besides outlasting the hairdo named for it in the 1960s, which was later made a band name.
The B-52s had another advantage: They had been bought and paid for, at an original cost of a little more than $6 million apiece. “You can’t even buy a Learjet for that these days,” said Alan Williams, a former B-52 radar navigator who now is the B-52 deputy program manager at the Air Force’s Global Strike Command.
“We are a bomb truck,” said Lt. Col. Dennis Zabka, the squadron commander and the senior officer on the Guam flight. “We carry the widest variety of munitions of any aircraft.”
Some of the defenses are more rudimentary: Traps baited with mice safeguard Andersen’s runways to keep brown tree snakes from slithering on to the airfield.
The crew was ready with a scripted reply when a Chinese air controller warned the B-52 it would be intercepted: “I am a United States military aircraft conducting lawful military activities in international airspace.” No intercept occurred.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Called Arclight.
Read it here.
https://archive.vn/u1iRL
Why not rework some 747s?
Major T. J. “King” Kong said about the B-52 in the movie “Well, boys, we got three engines out, we got more holes in us than a horse trader’s mule, the radio is gone and we’re leaking fuel and if we was flying any lower why we’d need sleigh bells on this thing... but we got one little budge on them Rooskies. At this height why they might harpoon us but they dang sure ain’t gonna spot us on no radar screen!”
Our nation is bankrupt & we should fight any more wars unless we are attacked.
shouldn’t
Imagine a thousand-plane raid starring B-52’s...whoo!
The battleship of the skies. Fill it up with whatever is the latest in weaponry to drop on the enemy.
A hundred years from now we’ll be putting anti-matter engines on the last half dozen B-52s so we can bomb Chinese bases on the moon.
BUFF Time
Too hard to remove the piano from the lounge on the top deck.
“Too hard to remove the piano from the lounge on the top deck.”
On a more positive note I’d say the B-52’s “hull” (its airframe) has held up so well that it need not be replaced. It can be decorated with all sorts of new things like engines, electronics, weapons ..., but why spend billions to replace something that continues to do its job.
With the kind of wars we will fight—we could use B-29s to blow up mud huts and aspirin factories. No world wars—all big wars fought with germs and bribes. We are now Mercenaries for Chinese Masters.
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