Obsolete Geezer Airplanes ?? Ask WHY we still have truly ancient jets, like the B-52 and the KC-135, both of which are in excess of 50-year-old designs ?
Simple: the need for the capability has not gone away, but previous “savings” prevented their replacement. And since the Ear Leader isn’t going to build new jets. . .
The B-52 and the KC-135 are both great aircraft. The B-52 will be nearly 95 yrs old when we finally retire it. For long range, high altitude bombing - the B-52 has passed the test of time. For re-fueling, really there is no replacment for the KC-135 that I’m aware of (which I freely admit, isn’t saying a lot). As I indicated earlier, I make no claim of expertise in this area.
However, do we still need to maintain the U-2? How many different jet trainers do we need? C-5, C-10, KC-10 and C-32? That many Cargo aircraft? Seriously, how many different type of Cargo aircraft do we need to support? Simply stated, we don’t “NEED” every type of aircraft we have. There is plenty of over-lap and redundancy. A wise person would check the stats on how many of each do we have, their failure records (why fix lemons?) and if we scrap ‘x’ of one aircraft, can we buy more of a better upgrade?