Posted on 09/10/2018 6:35:36 AM PDT by C19fan
The Air Force has begun a series of major upgrades to its oldest aircraft — the B-52H Stratofortress — to keep the fleet viable until about 2050.
The iconic B-52 airframes first came off the production line more than six decades ago.
The service currently possesses 76 of the long-range subsonic strategic bombers, split between Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, and Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, and operated by the service’s Global Strike Command as well as Air Force Reserve Command.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationaldefensemagazine.org ...
Honestly, that is just plain absurd.
Aircraft piloted by someone born 4 generations after it left the factory?
The truth is we need a new bomb truck, but we can’t afford it.
Take a trip to Louisiana or North Dakota
The current engines are original to the H models, the last of which came off the manufacturing line in 1962,
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A Rolls-Royce spokesperson said via email that the company plans to establish a new U.S.-based assembly line to build and test the engines, should it win the contract. The engine itself was not disclosed. GE Aviation did not respond to a request for comment.
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“One of the issues is that there was never a clear plan for how long the Air Force was going to continue flying them,” he said. “There was no plan to get rid of them, but I don’t think they had nearly as definitive a statement that said, ‘We will fly this aircraft into the 2050s.’
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Use to watch the B-52’s take off from Mather AFB in Sacramento. My really good friends dad was part of the B-52 24hr standby crews there. What a great bomber.
How about the 747-800 B
That would be like using Civil War weapons today.
My dad was USAF and I was born on SAC base and raised on SAC bases until I was 14. Watched many, many a BUFF take off.
Yeah. It’s pretty awesome.
As long as the airframe holds up, and as long as limitations on operation uses are observed, why not. There are still uses for a large capacity "Bomb Truck." If the '52 can still do the job cheaper than a newly developed bomber, why not keep it.
The US probably cannot afford to replace all of those B-52s with new bombers - the cost would likely be astronomical. Therefore we will have 80 year old planes defending the US by mid-century. I don’t see how this is sustainable - either the US develops relatively inexpensive drone aircraft capable of fulfilling the role of the B-52, or we watch China field newer, more capable aircraft in the decades to come.
The USAF has a procurement for a new stealth bomber the B21 Raider with projected service date of 2025.
“Engine Upgrades, Digitization to Keep B-52s Flying Into 2050s”
Nice, but I suspect that most of the B-52 flight crews would prefer the old cable-driven engine controls when flying through (or into) a nuclear battlefield.
...but then again, maybe I’m old-fashioned.
More like using the Ma Deuce today. Fortunately, that would never happen.
Do you know if they’re considering (again!) 4x big high-bypass engines, or 8x smaller ones?
(I understand the original “No, it will be too expensive” studies the USAF used to deny the engine replacements used the “fuel truck at the base” price of jet fuel to calculate cost savings with the modern, more fuel-efficient engines. Not the “jet fuel cost at the tanker’s nozzle at 35,000 feet.” )
“The truth is we need a new bomb truck, but we can’t afford it.”
We have newer bombers. What is our air force missing now that the B52 can’t supply.
“The US probably cannot afford to replace all of those B-52s with new bombers - the cost would likely be astronomical.”
Only if we want it to be. The B2’s were cheap, and so were the B1’s, once we got the development costs out of the way (certainly no more expensive than the B-52s). The problem with both was that we had left-wing Congress’s, so we had to deal with people like Maxine running the DOD budget. The additional problem with the B2 was that “The End of History” (i.e., no more Cold War, peace all over the world), meant that there would never be a need for a military again, much less new bombers - so the production count went from 132 to 75 to 21.
Needless to say, the Left (and probably the to-be NeverTrumpers) had a field day saying how hugely expensive the B2’s were...which they were, if you folded in development costs into a run of 21 aircraft, rather than 132 aircraft.
Just some details the Left would prefer conservatives not understand...and thus many do not.
The BUFF, will it fly forever?
Worked on the B52 electronics 1971 thru 1975 in North Dakota and upstate NY.
At that time they used mini vacuum tubes. Produced a lot of heat.
Took apart a radar monitor one time and found a fried mouse.
Saw them go to transistors then integrated circuits with infra red and and video cameras.
The older models were used in Guam and N. Vietnam.
Those had a periscope bombing sights like the WWII planes.
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