After 60 Years, B-52s Still Dominate U.S. Fleet

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/us/b-52s-us-air-force-bombers.html

by otoolep • 11 years ago

149 146 11 years ago

Two things strike me: 1. If it ain't broke, don't fix it 2. The military/red-tape bureaucracy/contracting/bid system behemoth that has been created in the meantime disallows any innovation that could ever take its place

toomuchtodo• 11 years ago

I'd argue your first point directly contradicts your second point.

I don't want the military failing hard and failing fast. Make it work, make it work well, and then don't mess with it.

The B-52s are a shining example of this.

Behold:

"The unexpectedly long career is due in part to a rugged design that has allowed the B-52 to go nearly anywhere and drop nearly anything the Pentagon desires, including both atomic bombs and leaflets. But it is also due to the decidedly underwhelming jets put forth to take its place."

"“There have been a series of attempts to build a better intercontinental bomber, and they have consistently failed,” said Owen Coté, a professor of security studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Turns out whenever we try to improve on the B-52, we run into problems, so we still have the B-52.”"

parasubvert• 11 years ago

"I don't want the military failing hard and failing fast. Make it work, make it work well, and then don't mess with it."

This presumes the mission, terrain, and enemy remains static, which has really never been the case. What worked in WW2 isn't often going to be effective for today's problems.

Sure there are jobs that are nearly eternal, from which we should pick proven designs, doctrines. But especially in wartime, a "fail fast, fail cheap, and learn quickly" is exactly what I would want in a military to complement the decades of bureaucratic planning that preceded in peacetime.

justinator• 11 years ago

If you RTFA, you'll see that it is broken.

This article is silly. The replacement of the B-52 isn't a better bomber, it's a different tech; ICBMs, drones, etc. - which the article doesn't even mention.

The article also mentions the amount of B 52s there are, and were. Today's fleet could be described as, "small" in comparison.

chrisseaton• 11 years ago

I think the US considered using ICBMs to deliver conventional strikes (and in fact they didn't even contain a warhead - just the kinetic energy of the missile was enough), but decided against it as they couldn't be differentiated from a nuclear strike by early warning systems.

As for drones - the B-52s are very long range aren't they? As in they take off from the US to strike in the middle east or anywhere else? Can any drone do that? So if you don't have a drone in theatre, it can't replace what the B-52 does.

Sanddancer• 11 years ago

You're neglecting the psychological aspect of the B-52. That antiquated technology means that you have a loud, lumbering plane flying overhead that you damn well know is full of angry death. ICBMs, Drones, etc designed for stealth, while advantageous in other aspects, really can't deliver that payload.

esaym• 11 years ago

As someone that used to be an aircraft mechanic on military planes, the running motto was "If it ain't broke, fix it 'till it is!"

perlgeek• 11 years ago

Even as the bombers were being assembled, defense officials were planning their replacement, but each plan was undone by its own complexity. First was a nuclear-powered bomber able to stay aloft for weeks (too radioactive), then the supersonic B-58 with dartlike wings (kept crashing), and then the even faster B-70 (spewed highly toxic exhaust).

Second system syndrome at its finest.

Sounds like what they really want is a new implementation of roughly the same design as the B-52.

vinceguidry3• 11 years ago

Good luck getting the Air Force to redesign a WW2-era plane. If there's one thing I learned reading the Boyd biography, it's that the Pentagon is constitutionally incapable of thinking pragmatically about technology.

crikli• 11 years ago

Sounds like a good read, are you referring to this? http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed-ebook/d...

stretchwithme2• 11 years ago

If The Pentagon Wars got only half of the problems right, this system needs to completely changed.

People who decide how to spend the money should not be going to defense contractors when they retire. And a problem that Ike pointed out 62 years ago shouldn't take this long to be changed.

How we elect our representatives is the root of the problem.

ufmace2• 11 years ago

From what I've read, it seems like a problem of being overly obsessed with the highest tech and most dramatic missions. Every new bomber is designed for the goal of nuking Moscow, including figuring out the best way to get past defenses. Never mind that if we actually wanted to nuke Moscow, we would use ICBMs instead.

What we really seem to have demand for is something that can carry a whole bunch of bombs cheaply and reliably in airspace that we already have air supremacy over. But apparently the Air Force can't get it's head around that design goal. Nobody seems to want to champion a cheap, dumb bomb truck plane that does simple stuff right every time. Instead, they keep going for the technological marvel designed for a goal that we'll probably never need to do and already have better weapons for anyways.

dTal• 11 years ago

You can't have a cheap, simple plane! Lockheed-Martin have to eat!

(unless you can get some foreign chumps to sell you their cheap, reliable planes and order Lockheed-Martin's latest contraption, which will arrive Any Day Now - everyone wins!)

Turing_Machine3• 11 years ago

"Never mind that if we actually wanted to nuke Moscow, we would use ICBMs instead."

Look up "nuclear triad", "not putting all your eggs in one basket", and "suspenders and belt".

azernik2• 11 years ago

Which is what the Soviets did - Russia still operates Tu-95s whose basic design comes from the exact same period as the B-52, but they built new versions and retired the old ones right up to the fall of the Soviet Union.

trhway2• 11 years ago

Russia still uses the "Bear" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-95 too.

In particular it has been just used to fire stealth cruise missiles Kh-101 - by contrast, the most modern weapon, almost 60 years younger than the bomber itself - in Syria.

tomohawk3• 11 years ago

"infamy lingering from the carpet bombing of Vietnam"

Carpet bombing is defined as bombing within a large boxed area with the goal of obliterating everything in the area regardless of the military value of the targets in the area.

Yes, B52s carpet bombed some jungle areas of Vietnam. No, there was no carpet bombing of Hanoi, which is what this is probably referring to. Can't believe after all of these years the NYT is still misreporting this. If Hanoi had been carpet bombed, it would have been leveled. It's obvious that bombing was limited to specific targets of military value.

tosseraccount5• 11 years ago

Clinton used B-52s to do carpet bombing in Europe in 1999, too.

http://theaviationist.com/2014/10/16/b-52-in-allied-force/

ceejayoz7• 11 years ago

On troop concentrations, with dozens of bombs, not tens of thousands. Comparing the two situations is a bit silly.

trhway2• 11 years ago

No, there was no carpet bombing of Hanoi

actually were.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20719382 "North Vietnam, 1972: The Christmas bombing of Hanoi"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-52_Stratofortress#Vie...

"The zenith of B-52 attacks in Vietnam was Operation Linebacker II (sometimes referred to as the Christmas Bombing) which consisted of waves of B-52s (mostly D models, but some Gs without jamming equipment and with a smaller bomb load). Over 12 days, B-52s flew 729 sorties[148] and dropped 15,237 tons of bombs on Hanoi, Haiphong, and other targets.[90][149] "

If Hanoi had been carpet bombed, it would have been leveled.

Hanoi did have air defense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-52_Stratofortress#/me...

rhino3692• 11 years ago

The air defenses weren't that great. They could knock down some B52s but the majority could deliver their payload and return.

The Wikipedia article on Linebacks II says the US air force targeted military targets and power plants.

Around 1700 people died. A true carpet bombing of a city like Hanoi would result in a lot more than that.

tomohawk3• 11 years ago

Bombing. Not carpet bombing. The bombing was directed at military targets.

With carpet bombing, there would have been considerably more civilian casualties. If you look at actual history books, you'll find that the Vietnamese authorities were surprised at the accuracy of the bombing.

mikeash3• 11 years ago

This is a fascinating conversational tactic. You take a statement, say that they "probably" meant something else, then mercilessly attack them for "saying" that something else.

Bravo!

ceejayoz7• 11 years ago

No, there was no carpet bombing of Hanoi, which is what this is probably referring to.

I think if they meant Hanoi they'd have said Hanoi, not "Vietnam".

tomohawk3• 11 years ago

The only other option would be that they were referring to the carpet bombing of military formations in the field as being infamous. The carpet bombing by B52s of North Vietnamese troops in the field did occur, but was hardly infamous.

unchocked• 11 years ago

The B.U.F.F. (Big Ugly Fat Fucker) is a bomb truck: it carries heavy ordinance over long distances in uncontested airspace. Yes it drinks fuel, yes it's a maintenance hog, but it's paid for.

elemenopy• 11 years ago

I think you mean ordnance [1] :)

1. http://grammarist.com/usage/ordinance-ordnance/

mikeash3• 11 years ago

Once we master the art of political warfare, we can send B-52s to drop destructive parking regulations, zoning requirements, noise restrictions, and other heavy ordinances to cripple the enemy.

azernik2• 11 years ago

The New York Times tries to play up the issues of the (indeed, terrible) American military procurement system, but I think there's something else going on. The B-52's Soviet equivalent, the Tu-95 (turboprop-powered, even!) is also still flying!

Part of the cause is that big bombers with enormous payload capacity and long range can always be adapted to new missions and tactics - there's always something you can do with an extra few tens of tons of ordnance.

Where the US military-industrial complex has fallen down on the job is that the physical airframes are still from the original production run. While the USAF always thought its new and different (first supersonic, then stealth) bomber designs would allow it to retire the B-52, the Soviets kept building new variants and retiring old airframes. So while American B-52s have been heroically kept operating since the 50s and 60s, Russian Air Force Tu-95s were all built in the 80s and early 90s with assorted design improvements and new avionics.

ceejayoz7• 11 years ago

So while American B-52s have been heroically kept operating since the 50s and 60s, Russian Air Force Tu-95s were all built in the 80s and early 90s with assorted design improvements and new avionics.

I'd expect modern B-52s are mostly Ships of Theseus and that little of the original avionics, wiring, metal, etc. still exist.

mikeash3• 11 years ago

Wiring and avionics and such, yes, but the structure is still original. This matters because of metal fatigue, which means that the structure is getting worse by the year.

kevin_thibedeau• 11 years ago

The B-52 airframes have long been planned to be in use for 95 years when they're finally retired. I wish I could find an image but I distinctly remember a publication from the 80's that showed a chart of the all aircraft in use from their first year of entering service to the projected EOL. The B-52 was a notable outlier in how long it was going to be kept in service. I always assumed it was an extended life test for the USAF. They are also insurance against a cataclysmic event that makes modern technology hard to maintain.

radiowave• 11 years ago

The B-52 was intended to carry out the airborne nuclear deterrent role, and therefore accrue a colossal number of flying hours. But of course after about 1992 they stopped flying quite so much.

cstross• 11 years ago

Yup: the Russian Tu-95 fleet (over 60 flying airframes) is currently undergoing modernization (upgraded navigation and weapons systems, including newer nuclear-warheaded cruise missiles) and is expected to stay in service until 2025 or later:

http://sputniknews.com/military/20151121/1030508547/tu-95-bo...

(They're trying to restart production of the Tu-160 -- the world's biggest, fastest bomber ever to enter service: a bit larger than a B52 but with supersonic dash capability -- but having real trouble with the engines; my money is on the Tu-95 sticking around at least as long as the B52, for exactly the same reason.)

yareally• 11 years ago

Eh, the Tu-160 looks like a faster clone of the B-1 Bomber. The B-1 was supposed to replace the B-52, but proved to be much more expensive and nowhere as versatile. Guessing Russia is going to find out it's also not a practical replacement for the the Tu-95 as the US did with the B-1.

antubbs3• 11 years ago

There have never been very many operational Tu-160 bombers in service. The Tu-160 is focused on the standoff weapon role, and is ideally meant to delivering tactical ordinance while enemy air defense is still in effect. Standoff weapons are expensive, even compared to "smart" conventional weapons.

Tu-95 is a big dumb bomber much in the way the B-52 is; since it also has/is getting the standoff capability, it's hard to argue the purpose of the Tu-160.

A lot of the newer bombers were built with the nuclear role in mind; in reality the world went in the direction of smart conventional weapons instead. For that role, aircraft like the Tu-95 and BUFF are more ideal, as they can just act as a large "bomb truck" and drop a large quantity of guided conventional munitions very efficiently once air defenses are suppressed.

Shivetya• 11 years ago

throw in that the enemies it is used against aren't first rate and the stand off ability with cruise missiles and why wouldn't it have a place?

mangeletti5• 11 years ago

Indeed!

I've often wondered why, for instance, we don't build brand new A-10 Warthogs. They provide the best close air support in perhaps the entire history of military aviation worldwide (great range, extremely resilient to small arms fire, low altitude / low speed capabilities, etc.). Instead, the Marines Corps scrambles (no pun intended) to find a replacement after realizing that the JSF program wasn't real (it turns out that the F-35 will bankrupt the Milky Way Galaxy before being finished, not to mention it has too much wing loading to provide adequate close air support). Yet, the wonderfully designed A-10 Warthog languishes in military relic status.

Why not make new copies these greats, with any of the little kinks worked out?

MrBuddyCasino• 11 years ago

The A-10 is not a plane that will be useful for long. It is great against rebels with kalashnikows, but it is far too vulnerable to rockets. In 10-20 years, manpads will be commonplace, and the A-10 will be an easy target.

Its a great plane, and the JSF is shit, but we need a different solution going forward.

CydeWeys7• 11 years ago

The main armament of the A-10, the GAU-8 Avenger Vulcan cannon, no longer does its job against modern armor. It still has all sorts of rockets and missiles it can be equipped with that do, but so do many other planes. It's fine in asymmetric conflicts like the current wars, where targets are slightly armored if that, but it will no longer serve its purpose in a war of first world nations.

jasonwatkinspdx• 11 years ago

The A-10 is great, but there are a number of reasons why we aren't building more of them. Chief among them is that the teams and facilities that produced them have been gone for decades now. It's not a product you can simply re-order. Of the planes in inventory, it's efficient and useful in low intensity CAS, but if you were ordering new for those missions you'd likely focus on something that's less overkill and lower cost like the super tucano.

kjs3• 11 years ago

The A-10 is the P-51 of today. It was a defining weapon of it's time, but it became unsurvivable on a more modern battlefield. Ask the guys who flew the P-51 in Korea how awesome it was. The A-10 is extremely vulnerable to any number of modern tactical AA weapons, and it won't get any more survivable.

engi_nerd5• 11 years ago

JSF costs are on a downward trend, and will continue that trend as production numbers increase[0]. For a financial breakdown of the projected costs of the program, see [1], [2](actual source for data in [0] and [1]).

And the program is very, very real. I am aware of other programs which really existed to funnel money to more secret programs, but the JSF program is not one of those front programs.

We don't build more A-10s because they no longer meet the projected operational needs of the USAF, which, along with the rest of the military, is changing strategic focus to the Asia/Pacific region. [3] Not to mention the production line is long since shutdown (32 years ago!) and the tooling either destroyed or lost. The knowledge to build them is lost. You do not simply build more. You have to teach yourself to build them again. This would take years.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/H5fTkIU.png

[1] http://i.imgur.com/6cV6I7g.png

[2] http://breakingdefense.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/0... (The definitive source for F-35 cost data).

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/F35Lightning/comments/3a7yol/articl... (full text of paywalled Aviation Week article)

epaga• 11 years ago

The A-29 was meant to be exactly this. It's a sad story, well-told by Vice. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/low-and-slow

Marazan• 11 years ago

I love the A-10 but in keeping with the rest of the US military it got lucky which hlped it's reputation enormously.

The US military spent the 80's allegedly training to fight a defensive war in Western Europe - but when you look at the wargames they engaged in what they actually trained for was an aggressive war in a desert (this isn't some wacky conspiracy theory, it's just basic incompetence by the people setting the military exercises, they looked at the crowded cluttered maps that represented Germany and despaired that they wouldn't get to use the 2 mile cannon range on their tanks in the wargames so the maps got altered until they were far to open to be Western Europe).

The A-10 is perfect for CAS in a desert - in Afghanistan they didn't do as well as their lower agility compared to other jets made it harder for them to dodge mountains which affects their legendary ability to loiter.

caf• 11 years ago

Yes, compare it to the C-130 which entered service around the same time as the B-52 - it's been revised many times over the years, up to the J model.

protomyth• 11 years ago

Well, if the B-1 had been designed for conventional payloads or hadn't become such a political promise in the 1980 election, the B-52 would probably have been retired. Even the B-3 specs don't look like something that will retire the B-52.

Honestly, I'm really not sure that the whole justification on "strategic" vs "tactical" bombing that spawned a separate Air Force was such a good idea given the types of wars fought in the nuclear age.

WalterBright• 11 years ago

The DC-3 is another airframe that just never goes obsolete.

pretzel• 11 years ago

What I don't get is, if it is such a simple aircraft - pretty much an airliner with the passenger section being a bomb bay - and we're pretty good at making airliners these days - why don't they as a short term stop gap just turn an airliner airframe into a bomber?

With modern materials, avionics and engines you could have a aircraft that flies faster and more efficiently, thus able to fly further and for less ongoing maintenance cost. I also imagine training would be simpler, if it meant they didn't have to train pilots with slide rules...

Roboprog4• 11 years ago

You would of course have to replace the electronics with simpler "hardened" versions. Can't have your B-252 brought down by a cell phone :-) (let alone an EMP)

I like the idea, but likely a large number of components would be replaced by less efficient, but more durable, variants.

Roboprog4• 11 years ago

Like slide rules :-)

bsamuels• 11 years ago

the B52's benefits center around it being such a simple aircraft.

modern passenger aircraft have complications and have made design decisions that increase complexity, require more maintenance, and add cost. airliners are willing to put up with these costs because they add to passenger comfort.

semi-extrinsic• 11 years ago

FWIW, the Boeing E3 Sentry (the "AWACS plane") was based on the Boeing 707.

But for a B-52 replacement, I think civilian planes have quite a few problems. For one, the wings are attached in the wrong place; on the B-52 they're more to the front, since the bomb bay has to be at the centre of balance. (Otherwise the plane becomes difficult to control after dropping the payload.) Another issue is that a commercial jet has a unneccesarily wide body, increasing drag. (Bombs are much denser than people.) A third is that commercial jets probably can't take the same level of structural loads in case of evasive action, particularly at lower altitudes. Compare the AWACS example: that airplane should never come close to enemy fire. A bomber most certainly would have to.

All those are engineering challenges, and could be solved. I guess the biggest reason is that it would cost more than you would gain.

jokamoto• 11 years ago

The B-52 is already something of a case study as far as the changes required to allow a high-altitude aircraft to endure prolonged low altitude missions. SAC's switch to low-altitude attack profiles during the Cold War resulted in a huge number of modifications and overhauls to SAC B-52s specifically to allow for prolonged low-altitude flight.

pinewurst• 11 years ago

That would be workable only if missions entailed takeoff, climb to 30,000 feet, dropping bombs and returning.

Much of the design difference between an airliner and a strategic bomber is due to extreme stresses from flying balls-out speed at treetop altitude. Older B-52 variants (pre-G) were retired when they couldn't take the load, because they were designed for max altitude cruise and weapons delivery. A big part of the B-1A to B-1B redesign involved removing the fancy high-altitude air intakes and restressing for extended treetop flight (and reducing RCS).

jonathankoren2• 11 years ago

You would think right?

For a parallel, let's look at the state of the USAF tanker fleet ("Nobody kicks ass without tanker gas!") The workhorse of the fleet is the pride of 1957, the KC-135. They're old, and so the Air Force wants to replace them, with the KC-46, which is pretty much a Boeing 767 but with seats replaced with big gas tank, and boom off the back. The 767 isn't a new airframe, it's a 30 year old design. And aerial refueling isn't a new technology either. Afterall, the plane that's being replaced has been in service for almost 60 years. Proven airframe. Proven technology. This is a slam dunk right?

Well, no. The KC-46 keeps getting delayed.[1] It's essentially too complicated and too flashy. For exampe, Boeing is ditching the tried and true, and dirt simple system of guiding refueling booms by having a guy look at a window and put the boom into the receptacle, and instead go with some unproven system using an occulus rift and stereo cameras. Why? I don't know. I guess because it's "high tech".

And do you want to know the most damning part of all? Boeing currently sells the KC-767, a refueling tanker based on the 767 airframe, that not only works, but is cheaper than the KC-46, and available today!

It's almost as bad as the F-35 debacle, but not quite.

Honestly, I don't think the military knows how to buy anything, and the contractors take advantage of that. It's Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex writ large.

[1] http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/broken-booms-why-is-it-so-h... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_KC-46_Pegasus

SHIT_TALKER• 11 years ago

Don't forget Eisenhower's original wording described it as the military-industrial-congressional complex. The KC-X would be flying if the original contract to EADS had not been scuttled by Congress:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X

antubbs3• 11 years ago

The hilarious thing is that the KC-46 is basically a means of keeping the Boeing 767 production line open and operating and producing airplanes even though Boeing has replaced it with the 777 and 787 for commercial customers. They may be new production aircraft, but they are not modern in any sense of the word. See also: The POTUS being about the only customer actually interested in purchasing the 747-8i these days.

engi_nerd5• 11 years ago

Question: is Boeing pushing this high tech approach, or are they just designing and building to match a requirement?

In other words, is the government dumb enough to ask for it and pay for it, or is Boeing just out to lunch?

vpribish5• 11 years ago

The B52 and earlier bombers programs at Boeing directly contributed to the development of their airliners - so it's kind of the other way around, historically.

you might find this mid-1970's project amusing: cruise missiles from a 747. http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/why-boeings-design-for-a-74...

rjsw3• 11 years ago

This is exactly what has been done for the P-8 [1], it is a 737 with a bomb bay.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_P-8_Poseidon

nickhalfasleep• 11 years ago

The B-52 (and Tu-95) can stay in the air so long as their is no challenge to air superiority. The last real challenge might have been the Vietnam war for B-52's and their SA-2 missiles. Once real challengers show up, they have to be herded away. Just look at the decimation of B-29's over Korea when Mig-15's showed up.

Roboprog4• 11 years ago

Yes.

They bat cleanup in an established no-fly zone.

lmm• 11 years ago

The C-130 is still in service too, for the same reason. The mission hasn't changed. The B-52 simply doesn't do anything really technological - it's not stealthed, it's not intended to go head-to-head with fighters. It carries a big load of bombs and drops them somewhere, and the technology for that was fundamentally done by the '60s. There will come a time when we don't need to redesign our aircraft every few decades any more than we do our infantry's rifles.

morgante2• 11 years ago

There will come a time when we don't need to redesign our aircraft every few decades any more than we do our infantry's rifles.

Except that the M4 is from 1994, making it significantly younger than the B52.

rangibaby2• 11 years ago

I think it's possible to convert an M4 into its contemporary M16 and vice versa.

CydeWeys7• 11 years ago

Huh? The M4 was directly based on the M16, which was based on the AR-15, which was all ultimately based on the AR-10, which was first made in the mid 1950s, thus making it almost exactly as old as the B-52 bomber.

There's a lot more differences between a B-52 bomber when it first rolled off the production line and what they're like now than there are between an AR-10 and a modern M4, though of course the rifles are a lot less complicated.

dingaling• 11 years ago

The mission that the C-130 performs changed significantly in its first 20 years.

It was shoe-horned into tactical airlift in Vietnam when the C-123 was withdrawn. Despite how it its viewed today that was never its intended mission and several aspects of the design ( in-line undercarriage wheels, narrowing centre cabin ) make it less than suitable. It was designed for medium-haul MAC trash-hauling, not tactical landings on forward strips. But it was available when a need arose and the role stuck because there was nothing else appropriate.

The Transall was a proper tactical airlifter with low ground pressure,high sink-rate and kneeling undercarriage. But the USAF would never buy it. The French, Turks and South Africans used both types simultaneously to complement each other.

Today we see the C-17 being pushed the other way, as a pseudo-strategic airlifter with horrendous inefficiencies.

vpribish5• 11 years ago

This is a worthless article. Yes, the B-52 is old - but it works. Yes, replacements with different missions for different times have failed, or come and gone. We're about to build the LSB which will try to replace the old plane more directly than those previous programs. Defense procurement is messed up. none of this is news.

the article is wrong in so many of the pithy little notes that the whole thing comes off as snarky propaganda at best.

* the nuclear-powered bomber was never seen as a practical program - just a way-out-there experiment

* the B-58 was retired because ICBMs did it's job much better as soviet defenses improved

* The (x)b-70 did not have highly toxic exhaust - it used regular jet fuel. author was confused about 'zip fuel' which could have been used in many planes - but didn't go into use.

* weighed down by infamy?

* like taking a biplane to iraq? huh?

geeze - having gone over this in more depth I think that the author actually has no message at all. it's just a bit of filler, with some 1960's antiwar jabs, and an arch tone.

WatchDog• 11 years ago

Had a little bit of trouble figuring out what the LSB was.

It appears you are referring to the LRS-B.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Strike_Bomber

vpribish5• 11 years ago

that's the one - thanks for clarifying!

function_seven• 11 years ago

This line made my bullshit detector go off:

    ... but in a prelude of future problems, the first B-1 unveiled in 1985,
    in front of a crowd of 30,000, failed to start.

That is not what happened, not even close. The plane was damaged during delivery two days prior to the unveiling. It didn't "fail to start", they didn't try to start it after it was damaged. All of this didn't occur "in front of a crowd of 30,000"; again, it occurred two days before.

Much like the points you made, this line is another ham-fisted attempt to paint what happened in the most embarrassing way possible, by drawing an image in the reader's mind of a bumbling pilot turning the key and the starter cranking over without starting. The author knows this (I got it from his link[1]).

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/30/us/30000-hail-bomber-debut...

drdeadringer• 11 years ago

Think of when we reach the point where a piece of "high technology" reaches its 100th year of operation.

Some bank of servers or other type of computer, or this B-52 airplane, or cruise-liner.

Roboprog4• 11 years ago

So when do the B-52s get the "Battleship Yamato" treatment?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Battleship_Yamato

OK, kidding about the cartoon alien tech, but somehow, I would not be shocked to see somebody strapping high tech engines under the BUFF to give it [sub]orbital capability some day :-)

vpribish5• 11 years ago

They are actually talking about replacing the troublesome old engines with ones from modern passenger planes - it hinges on the expected lifetime to recoup the costs through maintenance and efficiency (a bet that would have been wonderful at any time in the past). :)

peckrob2• 11 years ago

Read "Flight of the Old Dog" by Dale Brown. It's a bit dated by modern standards (it was written in the 80s, when the Soviet Union was still a thing), but still good. I won't spoil it for you, but the book features a heavily modified B-52 saving the day.

aaren• 11 years ago

"Fatal Terrain" is good as well. Released in 1997 so slightly more up to date. I read it hoping for fantastical descriptions of flying battleships hanging from a paper thin plot and was not remotely disappointed.

tn13• 11 years ago

It is common misconception that in military everything needs to be state of art. It needs to be effective.

kevinbluer• 11 years ago

One thing I've been wondering recently in regards to the NYT Online is why some articles allow for comments and some don't (as generally the debate is reasonably well balanced).

This article is obviously more of a magazine-style, so perhaps from an aesthetic perspective it doesn't fit. However, even in more "standard" articles they are sometimes available and sometimes not. I appreciate that some articles / topics are more sensitive, but surely they are the ones that need debate more than ever. Also if it's appropriately moderated anything deemed inappropriate can of course be removed.

squozzer• 11 years ago

Two reasons the B-52s are still around -

1) its replacements, even if they had worked perfectly, would not have improved upon the original to a degree not already covered by ICBMs, cruise missiles, and drones. It fills its niche perfectly, as does its Russian counterpart.

2) its three toughest opponents have been Vietnam, Iraq, and Serbia. Scrappy countries to be sure, but not first-class air defenses with targets deep in enemy territory. So very few have been shot down.

I suppose once the parts run out to keep a decent fleet operational, we should consider building exact duplicates - with some modern upgrades of course, and just keep trucking.

Animats• 11 years ago

There have been several proposals to re-engine the B-52 fleet with four jetliner engines, but it hasn't happened yet.

known• 11 years ago

Are they better than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_robot

tim3332• 11 years ago

I'd say that they are still using unreliable 60 year old bombers is something to celebrate in that carpet bombing is passe so who cares if the tools are a little clunky. Along the same lines I hope the UK fails to spend £100bn to replace the Trident nuclear deterrent. I mean if come WW3 we push the button to nuke Moscow and the thing doesn't go off who really cares? The money would be much better spent on humanitarian projects.

kqr2• 11 years ago

Nobody really cares whether or not the button actually works, but when you say "it works" that is supposed to be a credible threat. If you think it works, then Kremlin probably thinks it works, and will think twice about nuking you in the first place.

It's a deterrent, not a weapon.

tim3332• 11 years ago

Yeah but if you have several nuclear ICBMs pointed at you even a 25% chance of each working is probably a deterrent.

After 60 Years, B-52s Still Dominate U.S. Fleet

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