US Air Force B-52 bomber crashes after takeoff, Edwards Air Force Base says

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-air-force-b-52-bomber-crashes-after-takeoff-edwards-air-force-base-says-2026-06-15/

by tartoran • 1 month ago

105 89 1 month ago

reuters.com

dmvjs2• 1 month ago

why present tense?

Jtsummers7• 1 month ago

It's common in news headlines when an event is very recent or a story is still developing. A report about, say, the US bombing a previously unreported site in Iran several weeks ago would be in the past tense "US bombed <site> in Iran". When the US bombs Iran today, it'll be titled "US bombs <site> in Iran".

dmvjs2• 30 days ago

right but it had already happened

qq66• 1 month ago

They stopped making the B-52 64 years ago. The US military is depending on planes that are simply too old and need to be refreshed.

mrhottakes• 1 month ago

True, but the B-52s that are currently in operation are very much a Bomber of Theseus situation.

Jtsummers7• 1 month ago

Also true for most aircraft in the US military fleet that aren't of the most recent generation. Depot maintenance strips them down, and pretty much everything but the frame itself could have been replaced by this point for anything over 30-40 years of age. They also do form, fit, function for LRUs so that the a new LRU can be dropped in and connected to the existing aircraft as much as possible, allowing for more gradual changes over time.

JumpCrisscross3• 1 month ago

planes that are simply too old

Planes don’t really age like that, at least not if they’re serviced. They’re constantly being rebuilt and inspected.

The only reason airliner fleets churn as much as they do is fuel efficiency and maintenance standardization.

dpe82• 1 month ago

Nit: at some point you start getting metal fatigue issues (see Aloha Airlines Flight 243) but in general yes: fuel efficiency and fleet standardization.

Also airliners usually just become cargo planes for quite a long time before retirement. Eg. there's a bunch of DC-3s still being commercially operated. Jet engine noise regs killed a bunch of early jets, but older prop aircraft are still going strong.

blowsand• 1 month ago

Please do more research. They are most decidedly not “simply too old”. They have been “refreshed” many times over - from engines, to flight electronics, to targeting and comms systems, to airframe structures, to coffeemaker automation.

hk1337• 1 month ago

Sounds like a lot like ship of Theseus. The B-52 now is not not the same B-52 64 years ago.

jmalicki3• 1 month ago

The airframes still date closer in time to the Wright-Patterson Kitty Hawk flight than to today.

bigfatkitten• 1 month ago

The USAF has been neglected for a long time. The service has seen reductions in both headcount and airframes with no gains in efficiency or effectiveness.

Too many types of aircraft to operate and maintain, with too few people to do it and too few available airframes to maintain a combat capability.

elevation• 1 month ago

A friend who served was assigned to fix broken planes quickly. He and his fellow mechanics could be punished for not being ready to make urgent repairs, so they maintained a stock of commonly used parts in the hangar.

One year, a congressional efficiency mandate required that AFBs return any parts that hadn't been issued in the previous (90 days?). Returning their stock just because it hadn't been needed in the last 12 weeks undermined their readiness requirements, so the staff found a way around this limitation: periodically discard qty 1 of any seldom-used part and order another one to show proof of need. The congressional anti-waste attempt only served to fill their dumpster.

Along with investigating airframe selections, it would be worthwhile to audit the branches for these kinds of perverse incentives, to hear from people at all levels about which policies are helpful and which cause needless waste.

mrguyorama• 1 month ago

The B-52 lives in an awkward niche. Bomb trucks over utterly unprotected airspace might just not be a thing anymore.

If that holds for the forseen future, the B-52 will not have a real successor.

Currently, it looks like non-precision bulk bombing is just obsolete.

We "depend" on the B-52 because it still works, and there's a lot of chance it shouldn't get a replacement.

Are there any other planes we "depend" on that are old but not being replaced? Our tanker fleet is old but we are looking to replace it. Maybe some transports are getting old? But they probably don't need a new design. EWACS is old but also seeing new systems being built.

wbl2• 1 month ago

The B-52 has hands with the JASSM, ALCM, LRASM. No need to get close to pack a punch. Yeah a successor would likely be a LO blended wing body design, but the idea of cheap to operate big truck is fine.

rawgabbit2• 1 month ago

The C-130 is ubiquitous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-130_Hercules

The US plans to replace both JSTAR and AWACS with Golden Dome? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...

t0mas88• 1 month ago

Planes don't age in the same way cars do. There is a maintenance schedule that inspects and replaces almost literally every component at some point. So the engines on these planes can be just a year old for example.

And the military has a tendency to also upgrade the avionics and capabilities at several points in the lifetime of a program. So there is a lot of tech in these planes that's much newer than 60 years old.

__patchbit__• 1 month ago

Aged out weapons design is a flying target.

War profiteers say motherhood statements about the crew but don't care.

60 years of new weapons design opportunities was pocketed in pork by the politicians bought and paid for.

runjake5• 1 month ago

I worked on B-52s and other aircraft. Their systems (bomb/nav/comm/etc) were refreshed many times and the airframes inspected and improved regularly.

The reason B-52s are still around is because they are combat-effective and cost-effective relative to other aircraft, such as the B-1 and B-2 (both of which I also worked on). Whatever replaces the B-52 will have to be something new and something cost-effective. I don't think that currently exists.

The B-1 has only been combat/cost effective in more recent years after an extended rough patch spanning decades -- actually, I'm not even sure it's cost-effective. The B-2 has always been combat-effective, but was never cost-effective to operate or maintain.

giantg22• 1 month ago

Cost-effective might not be the best description. If the B2 is able to target SAMs with very low losses, then it could still be cost-effective compared to significant losses of other airframes and crews.

tonymet• 1 month ago

why can't they reproduce it like they do shelby kit cars?

2OEH8eoCRo02• 1 month ago

George Will mentioned in a recent article that some of the B-52s used against Iran were built before the first Beatles album.

optimalsolver• 1 month ago

Video of the 1994 B-52 crash at Fairchild Air Force Base:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2OIxo00UeM

applfanboysbgon• 1 month ago

I don't understand the fascination with watching people die. I'd rather not, thanks.

iamtheworstdev• 1 month ago

as a pilot - it's a reminder that if the pros can make a mistake then I absolutely can and I better not take anything for granted when I fly.

Jtsummers7• 1 month ago

https://ktla.com/news/california/b52-bomber-crash-edwards-ai... - Another report, includes an image of the crash site and more than just two paragraphs.

kryogen1c• 1 month ago

Is this after cleanup? There's almost zero wreckage and if it was at takeoff it shouldn't have enough speed or descent angle to atomize.

russdill• 1 month ago

There was a post crash fire, and that would be a lot of fuel burning.

Jtsummers7• 1 month ago

Almost certainly no cleanup before that photo was taken. The accident occurred at 1120, and the article was "last updated" at 1302, 1 hour 42 minutes is not enough time to cleanup a site like that when they still have to do the accident investigation.

It would likely have had full fuel tanks so that's probably why we can see little debris.

irthomasthomas• 1 month ago

Look at the fairfield airshow crash, there nothing left but a bit of the tail.

mrandish• 1 month ago

I hope the crew are okay, but from the look of the aftermath and the fact there's no mention of the crew yet, I assume not all survived. Shortly after takeoff is one of the most challenging times for an incident. Low altitude, low-speed and full fuel means things can go very bad, very fast.

yieldcrv• 1 month ago

As a betting man… this is not survivable

zardo• 1 month ago

Just after takeoff is the worst time to have a problem. Hopefully they had the minimum crew. Also hopefully it wasn't carrying a nuke and/or it wasn't compromised.

throwaway858253• 1 month ago

B-52 crew has to bail out, no ejection option.

Jtsummers7• 1 month ago

It has an ejection system, but some go up and some go down depending on their position in the aircraft. The two navigator seats eject downwards, they would not have had a chance. Given when the accident occurred (just after takeoff), and that there's not yet been any report on the crew, it's unlikely the other crew managed to eject.

TacticalCoder• 1 month ago

there are sadly all too many cases like this: the Concorde's last flight comes to mind. Just horrible.

RIP

Recurecur• 1 month ago

It’s been confirmed that the entire crew perished, and sadly the max complement of eight was aboard.

RIP!

verzali• 1 month ago

F-18 went down the other day as well.

yread• 1 month ago

And Tu-22M3 today as well. Not a good day for bombers

youngtaff• 1 month ago

A Tu-22M3 going down makes it better day for Ukraine

2OEH8eoCRo02• 1 month ago

A Russian bomber was seen nose diving today too.

m0llusk• 1 month ago

Strictly speaking that was a Soviet bomber. The Russians ended up with them, but they can't make more of them, at least not right now.

shawn_w• 1 month ago

The Tu-22M is almost as old as the B-52. They don't want to make more.

KingMachiavelli• 1 month ago

Is there something systemic behind these frequent incidents with military aircraft? It is using old, legacy equipment? Is it due to using rushed, streamlined procedures designed for war-time even outside an active battle environment? Are there just many, many military flights daily so statistically one will be in the news every couple weeks?

IMO the danger to US service members outside of combat seems way too high. It's a well known fact most fatalities occur during training than during combat. (Sure this due to there being many more training exercises than active combat engagements but from a policy perspective it is very worrying).

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

maximilianburke• 1 month ago

It's only notable now because of how safe aircraft are now and how rare these incidents are. Like, of the 116 B-58 Hustlers built, 24 were lost in crashes. Over 200 B-47's were lost during its service life, killing 464 crew members.

This is the first B-52 crash in almost 20 years.

recursivecaveat• 1 month ago

I would guess that when you are training you are still doing activities that are not as safe as just traveling from point A to B: flying low, pointing the nose at the ground, landing a helicopter in a less than ideal spot (it seems like half of those are helicopters), etc. That hypothesis doesn't really apply well to transport planes or B52s though. Military pilots probably spend a higher overall fraction of their flying career as trainees?

jandrewrogers• 1 month ago

The US military has 10-15,000 airframes. The US military trains hard and flies a lot of hours so accidents and failures are not completely preventable. They explicitly plan to lose an average of 2 airframes per month due to attrition, which is roughly their historical average. The crew is able to escape most of the time.

It may seem odd that they plan for these losses but the optimal amount of risk is non-zero. Excessive safety-ism interferes with effective training and operations, which risks lives in other ways. They aren't reckless but over-prioritizing never risking a life in training would defeat the purpose of it and institutionalize behavior that is ill-suited for actual warfare where risk is unavoidable.

Statistically the military environment is quite safe, particularly for young males, relative to the median lifestyle in the US. That is true even in some war zones, ironically.

Steve442• 1 month ago

They are very rare these days compared to the 1950s-80. I presume it's a combination of aircraft design developing and also the scale of the military and the intense training during the Cold War.

Have a flick through these links listing losses or two RAF types, it's quite sobering.

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

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/harrier...

blitzar• 1 month ago

you fly jets long enough something like this happens

Jtsummers7• 1 month ago

Statement put out by Edwards AFB, press conference scheduled for 4:15pm PDT.

https://www.edwards.af.mil/News/Display/Article/4517897/b-52...

hagbard_c• 1 month ago

It seems to be a bad day for strategic bombers with a B-52 down in the USA while a Russian Tu-22M3 'Backfire' went down in Irkutsk:

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/russian-s...

undersuit• 1 month ago