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Planning For 80-Year Old B-52s
Merry_B.Buck writes "The B-52 Stratofortress, famous for its carpet bombing (or, as
the Pentagon prefers, "long sticking") was designed in the 1940s to carry boxcar-sized atomic bombs. This Fast Company analysis describes how the US plans to keep these planes -- the youngest of which was built in 1962 -- flying until 2040. "
NASA uses a B-52 for high altitude drops of prototype flight models.
It was actually tail number "008" making it the oldest operational B-52.
It is also the lowest flight time operational B-52.
If you think about it, there really wouldn't be that much needed to make these planes more modern. Yes the computer upgrade would be necessary in my mind. Add the new navigation and targeting radar systems, if that hasn't been done already. I suppose the radar jammers, (if they have them?) would be good enough. The um....idea that they're working off of now is fighting third-world countries. They'll be using old radar. So the old jammers are what you need. If newer ones are needed, use the pod (forget the name off the top of my head).
And this thing is IMPRESSIVE. If you've seen one, its hard to imagine it flying, even more so with the amount of ordinance it can carry. And what's more demoralizing that being carpet-bombed by one of these old big planes? Well maybe beign hit by a bomb.......but thats besides the point.
So maybe what needs to be the area of concern is not the age, but the capacity and reliability of these planes.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&o
What since when? I had the feeling the capital of serbia was named BELGRADE. I also use to thought that Kosovo was a REGION not a city. A region that wanted to separate from the rest of the country! Now if this guy got all his fact as straight as is understanding of a RECENT war, I'm sure we can trust him.
Trust me, I'm a reporter!
The "newer" B-52's use the P&W TF-33 fanjet engines. Another old workhorse, the KC-135 Stratotanker is about as old as the B-52 and is predicted to fly until 2040 also. It originally came with J-57 engines and was known as the KC-135A. It was re-engined in the 80's with fans (similar to the TF-33's) from old Boeing 707 airliners. This resulted in the KC-135E model. Many have since been re-engined with CFM56 high bypass fans. These are KC-135R models. With the E and R models, the KC135 also got thrust reversers and did away with the water injection of the A models. I remember flying out of Hickam in Hawaii one afternoon. Water injection gave you an extra 2000lbs of thrust per engine for 2 minutes. After the 2 minutes when the water ran out, you lost 8000lbs of thrust. That was a fun moment in the back when we almost lost our lunches. :)
I was a jet mechanic on A and E models in the Air Guard from 80 to 87.
What's my Karma Mr. Burns? "Excellent"
Also, one of the things that helps is that the 'modern' B-52s (the H models) are essentially version '2.1'.
The A-F versions and the G-H versions are fundamentally two different airplanes - the fuselage changed from a round shape to its current squarish form, the wing design changed, even the landing gear ended up in different spots.
Just like in software, when the engineers were given a chance to learn some lessons and create a partial rewrite, they produced an incredible product. Years later, the rewrite without the history produced junk like the B-1 (which didn't even make it to the Persian Gulf war).
I thought the same thing weeks ago when they were talking about the Tomcats being used on bombing missions. The F-14 is there to protect the carrier battle group with long-range Phoenix missles. The cold-war mission this platform was designed for is to stop soviet antiship attacks from 200+ miles out.
You are correct that F15 Eagles (and/or F16 Falcons) are better suited to the task of air superiority, except we don't have any forward ground air bases from which we could operate in Afghanistan at the present.
I would expect Hornets (F/A-18) to be patrolling the skies over Afghanistan. CNN was reporting that F 14's were flying missions over Afghanistan a while back, though:
Footage on al-Jazeera shot during the day showed a U.S. F-14 Tomcat fighter slicing through the skies above Kabul, unchallenged.
The B-52 does require an engine upgrade - as when the plane is loaded to capaicity with ordinance, it cannot be fully fueled - otherwise it will not be able to take off. It then requires an in flight fill up after take off to do its mission.
Another interesting note about that plane, is that it has wheels on the end of its wings, due to the fact that after very lengthy flights, the wings stretch so much that when it returns its wings are touching the ground.
The F-16 lineage is basically:
A/B: Analog Fly-by-wire
C/D: Digital Fly-by-wire
A/C: single-seat
B/D: two-seater.
the C/D F-16 has seen about 10 major revisions, and then there are beasts like the F-16CG, and F-16CJ, and all the various block numbers. The Viper is one versatile little airplane.
Primary Function: Heavy bomber
Contractor: Boeing Military Airplane Co.
Power plant: Eight Pratt & Whitney engines TF33-P-3/103 turbofan
Thrust: Each engine up to 17,000 pounds
Length: 159 feet, 4 inches (48.5 meters)
Height: 40 feet, 8 inches (12.4 meters)
Wingspan: 185 feet (56.4 meters)
Speed: 650 miles per hour (Mach 0.86)
Ceiling: 50,000 feet (15,151.5 meters)
Weight: Approximately 185,000 pounds empty (83,250 kilograms)
Maximum Takeoff Weight: 488,000 pounds (219,600 kilograms)
Range: Unrefueled 8,800 miles (7,652 nautical miles)
Armament: Approximately 70,000 pounds (31,500 kilograms) mixed ordnance -- bombs, mines and missiles. (Modified to carry air-launched cruise missiles, Harpoon anti-ship and Have Nap missiles.)
Crew: Five (aircraft commander, pilot, radar navigator, navigator and electronic warfare officer)
Accommodations: Six ejection seats
Unit Cost: $74 million
Date Deployed: February 1955
Inventory: Active force, 85; ANG, 0; Reserve, 9
More facts and an imposing photo at AF.MIL
Oh btw, great post, Hemos / Merry / Greygent!
Keep in mind that the Herky-birds are still in *mass production*, unlike most other planes from that era. The P-3 may also be spit out from time to time, but I think those two planes are far different cases when compared to the B-52. Buff has seen some systems overhauls, but has not changed much in 40 years. The P-3 and C-130, though, have been almost completely reworked, as I believe they have almost all (at least in US service) gotten new engines, new cockpits, and sometimes even new wings.
Incidentally, a friend of the family works for Boeing as a manufacturer liaison (or something like that). He's trying to get me artist conceptions of a re-engined B-52. Boeing approached the USAF about it a couple of years ago, taking out the eight old Pratt & Whitney engines in favor of four newer engines from P&W or GE. I think he mentioned the same engine models as are used on the 757, which would make for a less noisy, more fuel-efficient, and, perhaps most importantly, less easy to see aircraft. The B-52 currently burns its fuel in a VERY dirty way; if you've ever seen one in flight at high thrust levels, you know what I'm talking about.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Yes and no. The B-52s (probably G and H models) now flying are mostly the same airframe that entered service back in 1962. I would hazard a guess that from an avionics and weapons targetting perspective they are very different beasties.
What was likely once an analog POI computer is now a digital unit. Inertial navigation has been augmented with GPS. The original HF/VHF/UHF radio suites have probably been updated to include a limited digital messaging capability over those means. You could relatively easily add UHF satellite capabilities, but I don't recall hearing of any such upgrades.
The 70K lbs payload is today likely up to 100-1400 500lb GP or cluster munitions. When you start thinking about all that ordanance falling on your head it can get quite scary.
It's a big ugly bomb truck. Where we own the skies and have adequately supressed SAMs it works great. The airframe may be the same, but as long as we keep upgrading the avionics and weapons delivery systems there is no reason it can't keep flying until 2050.
Gary Powers has been dead almost 25 years - he crashed a L.A. television news helicopter he was flying. I was a kid when he died yet still remember seeing the morning newspaper headlines very well because it was the first time I'd heard of his U2 incident over the USSR.
"My mother works for Microsoft now. A whole other cult."
Years later, the rewrite without the history produced junk like the B-1 (which didn't even make it to the Persian Gulf war).
The B-1 was FINALLY used in operation Desert Fox in 1998 and Kosovo last year, and is performing round-the-clock duties in Afghanistan right now.
The history of the B-1 is pretty ridiculous. The project was cancelled with just four prototypes of the B-1A in 1977, and then restarted under Reagan as the B-1B in 1981 with delivery in 1985. After this painful gestation period they don't figure out what to do with the darn things until 1998.
I seriously think that we'll still have B-52s flying LONG after the B-1s get scrapped.
(Anyone with a better knowledge of the B-1, feel free to correct me.)
Ian
I beg to differ; the wings don't stretch in flight. They do flex up and down, however, in or out of the air. 12 feet at the wingtip, to be precise, which is enough to let the tips touch the ground while taxiing or towing on the ground. That's the reason for the tip gear.They flex upward in flight (lift, duh!) so it's a ground/takeoff/landing problem.
The wings actually FLAP before the plane lifts off...and it lifts off ass end first. It typically flies with the ass end higher than the front, too. It might fly level fully loaded.
It can hold 1 1/2 times more fuel in pounds than it's own not inconsiderable weight. I don't want to think about how much it weighs with weapons loaded, but the dude who said it can't take off with full fuel and weapons was right on. It must meet that tanker and refuel before it flies the mission.It carries a LOT of conventional bombs, like half the weight of the aircraft again. It needs a long runway, 2 1/2 miles, to take off loaded, and then it might use part of the overrun.
Actually, we came very close to replacing the C-130 back in the 1970's.
We had a competition between the Boeing YC-14 and McDonnell-Douglas YC-15 to replace the C-130, but budgetary considerations and the US Army's need for larger transports kiboshed that idea. That was the reason why there was a later competition to build a larger transport plane, and the result is the C-17A Globemaster III transport. The USAF has taken deliveries of around 80 planes (out of the original 120 plane order) and is planning for another follow-on order for possibly another 100 planes by 2010.
Anyway, the C-130 has been upgraded to the current C-130J version with a very advanced cockpit and much more fuel-efficient engines.
Between avionics, engines, stealth requirements, software, etc., designing and building new fighters and bombers is an extremely costly proposition these days. It's also highly political since, when you're talking about a weapons system that will cost tens of billions of dollars to field, you can be sure that every state will want their turn at the trough.
Having said that, a number of new fighters are in the works. The US has the F-22 Raptor entering service in a couple of years, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will be fielded towards the end of this decade, the European Typhoon will enter service next year, the Russians are working on several interesting designs (though whether any of them will get past the prototype stage due to funding problems is another question entirely), the Chinese have their own programs, etc.
New manned bombers are a thornier problem due to escalating costs (B-1B cost $200 mil per plane in the '80s; B-2 cost ten times that in the '90s), but I think if the USAF can design something that manages to keep the costs down, they'll always have a need for something that can haul a lot of explosive power over intercontinental distances.