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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. "
And they're thinking about CONTINUING to do so until Hell freezes over!
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
Hooyah!
I was a Bomb/Nav tech on the B-52's and can definitely attest to their resilience. While the airframe is old, they are running early 80's era technology throughout many areas.
The bombing systems run off of 3 computing units, each with as I remember four Z-80A processors. Data is loaded from harden (and sloooow) tape drives.
The Nav/bombardier compartment is on the first floor, but it does sit quite a ways back from the pilot. Underneath the pilot's is the main radar antenna.
The FLIR and STV systems were top. The FLIR was especially handy in the blizzard-ridden hellhole I was stationed at. We could use them to discern the sex of people from far away (different hotspots), and we could also located our boss driving the trick in a whiteout. He was a chain smoker, so we would just aim it out on the flightline, and wait for the telltale thin white heat line of a man driving a work truck with his cigarette hanging out the window....
Sgt. Barker if you're out there, give me a ring at:
greygent [at] absent [dot] org
I loved working on B-52's, they were excellent, quality planes...and I actually do miss the flightline life...
Working on B-1s...was another story. Nothing scares a pilot thats about to take off, more, than when an advanced avionics tech rushes up into the plane to fix a problem with a rubber mallet (sticky relays). when I was in the military, I read a report that stated as things stand, even though the B-1 is 20 years newer, the B-52 airframe will still far outlast the B-1.
I've read that the first U2 spy plane was able to fly around 3000 feet higher than those of today simply because a crapload of equipment has been tacked on the modern version.
With the B-52, it seems this might not have happened, and the plane might have gotten lighter. After all, a "dance hall" full of vacuum tubes that can be replaced with a few microchips must take off a few tonnes (which can then be added on in munitions. yippee).
Also, when Mike T. is one in a long string of people that I've heard crap on the B-1. Is there anything about that plane that doesn't suck? Or is there some truth in people who say that the modern American aerospace industry couldn't produce a cheap, reliable airplane?
Obviously there's the F-22 and the JSF, but at $150 million for a single F-22, is stealth and all the associated razmataz really worth it? The US already dominates the world.
...we don't need them any more in 40 years.
mechanical engineers come up with a design that will pass the test of time with flying colors. the B-52 is just an example,but then there is the Morris Minor, the Porsche911 etc. One reason could be that there are no such dramatic technological advances in mechanical engineering, as there are in electronics (for example), so a few talented mechanical designers have the chance of making an outstanding, long-lasting product.
:o)
Let me explain this point: as transistors appeared, nobody wanted or had any reason to make computers based on valves or relays. Once you could integrate many transistors on one chip, most of the computer logic moved from discrete to integrated electronics. This, on the other hand, brought about new and more sophisticated logic designs.
In mechanical engineering you can have new alloys, new kinds of bearings, sensors and microcontroller-regulated engines, but the basic concept is totally the same. Today you could (theoretically) employ a mechanical designer from the beginning of the century, and he would be up to speed with his colleagues in a matter of months. And his biggest challenge would be to learn CAD/CAM software usage
Software engineers are probably the most "disposable" of thebunch: advances in software engineering (ans I don't mean just programming, like moving from RPG, PL/1 to Pascal and then to C, C++, Java etc., but advances in project management techniques, requirements management, software quality control, risk management, all that sh*t...) are coming at an incredible speed, even during an alleged economical downturn, that it's not anymore important whether you know something, but how fast you are able to learn something new.
So, if I was to think of one software design from the 60' (not that long ago, even), I can't think of any.
Sigged!
Yes. The have (had?) the Tu-95 /142, NATO codename Bear heavy bomber. They used to be intercepted over the northsea all the time by aircraft from the squadron where I served.
a propeller plane that could go stratospheric and insanely fast.
It also was insanely loud :-)
karma capped
Carpet bombing is not the same as a longstick.
The emotive term carpet bombing is used by the media to conjure up images of indescriminate widespread destruction. A single bomber cannot carpet bomb. The expression was coined during WWII when waves of bombers would beging to bomb a target area and over the course of many planes dropping bombs, perhaps over hours, the destructive wave would roll forward like a carpet. It was so predictable that ultimately the first bomber would drop it's bombs short of the target in anticipation that the carpet bombing would eventually roll over the target area guaranteeing it's destruction.
So, longstick is NOT carpet bombing. It is pretty accurate, and supplemented with JDAMS & paveway guided bombs, it is even precise.
So, when you think you're being sophisticated and circumventing US propaganda calling this carpet bombing, you are infact misrepresenting what it is, and propagating a lie.