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B-52 Gets First Full IT Upgrade Since 1961
An anonymous reader writes in with good news for everyone who wants to hold a LAN party in a Stratofortress. "The US Air Force's 10th Flight Test Squadron recently took delivery of the first B-52H Stratofortress to complete a refit through the Combat Network Communications Technology (CONECT) program. It's an effort to bring the Cold War era heavy bomber into the 21st century way of warfare—or at least up to the 1990s, technology-wise. While the aircraft received piecemeal upgrades over the past 50 years of flying, CONECT is the first major information technology overhaul for the Air Force's B-52H fleet since the airplanes started entering service in 1961."
If missiles are called for, you'll need something to get the missiles within range. A B-52 can carry 20 cruise missiles 5,000 miles. Since the US has B-52s stationed around the world, they can put missiles anywhere on the planet.
You COULD use ICBMs, but maintaining appreviously purchased aircraft is a lot less expensive than building a bunch of ICBMs.
A former co-worker of mine worked on designing a drone that can be dropped from the B-52. The earlier comment was pretty accurate - the B-52 is the pickup truck of the air, very versatile and conservatively inexpensive.
Given the number of cruise missiles it carries - yes it is. If you absolutly, positively need to fuck up someone's day, a B52 is still one of the ebst weapons to do it.
"Old Rallydrivers never die - they just fail to book in on time"
A couple of Tu-95 Bears flew down towards the north of Scotland a few weeks back, the RAF went up to welcome them outside the national limit and got some nice pictures. I grabbed them off the MoD website and bundled them up since most of my friends are Apple fans and don't do Flash.
https://www.mediafire.com/?fs5...
Runs to about 12MB or so as a zip download.
Another example is a DC-3 that took part in a search and rescue operation in Antarctica a few months ago. It was a situation where cost is not a consideration yet an airframe built in the 1930s was used because it was suitable for the job. That DC-3 has turboprops and has been cut in half then lengthened but every major structural part is over 70 years old. There's a few other DC-3s around.
As with the B52 the modes of failure are very well known now so maintainance is going over a checklist and the nasty surprises happened decades ago.