Slashdot Mirror
B-52s: The Plane That Refuses To Die
HughPickens.com writes: Dave Phillipps has an interesting article in the NY Times about B-52's and why the Air Force's largest bomber, now in its 60th year of active service and scheduled to fly until 2040, are not retiring anytime soon. "Many of our B-52 bombers are now older than the pilots who fly them," said Ronald Reagan in 1980. Today, there is a B-52 pilot whose father and grandfather flew the plane. Originally slated for retirement generations ago, the B.U.F.F. — a colorful acronym that the Air Force euphemistically paraphrases as Big Ugly Fat Fellow — continues to be deployed in conflict after conflict. It dropped the first hydrogen bomb in the Bikini Islands in 1956, and laser-guided bombs in Afghanistan in 2006. It has outlived its replacement. And its replacement's replacement. And its replacement's replacement's replacement. 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. The $283 million B-1B Lancer first rolled off the assembly line in 1988 with a state-of-the-art radar-jamming system that jammed its own radar. The $2 billion B-2 Spirit, introduced a decade later, had stealth technology so delicate that it could not go into the rain. "There have been a series of attempts to build a better intercontinental bomber, and they have consistently failed," says Owen Coté. "Turns out whenever we try to improve on the B-52, we run into problems, so we still have the B-52."
The usefulness of the large bomber — and bombers in general — has come under question in the modern era of insurgent wars and stateless armies. In the Persian Gulf war, Kosovo, Afghanistan and the Iraq war, the lumbering jets, well-established as a symbol of death and destruction, demoralized enemy ground troops by first dropping tons of leaflets with messages like "flee and live, or stay and die," then returning the next day with tons of explosives. In recent years, it has flown what the Air Force calls "assurance and deterrence" missions near North Korea and Russia. Two B-52 strategic bombers recently flew near artificial Chinese-built islands in the South China Sea and were contacted by Chinese ground controllers but continued their mission undeterred. "The B.U.F.F. is like the rook in a chess game," says Maj. Mark Burleys. "Just by how you position it on the board, it changes the posture of your adversary."
The usefulness of the large bomber — and bombers in general — has come under question in the modern era of insurgent wars and stateless armies. In the Persian Gulf war, Kosovo, Afghanistan and the Iraq war, the lumbering jets, well-established as a symbol of death and destruction, demoralized enemy ground troops by first dropping tons of leaflets with messages like "flee and live, or stay and die," then returning the next day with tons of explosives. In recent years, it has flown what the Air Force calls "assurance and deterrence" missions near North Korea and Russia. Two B-52 strategic bombers recently flew near artificial Chinese-built islands in the South China Sea and were contacted by Chinese ground controllers but continued their mission undeterred. "The B.U.F.F. is like the rook in a chess game," says Maj. Mark Burleys. "Just by how you position it on the board, it changes the posture of your adversary."
Having a plane that can be kept in the air as much as possible trumps technology every time.
The A-10 isn't quite so old, having been introduced in 1977, but it too is uniquely successful at its job, with no practical replacement in sight.
Ask any Army Soldier or Marine Rifleman that has seen combat and needed close air support what their favorite jet is, and you'll hear only one name.
Rather than talking about retirement, we should be building more of these two jets. Yes, I know it would be expensive to re-create all of the tooling. In my opinion, new production lines for them should be established and maintained in perpetuity as national treasures, at least until suitable replacements are found and validated by real-world experience.
(The C-130 should probably be included too, and would be much easier, since it is still in active production.)
See that "Preview" button?
Aside from the "because military contractors" excuse, I suspect that the very dumb, durable, reliability of the B-52 may actually contribute to a dysfunctional replacement-selection process:
Since the B-52, while old enough that it could almost certainly be done better with newer engines, more lightweight composites, and whatnot, does what it does fairly well; which means that any bid of the form "Well, build basically the same aircraft; but with contemporary technology where applicable" will immediately be compared with proposals to just do more maintenance and some incremental system upgrades to the planes we already have.
Any bids of the "zOMG, radical new bomber with sexy low-radar-signature geometry and stuff!" flavor, by contrast, aren't as vulnerable to "Or we could just upgrade the engines at markedly lower cost and within a much shorter and more reliable timeframe..." objections.
In fairness to the "zOMG radical new bomber!" proposals, one of the reasons that the B-52 has remained in service so long is that it can be used to air-launch cruise missiles against targets that might actually have AA capabilities; and many of our wars largely involve pounding on hapless opponents who simply lack the means to shoot down anything other than low-flying helicopters, so its probably-dismal survivability against remotely competent air defenses hasn't been a serious issue. This probably also complicates the bidding for a replacement: If you decided to admit that "Yeah, this thing isn't supposed to go near actual air defenses, it's either a missile boat or for beating down soft targets", you could probably have the B-52++ sketched out relatively quickly. If you want similar payload; but in an aircraft that can actually survive hostile environments, it's much less clear exactly how you can do that. B-1s and B-2s are totally sci-fi; but I'd hate to imagine what building an aircraft like that on a scale large enough to match a B-52 would cost.