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."

Comments

Where did it all go right?

[Richard Kirk]

There are a few examples of engineering projects where everything went right, or at least better than expected. The UK equivalent plane was the Vulcan bomber, which would have been a stealth bomber by accident: only the upright tail gives it away on radar. The AK-47 has it. The London Routemaster bus had it. The Soyuz lifter has it. The Panama canal has it too. Can you think of any others?

More importantly, can we make everything work like that?

If it ain't broke...

[pr0t0]

I'm sure things like avionics and perhaps engines have been updated over the years. So maybe the B-52's replacement should simply be a B-52 built out of more modern materials? Call it a B-53.

Contested vs. uncontested sky

[Spacelord]

The thing that makes the B-52 work is that it's a simple bombtruck that can carry an insane amount of ordnance. It's achilles heel though is that it is not survivable in contested skies. It's a big lumbering airplane and if your enemy has a somewhat capable air defense, the B-52 is going to get shot down. This rules out use against countries like Russia and China, or even Iran, at least in first wave strikes. Even relatively simple SA-2 SAMs managed to take out several B-52s in Vietnam.

Its successors all tried to address the survivability issue. The B-1 did it by adding speed and low level flying to the equation, the B-2 by adding stealth.

Luckily, most of the US' conflicts since the Vietnam war have been with adversaries that are not technologically advanced, so the B-52 is still highly useful.

It has this in common with the A-10 by the way, very useful plane in the current context, but not usable against an adversary with an actual air defence system.

It's true

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"...The $2 billion B-2 Spirit, introduced a decade later, had stealth technology so delicate that it could not go into the rain."

I know someone who works with the B-2 Spirit bombers, and he confirms this. If it's more than a drizzle, they don't fly them (they won't even take them out of the hangar). Thank goodness our enemies would never attack us while it's raining.

And don't even get me started on the F-35, also known as the "Little Plane That Can't". Can't fly, can't dogfight, can't turn, and can't land. Can't start the engine or takeoff if it's too hot or too cold, can't fly in the rain, can't shoot its gun twice in a row without jamming. As someone in the know once said, "It's like a $148 million garbage disposal for money." And that's the budget model, the Navy version (the F-35C) costs a staggering $337 million each.

Peak Aeroplane

[Catmeat]

The B-52 first flew in 1952,they only built them for 10 years, the youngest now flying dates from 1962. But this is a one-off. A combination of a robust design that's useful for a niche purpose, and the insane cost of a clean sheet, replacement. Note that the Vickers Valient, a similar British strategic nuclear bomber that dated from the same era, only lasted in service until the mid-60's as they were basically falling to pieces. That could easily have been the B-52, had it's designers made some bad decisions.

It's interesting to compare this with the C-130 which first flew a little later, 1954, and is still being built. The time interval over which they have been building them is longer than the time interval between the Wright Brothers, and the first C-130 flight.

This gives rise to the interesting thought that in certain niche areas (dropping insanely huge numbers of bombs, landing 10 tons of cargo on a remote dirt airstrip) we have reached "peak aeroplane" and did so decades ago. Essentially, spending a huge wodge of money on a clean sheet design to do those jobs will never result in benefits that justify the cost. Far better just to tweak the designs we have with a few incremental improvements.

Civil aircraft don't seem to have reached peak as there are still improvements (in running cost) to be made, which justify new designs. "The average amount of energy consumed per mile, per passenger, fell by 74% on domestic flights in America between 1970 and 2010", according to The Economist. But presumably that will also eventually peak out in the future, eventually making brand-new civil designs pointless.