After 60 Years, B-52s Still Dominate U.S. Fleet
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Part of the cause is that big bombers with enormous payload capacity and long range can always be adapted to new missions and tactics - there's always something you can do with an extra few tens of tons of ordnance.
Where the US military-industrial complex has fallen down on the job is that the physical airframes are still from the original production run. While the USAF always thought its new and different (first supersonic, then stealth) bomber designs would allow it to retire the B-52, the Soviets kept building new variants and retiring old airframes. So while American B-52s have been heroically kept operating since the 50s and 60s, Russian Air Force Tu-95s were all built in the 80s and early 90s with assorted design improvements and new avionics.
I'd expect modern B-52s are mostly Ships of Theseus and that little of the original avionics, wiring, metal, etc. still exist.
I wouldn't expect that metal fatigue will prove to be an impediment to the B-52's ability to continue to deliver ordinance.
"Following Operation Desert Storm, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the de facto end of the Cold War, President George H. W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney directed SAC to take all bomber and refueling aircraft and Minuteman II ICBM's off of continuous nuclear alert on 27 September 1991[85] and placing said aircraft on quick reaction ground alert"
So, still ready for Armageddon, but with a bit higher latency.
http://sputniknews.com/military/20151121/1030508547/tu-95-bo...
(They're trying to restart production of the Tu-160 -- the world's biggest, fastest bomber ever to enter service: a bit larger than a B52 but with supersonic dash capability -- but having real trouble with the engines; my money is on the Tu-95 sticking around at least as long as the B52, for exactly the same reason.)
The B-1 was designed for a role (low altitude nape of the earth bombing) that was obsolete before they worked out the bugs in the jet (Russian interceptor and fighter aircraft got look-down shoot-down capability). The B-1 was kept alive because of its electronic warfare capabilities, but efficiency of the bomb trucks matter more than high-speed delivery in a hostile radar environment these days.
Tu-95 is a big dumb bomber much in the way the B-52 is; since it also has/is getting the standoff capability, it's hard to argue the purpose of the Tu-160.
A lot of the newer bombers were built with the nuclear role in mind; in reality the world went in the direction of smart conventional weapons instead. For that role, aircraft like the Tu-95 and BUFF are more ideal, as they can just act as a large "bomb truck" and drop a large quantity of guided conventional munitions very efficiently once air defenses are suppressed.
I've often wondered why, for instance, we don't build brand new A-10 Warthogs. They provide the best close air support in perhaps the entire history of military aviation worldwide (great range, extremely resilient to small arms fire, low altitude / low speed capabilities, etc.). Instead, the Marines Corps scrambles (no pun intended) to find a replacement after realizing that the JSF program wasn't real (it turns out that the F-35 will bankrupt the Milky Way Galaxy before being finished, not to mention it has too much wing loading to provide adequate close air support). Yet, the wonderfully designed A-10 Warthog languishes in military relic status.
Why not make new copies these greats, with any of the little kinks worked out?
Its a great plane, and the JSF is shit, but we need a different solution going forward.
MANPADS have been common for a very long time. The Mujaheddin used them with great success.
A-10s are not invulnerable against MANPADs, but they're not helpless against them either. In fact, one of the biggest reasons the air force hated the A-10 was because it was "too slow" and could be "easily" hit by a SA-7
Don't get me wrong - I love the A-10, but it's pretty much obsolete at this point. Not because you can't use it to destroy tanks, but because there are much cheaper, safer, and more efficient ways to destroy tanks than low-and-slow strafing. A properly equipped strike aircraft can hit a tank with a laser guided bomb without ever exposing itself to AAA or MANPADS fire.
And if we're just going to mow down groups of jihadis with rusty AK-47s we should be using something cheaper like the Super Tucano II.
Sure, the Super Tucano doesn't have the punch from the main gun or crazy survivability of the A-10. But in a battlespace where air supremacy is guaranteed, it has the advantage of being able to get a close-up visual on the target, and accurately fire ordinance tens rather than hundred of meters away from friendly forces.
My personal understanding is that the Super Tucano was sacrificed on the alter of the myth of technological progress.
Every airframe, every digital HMI, and every weapons system must be more technologically sophisticated than the last, even if that solution is completely unsuited to ongoing and forecasted combat missions.
The fact that our most common enemies can't field a proper SAM site, much less a fifth-generation fighter, be damned.
Of course there is also the cultural issue. That the great United States might have to admit that the South Americans know more than us about air warfare in counter-insurgency campaigns is anathema to both the military and the civilian government.
The Super Tucano A-29B:
•Has a greater range, at 800nm vs. 320nm, much more for the Tucano with one pilot and the extra fuel tank, with an even greater difference if the Raider flies at top speed. (Yes, I know, it's easier to refuel a helicopter.)
•Is currently in proven service in CAS roles in COIN operations with 23,000 combat hours vs. the S-97's zero combat hours, which only flew its first demonstration flight in 2015.
•Costs far less at $9 million per unit with almost no development cost vs. a government projected program cost of $200 million and a unit cost of $15 million at full production. Defense analysts expect this to rise to $30 million a unit and $500 million in development costs.
•A low-flying CAS helicopter is a great idea, unless of course you're flying in thin air in the Hindu Kush, or your opponent has the ability to down such aircraft. Ask the Soviets how that worked out...
But the totally unproven S-97 incorporates new technology, which requires R&D thus inviting the procurement bonanza, so it beats out the combat-tested Super Tucano in the GAO procurement arena every time.
There's a reason JSOC wants the A-29B.
I hadn't heard about the Raider costing $30 million eventually, but that's ridiculous, if it turns out to be correct. However, $30 million is still less than half that of the AH-64D.
The one thing I'll add to your criticisms is that the Raider (badly) needs more armament (perhaps another 7-shot Hydra 70 pod).
And the program is very, very real. I am aware of other programs which really existed to funnel money to more secret programs, but the JSF program is not one of those front programs.
We don't build more A-10s because they no longer meet the projected operational needs of the USAF, which, along with the rest of the military, is changing strategic focus to the Asia/Pacific region. [3] Not to mention the production line is long since shutdown (32 years ago!) and the tooling either destroyed or lost. The knowledge to build them is lost. You do not simply build more. You have to teach yourself to build them again. This would take years.
[0]: https://i.imgur.com/H5fTkIU.png
[1]: http://i.imgur.com/6cV6I7g.png
[2]: http://breakingdefense.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/0... (The definitive source for F-35 cost data).
[3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/F35Lightning/comments/3a7yol/articl... (full text of paywalled Aviation Week article)
When we're spending nearly (or more than) $100MM for a jet that cannot even stand up against an F-16, a jet introduced in 1978. That's 5 years before I was born, so it's really weird to think about a jet from that long ago even flying today, let alone a pre-Nintendo jet dog fighting (let alone, beating!) a modern jet in 2015, that surely has orders of magnitude more computational power on board than did the entire world at that time.
In other words, the scenario described is a bit like that movie, The Final Countdown, except the fighter jets on the aircraft carrier lose to Japanese Zeros :/ what a frightening situation to be in.
All that said, I understand that we live in a different world now, and that air superiority isn't defined only by dog fighting capability, and that we also have to factor in that most modern dog fights would be over before either pilot could see the other with their own eyes, and that this is, in fact, part of the promise of the F-35. But, regardless of this, what was the value gained by the F-35 by making the wings so small? A slightly larger wing size could have increased fuel capacity, increased fuel efficiency, increased low-speed and low altitude capabilities, and made it a much better dog fighter, at no real expense to other features.
The US military spent the 80's allegedly training to fight a defensive war in Western Europe - but when you look at the wargames they engaged in what they actually trained for was an aggressive war in a desert (this isn't some wacky conspiracy theory, it's just basic incompetence by the people setting the military exercises, they looked at the crowded cluttered maps that represented Germany and despaired that they wouldn't get to use the 2 mile cannon range on their tanks in the wargames so the maps got altered until they were far to open to be Western Europe).
The A-10 is perfect for CAS in a desert - in Afghanistan they didn't do as well as their lower agility compared to other jets made it harder for them to dodge mountains which affects their legendary ability to loiter.
the article is wrong in so many of the pithy little notes that the whole thing comes off as snarky propaganda at best.
* the nuclear-powered bomber was never seen as a practical program - just a way-out-there experiment
* the B-58 was retired because ICBMs did it's job much better as soviet defenses improved
* The (x)b-70 did not have highly toxic exhaust - it used regular jet fuel. author was confused about 'zip fuel' which could have been used in many planes - but didn't go into use.
* weighed down by infamy?
* like taking a biplane to iraq? huh?
geeze - having gone over this in more depth I think that the author actually has no message at all. it's just a bit of filler, with some 1960's antiwar jabs, and an arch tone.
It appears you are referring to the LRS-B.
... but in a prelude of future problems, the first B-1 unveiled in 1985,
in front of a crowd of 30,000, failed to start.
Much like the points you made, this line is another ham-fisted attempt to paint what happened in the most embarrassing way possible, by drawing an image in the reader's mind of a bumbling pilot turning the key and the starter cranking over without starting. The author knows this (I got it from his link[1]).
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/30/us/30000-hail-bomber-debut...
With modern materials, avionics and engines you could have a aircraft that flies faster and more efficiently, thus able to fly further and for less ongoing maintenance cost. I also imagine training would be simpler, if it meant they didn't have to train pilots with slide rules...
I like the idea, but likely a large number of components would be replaced by less efficient, but more durable, variants.
This article sounds like a PR effort by the USAF to help cost justify replacement of the B-52H.
modern passenger aircraft have complications and have made design decisions that increase complexity, require more maintenance, and add cost. airliners are willing to put up with these costs because they add to passenger comfort.
But for a B-52 replacement, I think civilian planes have quite a few problems. For one, the wings are attached in the wrong place; on the B-52 they're more to the front, since the bomb bay has to be at the centre of balance. (Otherwise the plane becomes difficult to control after dropping the payload.) Another issue is that a commercial jet has a unneccesarily wide body, increasing drag. (Bombs are much denser than people.) A third is that commercial jets probably can't take the same level of structural loads in case of evasive action, particularly at lower altitudes. Compare the AWACS example: that airplane should never come close to enemy fire. A bomber most certainly would have to.
All those are engineering challenges, and could be solved. I guess the biggest reason is that it would cost more than you would gain.
Much of the design difference between an airliner and a strategic bomber is due to extreme stresses from flying balls-out speed at treetop altitude. Older B-52 variants (pre-G) were retired when they couldn't take the load, because they were designed for max altitude cruise and weapons delivery. A big part of the B-1A to B-1B redesign involved removing the fancy high-altitude air intakes and restressing for extended treetop flight (and reducing RCS).
For a parallel, let's look at the state of the USAF tanker fleet ("Nobody kicks ass without tanker gas!") The workhorse of the fleet is the pride of 1957, the KC-135. They're old, and so the Air Force wants to replace them, with the KC-46, which is pretty much a Boeing 767 but with seats replaced with big gas tank, and boom off the back. The 767 isn't a new airframe, it's a 30 year old design. And aerial refueling isn't a new technology either. Afterall, the plane that's being replaced has been in service for almost 60 years. Proven airframe. Proven technology. This is a slam dunk right?
Well, no. The KC-46 keeps getting delayed.[1] It's essentially too complicated and too flashy. For exampe, Boeing is ditching the tried and true, and dirt simple system of guiding refueling booms by having a guy look at a window and put the boom into the receptacle, and instead go with some unproven system using an occulus rift and stereo cameras. Why? I don't know. I guess because it's "high tech".
And do you want to know the most damning part of all? Boeing currently sells the KC-767, a refueling tanker based on the 767 airframe, that not only works, but is cheaper than the KC-46, and available today!
It's almost as bad as the F-35 debacle, but not quite.
Honestly, I don't think the military knows how to buy anything, and the contractors take advantage of that. It's Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex writ large.
[1] http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/broken-booms-why-is-it-so-h... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_KC-46_Pegasus
I lived in Seattle at the time, and it was widely remarked by Boeing IDS employees that the protest Boeing filed was a remarkably unusual step. They lose out on contracts all the time and just move on to the next thing; it's generally considered bad form for a defense contractor to throw a fit about losing out on a contract. But there were a lot of shenanigans, as detailed in the GAO report, which is why the decision was ultimately reversed.
[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20080625201918/http://www.king5.c...
In other words, is the government dumb enough to ask for it and pay for it, or is Boeing just out to lunch?
you might find this mid-1970's project amusing: cruise missiles from a 747. http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/why-boeings-design-for-a-74...
Second system syndrome at its finest.
Sounds like what they really want is a new implementation of roughly the same design as the B-52.
The Pentagon would rather burn billions and billions of taxpayer dollars on probable duds than iterate slowly on proven designs. Even after Boyd showed them conclusively how stupid that was.
How do you shoehorn iterative development into this? Where does it fit? It doesn't, so it doesn't happen.
I hardly think Boyd was the first guy to show them how dumb they can be.
[0]: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2010/09/atl_wal...
People who decide how to spend the money should not be going to defense contractors when they retire. And a problem that Ike pointed out 62 years ago shouldn't take this long to be changed.
How we elect our representatives is the root of the problem.
But, ultimately, someone has to decide how our weapons are designed and built, I'm not sure how to come up with a better system.
What we really seem to have demand for is something that can carry a whole bunch of bombs cheaply and reliably in airspace that we already have air supremacy over. But apparently the Air Force can't get it's head around that design goal. Nobody seems to want to champion a cheap, dumb bomb truck plane that does simple stuff right every time. Instead, they keep going for the technological marvel designed for a goal that we'll probably never need to do and already have better weapons for anyways.
(unless you can get some foreign chumps to sell you their cheap, reliable planes and order Lockheed-Martin's latest contraption, which will arrive Any Day Now - everyone wins!)
Look up "nuclear triad", "not putting all your eggs in one basket", and "suspenders and belt".
"Carry a heavy load of weapons anywhere in the world while having a decent chance of penetrating air defenses" is a better description of what a bomber does, but that doesn't lend itself to the kind of facile sneering that was in your original post, does it?
In particular it has been just used to fire stealth cruise missiles Kh-101 - by contrast, the most modern weapon, almost 60 years younger than the bomber itself - in Syria.
I don't want the military failing hard and failing fast. Make it work, make it work well, and then don't mess with it.
The B-52s are a shining example of this.
Behold:
"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."
"“There have been a series of attempts to build a better intercontinental bomber, and they have consistently failed,” said Owen Coté, a professor of security studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Turns out whenever we try to improve on the B-52, we run into problems, so we still have the B-52.”"
This presumes the mission, terrain, and enemy remains static, which has really never been the case. What worked in WW2 isn't often going to be effective for today's problems.
Sure there are jobs that are nearly eternal, from which we should pick proven designs, doctrines. But especially in wartime, a "fail fast, fail cheap, and learn quickly" is exactly what I would want in a military to complement the decades of bureaucratic planning that preceded in peacetime.
This article is silly. The replacement of the B-52 isn't a better bomber, it's a different tech; ICBMs, drones, etc. - which the article doesn't even mention.
The article also mentions the amount of B 52s there are, and were. Today's fleet could be described as, "small" in comparison.
As for drones - the B-52s are very long range aren't they? As in they take off from the US to strike in the middle east or anywhere else? Can any drone do that? So if you don't have a drone in theatre, it can't replace what the B-52 does.
> Conventional prompt global strike (CPGS) weapons would allow the United States to strike targets anywhere on Earth in as little as an hour. This capability may bolster U.S. efforts to deter and defeat adversaries by allowing the United States to attack high-value targets or “fleeting targets” at the start of or during a conflict.
> Some analysts, however, have raised concerns about the possibility that U.S. adversaries might misinterpret the launch of a missile with conventional warheads and conclude that the missiles carry nuclear weapons.
Wikipedia says the B-52 has a 8,764 nmi range. The RQ-4 Global Hawk has a range of 12,299 nmi. The X47-B recently demonstrated mid-air refueling (which B-52s need to go from the US to the ME and back), too.
Except that the M4 is from 1994, making it significantly younger than the B52.
There's a lot more differences between a B-52 bomber when it first rolled off the production line and what they're like now than there are between an AR-10 and a modern M4, though of course the rifles are a lot less complicated.
The lower receiver - the part of the gun that's a controlled "firearm" - is identical between the AR-15, M-16, and M-4. The only things that really change are the barrel length and the parts that go in the lower to differentiate between automatic fire and burst fire.
the "real" AR-15, by Armalite - not the semi-automatic version commonly available to civilians.
The B-52s are the same planes as were built in the 50s (not just the same designs. It's true that there aren't many parts in those planes that exist from the '50s, but and M-4 isn't a AR-15 that was taken the factory and rebuilt - it is a brand new rifle.
Unfortunately it wouldn't make a good bomber because of the basic layout of the plane. Compare the overall top-view layouts of the 737 vs the B-52, paying special attention to wing attachment points and where the bombing bay is, and you'll see what I mean.
It was shoe-horned into tactical airlift in Vietnam when the C-123 was withdrawn. Despite how it its viewed today that was never its intended mission and several aspects of the design ( in-line undercarriage wheels, narrowing centre cabin ) make it less than suitable. It was designed for medium-haul MAC trash-hauling, not tactical landings on forward strips. But it was available when a need arose and the role stuck because there was nothing else appropriate.
The Transall was a proper tactical airlifter with low ground pressure,high sink-rate and kneeling undercarriage. But the USAF would never buy it. The French, Turks and South Africans used both types simultaneously to complement each other.
Today we see the C-17 being pushed the other way, as a pseudo-strategic airlifter with horrendous inefficiencies.
It's a deterrent, not a weapon.
This article is obviously more of a magazine-style, so perhaps from an aesthetic perspective it doesn't fit. However, even in more "standard" articles they are sometimes available and sometimes not. I appreciate that some articles / topics are more sensitive, but surely they are the ones that need debate more than ever. Also if it's appropriately moderated anything deemed inappropriate can of course be removed.
Some bank of servers or other type of computer, or this B-52 airplane, or cruise-liner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Battleship_Yamato
OK, kidding about the cartoon alien tech, but somehow, I would not be shocked to see somebody strapping high tech engines under the BUFF to give it [sub]orbital capability some day :-)
They bat cleanup in an established no-fly zone.
1) its replacements, even if they had worked perfectly, would not have improved upon the original to a degree not already covered by ICBMs, cruise missiles, and drones. It fills its niche perfectly, as does its Russian counterpart.
2) its three toughest opponents have been Vietnam, Iraq, and Serbia. Scrappy countries to be sure, but not first-class air defenses with targets deep in enemy territory. So very few have been shot down.
I suppose once the parts run out to keep a decent fleet operational, we should consider building exact duplicates - with some modern upgrades of course, and just keep trucking.
Carpet bombing is defined as bombing within a large boxed area with the goal of obliterating everything in the area regardless of the military value of the targets in the area.
Yes, B52s carpet bombed some jungle areas of Vietnam. No, there was no carpet bombing of Hanoi, which is what this is probably referring to. Can't believe after all of these years the NYT is still misreporting this. If Hanoi had been carpet bombed, it would have been leveled. It's obvious that bombing was limited to specific targets of military value.
Are you saying President Clinton did NOT use B-52s to carpet bomb?
Please check your history.
"Further details were added by the Reuters that on Wednesday, June 9, reported that a NATO B-52 bomber caught two Yugoslav Army battalions in the open after Serbia stalled on pulling its troops out of Kosovo . The B-52 dropped sticks of gravity bombs on the troop concentrations near the Kosovo – Albania border Monday, carpeting a hillside area where some 400 to 800 soldiers were estimated to have been in the field. Moreover the Reuters added that NATO military spokesman Gen. Walter Jerts confirmed that “heavy bombers had been diverted at short notice to attack troops in Kosovo.”
In 1944, the US bombed German troops in Operation Cobra. The tactic of bombing troops in field in a massive attack without precision weapons is called "carpet bombing".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cobra "Approximately 3,000 U.S. aircraft had carpet-bombed a narrow section of the front, with the Panzer-Lehr-Division taking the brunt of the attack"
I'm saying the case you cite is not on any sort of scale comparable to Vietnam or WWII.
Your Operation Cobra cite involves 3,000 aircraft. Your Kosovo cite involves 86 bombs.
140,000 people died in the war. 4,000,000 "displaced".
The NYTimes article mentions B-52's bombing Yugoslavia ...
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.
OK, now you've gone off the deep end. Those 140,000 were killed by the various forces inside former Yugoslavia, in a number of campaigns of civil war and ethnic cleansing.
Per Wikipedia, somewhere about 500 civilians were killed in the NATO bombings, and about 1,000 belligerents. Those bombings effectively stopped the ethnic cleansing that'd been ongoing for almost a decade, and you're citing one case of saturation bombing of military forces as if it were at all comparable to Vietnam or WWII.
Who cleansed who?
If you believe NATO's the reason for ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, I've got a good condition used bridge in NYC to sell you.
I would encourage you to review exactly what Clinton did in the ethnic cleansing of Krajina. Did he hire contractors and mercanaries to help? Did he okay the invasion? Did he have USAF assist the Croat attack?
Sadly, all the answers appear to be "yes he did".
BS?
Please decide for yourself. A candid review of the available data is all I ask.
actually were.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20719382 "North Vietnam, 1972: The Christmas bombing of Hanoi"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-52_Stratofortress#Vie...
"The zenith of B-52 attacks in Vietnam was Operation Linebacker II (sometimes referred to as the Christmas Bombing) which consisted of waves of B-52s (mostly D models, but some Gs without jamming equipment and with a smaller bomb load). Over 12 days, B-52s flew 729 sorties[148] and dropped 15,237 tons of bombs on Hanoi, Haiphong, and other targets.[90][149] "
>If Hanoi had been carpet bombed, it would have been leveled.
Hanoi did have air defense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-52_Stratofortress#/me...
The Wikipedia article on Linebacks II says the US air force targeted military targets and power plants.
Around 1700 people died. A true carpet bombing of a city like Hanoi would result in a lot more than that.
With carpet bombing, there would have been considerably more civilian casualties. If you look at actual history books, you'll find that the Vietnamese authorities were surprised at the accuracy of the bombing.
Bravo!
I think if they meant Hanoi they'd have said Hanoi, not "Vietnam".
Honestly, I'm really not sure that the whole justification on "strategic" vs "tactical" bombing that spawned a separate Air Force was such a good idea given the types of wars fought in the nuclear age.