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After 60 Years, B-52s Still Dominate U.S. Fleet

149 points by otoolep 11y ago

unchocked 11y ago
The B.U.F.F. (Big Ugly Fat Fucker) is a bomb truck: it carries heavy ordinance over long distances in uncontested airspace. Yes it drinks fuel, yes it's a maintenance hog, but it's paid for.
- elemenopy 11y ago
  I think you mean ordnance [1] :) 1. http://grammarist.com/usage/ordinance-ordnance/ http://grammarist.com/usage/ordinance-ordnance/
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Once we master the art of political warfare, we can send B-52s to drop destructive parking regulations, zoning requirements, noise restrictions, and other heavy ordinances to cripple the enemy.
thebiglebrewski 11y ago
Two things strike me: 1. If it ain't broke, don't fix it 2. The military/red-tape bureaucracy/contracting/bid system behemoth that has been created in the meantime disallows any innovation that could ever take its place
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  I'd argue your first point directly contradicts your second point. 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.”"
  - parasubvert 11y ago
    "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." 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.
- justinator 11y ago
  If you RTFA, you'll see that it is broken. 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.
  - chrisseaton 11y ago
    I think the US considered using ICBMs to deliver conventional strikes (and in fact they didn't even contain a warhead - just the kinetic energy of the missile was enough), but decided against it as they couldn't be differentiated from a nuclear strike by early warning systems. 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.
    - snerbles 11y ago
      Conventional ICBMs are being considered under the Prompt Global Strike project [1]. From the summary: > 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. [1] https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/R41464.pdf https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/R41464.pdf
    - ceejayoz 11y ago
      > As for drones - the B-52s are very long range aren't they? 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.
    - toyg 11y ago
- esaym 11y ago
  As someone that used to be an aircraft mechanic on military planes, the running motto was "If it ain't broke, fix it 'till it is!"
perlgeek 11y ago
> Even as the bombers were being assembled, defense officials were planning their replacement, but each plan was undone by its own complexity. First was a nuclear-powered bomber able to stay aloft for weeks (too radioactive), then the supersonic B-58 with dartlike wings (kept crashing), and then the even faster B-70 (spewed highly toxic exhaust). 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.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  Good luck getting the Air Force to redesign a WW2-era plane. If there's one thing I learned reading the Boyd biography, it's that the Pentagon is constitutionally incapable of thinking pragmatically about technology.
  - crikli 11y ago
    Sounds like a good read, are you referring to this? http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed-ebook/dp/B000FA5UEG/ http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed-ebook/d...
    - vinceguidry 11y ago
      Yeah. 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.
      - engi_nerd 11y ago
        The Pentagon is, for practical purposes, forbidden from iteration because that's not how their process is structured. This hellacious chart [0], (which I love pointing out), is the official diagram for the Pentagon's weapons purchasing process. This process matches requirements in federal law. In other words, this process is mandated by Congress. 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_wall_chart.jpg http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2010/09/atl_wal...
trhway 11y ago
Russia still uses the "Bear" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-95 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-95 too. 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.
tomohawk 11y ago
"infamy lingering from the carpet bombing of Vietnam" 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.
- tosseraccount 11y ago
  Clinton used B-52s to do carpet bombing in Europe in 1999, too. http://theaviationist.com/2014/10/16/b-52-in-allied-force/ http://theaviationist.com/2014/10/16/b-52-in-allied-force/
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    On troop concentrations, with dozens of bombs, not tens of thousands. Comparing the two situations is a bit silly.
    - tosseraccount 11y ago
      Carpet bombing is carpet bombing. Carpet bombing, also known as saturation bombing, is aerial bombing done in order to inflict damage in every part of a selected area of land. 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 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"
azernik 11y ago
The New York Times tries to play up the issues of the (indeed, terrible) American military procurement system, but I think there's something else going on. The B-52's Soviet equivalent, the Tu-95 (turboprop-powered, even!) is also still flying! 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.
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  > 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.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Wiring and avionics and such, yes, but the structure is still original. This matters because of metal fatigue, which means that the structure is getting worse by the year.
    - sokoloff 11y ago
      Semi-modern inspection techniques (eddy current inspection) and X-ray inspection can detect hidden defects and cracks and aluminum airframes are fairly readily repairable. I wouldn't expect that metal fatigue will prove to be an impediment to the B-52's ability to continue to deliver ordinance.
    - 11y ago
protomyth 11y ago
Well, if the B-1 had been designed for conventional payloads or hadn't become such a political promise in the 1980 election, the B-52 would probably have been retired. Even the B-3 specs don't look like something that will retire the B-52. 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.
WalterBright 11y ago
The DC-3 is another airframe that just never goes obsolete.
pretzel 11y ago
What I don't get is, if it is such a simple aircraft - pretty much an airliner with the passenger section being a bomb bay - and we're pretty good at making airliners these days - why don't they as a short term stop gap just turn an airliner airframe into a bomber? 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...
- Roboprog 11y ago
  You would of course have to replace the electronics with simpler "hardened" versions. Can't have your B-252 brought down by a cell phone :-) (let alone an EMP) I like the idea, but likely a large number of components would be replaced by less efficient, but more durable, variants.
  - Roboprog 11y ago
    Like slide rules :-)
    - runjake 11y ago
      Everything in the B-52H is nuclear-hardened. Navigators don't actually use the slide rule or start sextant on a regular basis though they do train on it. This article sounds like a PR effort by the USAF to help cost justify replacement of the B-52H.
    - sirkneeland 11y ago
      At some point SOMEBODY has to mention Battlestar Galactica and the importance of using old tech not connected to "the network" to save the day...
- bsamuels 11y ago
  the B52's benefits center around it being such a simple aircraft. 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.
nickhalfasleep 11y ago
The B-52 (and Tu-95) can stay in the air so long as their is no challenge to air superiority. The last real challenge might have been the Vietnam war for B-52's and their SA-2 missiles. Once real challengers show up, they have to be herded away. Just look at the decimation of B-29's over Korea when Mig-15's showed up.
- Roboprog 11y ago
  Yes. They bat cleanup in an established no-fly zone.
lmm 11y ago
The C-130 is still in service too, for the same reason. The mission hasn't changed. The B-52 simply doesn't do anything really technological - it's not stealthed, it's not intended to go head-to-head with fighters. It carries a big load of bombs and drops them somewhere, and the technology for that was fundamentally done by the '60s. There will come a time when we don't need to redesign our aircraft every few decades any more than we do our infantry's rifles.
- morgante 11y ago
  > There will come a time when we don't need to redesign our aircraft every few decades any more than we do our infantry's rifles. Except that the M4 is from 1994, making it significantly younger than the B52.
  - rangibaby 11y ago
    I think it's possible to convert an M4 into its contemporary M16 and vice versa.
    - dsr_ 11y ago
      The M16 entered service in 1963. The M4 is a derivative.
      - rangibaby 11y ago
        I know that, but the M4 is based on the M16A2 from the 80s.
  - CydeWeys 11y ago
    Huh? The M4 was directly based on the M16, which was based on the AR-15, which was all ultimately based on the AR-10, which was first made in the mid 1950s, thus making it almost exactly as old as the B-52 bomber. 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.
vpribish 11y ago
This is a worthless article. Yes, the B-52 is old - but it works. Yes, replacements with different missions for different times have failed, or come and gone. We're about to build the LSB which will try to replace the old plane more directly than those previous programs. Defense procurement is messed up. none of this is news. 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.
- WatchDog 11y ago
  Had a little bit of trouble figuring out what the LSB was. It appears you are referring to the LRS-B. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Strike_Bomber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Strike_Bomber
  - vpribish 11y ago
    that's the one - thanks for clarifying!
- function_seven 11y ago
  This line made my bullshit detector go off: ... 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. That is not what happened, not even close. The plane was damaged during delivery two days prior to the unveiling. It didn't "fail to start", they didn't try to start it after it was damaged. All of this didn't occur "in front of a crowd of 30,000"; again, it occurred two days before. 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-but-settle-for-a-substitute.html http://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/30/us/30000-hail-bomber-debut...
drdeadringer 11y ago
Think of when we reach the point where a piece of "high technology" reaches its 100th year of operation. Some bank of servers or other type of computer, or this B-52 airplane, or cruise-liner.
Roboprog 11y ago
So when do the B-52s get the "Battleship Yamato" treatment? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Battleship_Yamato 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 :-)
- vpribish 11y ago
  They are actually talking about replacing the troublesome old engines with ones from modern passenger planes - it hinges on the expected lifetime to recoup the costs through maintenance and efficiency (a bet that would have been wonderful at any time in the past). :)
- peckrob 11y ago
  Read "Flight of the Old Dog" by Dale Brown. It's a bit dated by modern standards (it was written in the 80s, when the Soviet Union was still a thing), but still good. I won't spoil it for you, but the book features a heavily modified B-52 saving the day.
  - aaren 11y ago
    "Fatal Terrain" is good as well. Released in 1997 so slightly more up to date. I read it hoping for fantastical descriptions of flying battleships hanging from a paper thin plot and was not remotely disappointed.
    - peckrob 11y ago
      Dale Brown books are one of my guilty pleasures. Actually, Silver Tower was the first sci-fi book I remember reading when I was a kid. He went to military thrillers after that one and I've read all of them too. But Silver Tower and Old Dog are still two of my favorites.
tn13 11y ago
It is common misconception that in military everything needs to be state of art. It needs to be effective.
kevinbluer 11y ago
One thing I've been wondering recently in regards to the NYT Online is why some articles allow for comments and some don't (as generally the debate is reasonably well balanced). 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.
squozzer 11y ago
Two reasons the B-52s are still around - 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.
Animats 11y ago
There have been several proposals to re-engine the B-52 fleet with four jetliner engines, but it hasn't happened yet.
known 11y ago
Are they better than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_robot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_robot
tim333 11y ago
I'd say that they are still using unreliable 60 year old bombers is something to celebrate in that carpet bombing is passe so who cares if the tools are a little clunky. Along the same lines I hope the UK fails to spend £100bn to replace the Trident nuclear deterrent. I mean if come WW3 we push the button to nuke Moscow and the thing doesn't go off who really cares? The money would be much better spent on humanitarian projects.
- kqr 11y ago
  Nobody really cares whether or not the button actually works, but when you say "it works" that is supposed to be a credible threat. If you think it works, then Kremlin probably thinks it works, and will think twice about nuking you in the first place. It's a deterrent, not a weapon.
  - tim333 11y ago
    Yeah but if you have several nuclear ICBMs pointed at you even a 25% chance of each working is probably a deterrent.

149 points by otoolep 11y ago

The B.U.F.F. (Big Ugly Fat Fucker) is a bomb truck: it carries heavy ordinance over long distances in uncontested airspace. Yes it drinks fuel, yes it's a maintenance hog, but it's paid for.

elemenopy 11y ago
I think you mean ordnance [1] :) 1. http://grammarist.com/usage/ordinance-ordnance/ http://grammarist.com/usage/ordinance-ordnance/
- mikeash 11y ago
  Once we master the art of political warfare, we can send B-52s to drop destructive parking regulations, zoning requirements, noise restrictions, and other heavy ordinances to cripple the enemy.

thebiglebrewski 11y ago

Two things strike me: 1. If it ain't broke, don't fix it 2. The military/red-tape bureaucracy/contracting/bid system behemoth that has been created in the meantime disallows any innovation that could ever take its place

toomuchtodo 11y ago
I'd argue your first point directly contradicts your second point. 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.”"
- parasubvert 11y ago
  "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." 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.
justinator 11y ago
If you RTFA, you'll see that it is broken. 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.
- chrisseaton 11y ago
  I think the US considered using ICBMs to deliver conventional strikes (and in fact they didn't even contain a warhead - just the kinetic energy of the missile was enough), but decided against it as they couldn't be differentiated from a nuclear strike by early warning systems. 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.
  - snerbles 11y ago
    Conventional ICBMs are being considered under the Prompt Global Strike project [1]. From the summary: > 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. [1] https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/R41464.pdf https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/R41464.pdf
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    > As for drones - the B-52s are very long range aren't they? 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.
  - toyg 11y ago
esaym 11y ago
As someone that used to be an aircraft mechanic on military planes, the running motto was "If it ain't broke, fix it 'till it is!"

perlgeek 11y ago

> Even as the bombers were being assembled, defense officials were planning their replacement, but each plan was undone by its own complexity. First was a nuclear-powered bomber able to stay aloft for weeks (too radioactive), then the supersonic B-58 with dartlike wings (kept crashing), and then the even faster B-70 (spewed highly toxic exhaust). 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.

vinceguidry 11y ago
Good luck getting the Air Force to redesign a WW2-era plane. If there's one thing I learned reading the Boyd biography, it's that the Pentagon is constitutionally incapable of thinking pragmatically about technology.
- crikli 11y ago
  Sounds like a good read, are you referring to this? http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed-ebook/dp/B000FA5UEG/ http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed-ebook/d...
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    Yeah. 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.
    - engi_nerd 11y ago
      The Pentagon is, for practical purposes, forbidden from iteration because that's not how their process is structured. This hellacious chart [0], (which I love pointing out), is the official diagram for the Pentagon's weapons purchasing process. This process matches requirements in federal law. In other words, this process is mandated by Congress. 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_wall_chart.jpg http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2010/09/atl_wal...

trhway 11y ago

Russia still uses the "Bear" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-95 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-95 too. 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.

tomohawk 11y ago

"infamy lingering from the carpet bombing of Vietnam" 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.

tosseraccount 11y ago
Clinton used B-52s to do carpet bombing in Europe in 1999, too. http://theaviationist.com/2014/10/16/b-52-in-allied-force/ http://theaviationist.com/2014/10/16/b-52-in-allied-force/
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  On troop concentrations, with dozens of bombs, not tens of thousands. Comparing the two situations is a bit silly.
  - tosseraccount 11y ago
    Carpet bombing is carpet bombing. Carpet bombing, also known as saturation bombing, is aerial bombing done in order to inflict damage in every part of a selected area of land. 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 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"

azernik 11y ago

The New York Times tries to play up the issues of the (indeed, terrible) American military procurement system, but I think there's something else going on. The B-52's Soviet equivalent, the Tu-95 (turboprop-powered, even!) is also still flying! 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.

ceejayoz 11y ago
> 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.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Wiring and avionics and such, yes, but the structure is still original. This matters because of metal fatigue, which means that the structure is getting worse by the year.
  - sokoloff 11y ago
    Semi-modern inspection techniques (eddy current inspection) and X-ray inspection can detect hidden defects and cracks and aluminum airframes are fairly readily repairable. I wouldn't expect that metal fatigue will prove to be an impediment to the B-52's ability to continue to deliver ordinance.
  - 11y ago

protomyth 11y ago

Well, if the B-1 had been designed for conventional payloads or hadn't become such a political promise in the 1980 election, the B-52 would probably have been retired. Even the B-3 specs don't look like something that will retire the B-52. 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.

WalterBright 11y ago

The DC-3 is another airframe that just never goes obsolete.

pretzel 11y ago

What I don't get is, if it is such a simple aircraft - pretty much an airliner with the passenger section being a bomb bay - and we're pretty good at making airliners these days - why don't they as a short term stop gap just turn an airliner airframe into a bomber? 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...

Roboprog 11y ago
You would of course have to replace the electronics with simpler "hardened" versions. Can't have your B-252 brought down by a cell phone :-) (let alone an EMP) I like the idea, but likely a large number of components would be replaced by less efficient, but more durable, variants.
- Roboprog 11y ago
  Like slide rules :-)
  - runjake 11y ago
    Everything in the B-52H is nuclear-hardened. Navigators don't actually use the slide rule or start sextant on a regular basis though they do train on it. This article sounds like a PR effort by the USAF to help cost justify replacement of the B-52H.
  - sirkneeland 11y ago
    At some point SOMEBODY has to mention Battlestar Galactica and the importance of using old tech not connected to "the network" to save the day...
bsamuels 11y ago
the B52's benefits center around it being such a simple aircraft. 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.

nickhalfasleep 11y ago

The B-52 (and Tu-95) can stay in the air so long as their is no challenge to air superiority. The last real challenge might have been the Vietnam war for B-52's and their SA-2 missiles. Once real challengers show up, they have to be herded away. Just look at the decimation of B-29's over Korea when Mig-15's showed up.

Roboprog 11y ago
Yes. They bat cleanup in an established no-fly zone.

lmm 11y ago

The C-130 is still in service too, for the same reason. The mission hasn't changed. The B-52 simply doesn't do anything really technological - it's not stealthed, it's not intended to go head-to-head with fighters. It carries a big load of bombs and drops them somewhere, and the technology for that was fundamentally done by the '60s. There will come a time when we don't need to redesign our aircraft every few decades any more than we do our infantry's rifles.

morgante 11y ago
> There will come a time when we don't need to redesign our aircraft every few decades any more than we do our infantry's rifles. Except that the M4 is from 1994, making it significantly younger than the B52.
- rangibaby 11y ago
  I think it's possible to convert an M4 into its contemporary M16 and vice versa.
  - dsr_ 11y ago
    The M16 entered service in 1963. The M4 is a derivative.
    - rangibaby 11y ago
      I know that, but the M4 is based on the M16A2 from the 80s.
- CydeWeys 11y ago
  Huh? The M4 was directly based on the M16, which was based on the AR-15, which was all ultimately based on the AR-10, which was first made in the mid 1950s, thus making it almost exactly as old as the B-52 bomber. 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.

vpribish 11y ago

This is a worthless article. Yes, the B-52 is old - but it works. Yes, replacements with different missions for different times have failed, or come and gone. We're about to build the LSB which will try to replace the old plane more directly than those previous programs. Defense procurement is messed up. none of this is news. 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.

WatchDog 11y ago
Had a little bit of trouble figuring out what the LSB was. It appears you are referring to the LRS-B. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Strike_Bomber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Strike_Bomber
- vpribish 11y ago
  that's the one - thanks for clarifying!
function_seven 11y ago
This line made my bullshit detector go off: ... 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. That is not what happened, not even close. The plane was damaged during delivery two days prior to the unveiling. It didn't "fail to start", they didn't try to start it after it was damaged. All of this didn't occur "in front of a crowd of 30,000"; again, it occurred two days before. 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-but-settle-for-a-substitute.html http://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/30/us/30000-hail-bomber-debut...

drdeadringer 11y ago

Think of when we reach the point where a piece of "high technology" reaches its 100th year of operation. Some bank of servers or other type of computer, or this B-52 airplane, or cruise-liner.

Roboprog 11y ago

So when do the B-52s get the "Battleship Yamato" treatment? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Battleship_Yamato 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 :-)

vpribish 11y ago
They are actually talking about replacing the troublesome old engines with ones from modern passenger planes - it hinges on the expected lifetime to recoup the costs through maintenance and efficiency (a bet that would have been wonderful at any time in the past). :)
peckrob 11y ago
Read "Flight of the Old Dog" by Dale Brown. It's a bit dated by modern standards (it was written in the 80s, when the Soviet Union was still a thing), but still good. I won't spoil it for you, but the book features a heavily modified B-52 saving the day.
- aaren 11y ago
  "Fatal Terrain" is good as well. Released in 1997 so slightly more up to date. I read it hoping for fantastical descriptions of flying battleships hanging from a paper thin plot and was not remotely disappointed.
  - peckrob 11y ago
    Dale Brown books are one of my guilty pleasures. Actually, Silver Tower was the first sci-fi book I remember reading when I was a kid. He went to military thrillers after that one and I've read all of them too. But Silver Tower and Old Dog are still two of my favorites.

tn13 11y ago

It is common misconception that in military everything needs to be state of art. It needs to be effective.

kevinbluer 11y ago

One thing I've been wondering recently in regards to the NYT Online is why some articles allow for comments and some don't (as generally the debate is reasonably well balanced). 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.

squozzer 11y ago

Two reasons the B-52s are still around - 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.

Animats 11y ago

There have been several proposals to re-engine the B-52 fleet with four jetliner engines, but it hasn't happened yet.

known 11y ago

Are they better than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_robot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_robot

tim333 11y ago

I'd say that they are still using unreliable 60 year old bombers is something to celebrate in that carpet bombing is passe so who cares if the tools are a little clunky. Along the same lines I hope the UK fails to spend £100bn to replace the Trident nuclear deterrent. I mean if come WW3 we push the button to nuke Moscow and the thing doesn't go off who really cares? The money would be much better spent on humanitarian projects.

kqr 11y ago
Nobody really cares whether or not the button actually works, but when you say "it works" that is supposed to be a credible threat. If you think it works, then Kremlin probably thinks it works, and will think twice about nuking you in the first place. It's a deterrent, not a weapon.
- tim333 11y ago
  Yeah but if you have several nuclear ICBMs pointed at you even a 25% chance of each working is probably a deterrent.