Civil aviation does not have the same inspection process that the military does. The old heavy tankers were all being flown at their limits for decades with no

Civil aviation does not have the same inspection process that the military does. The old heavy tankers were all being flown at their limits for decades with nothing more than a dude with a flashlight looking at the insides of them and going "yurp, this is good to go!" On Air Force aircraft, to include the B-52, thousands of inspectors either look at every single critical part on a regular basis or use random sampling to establish estimated fleet health levels. https://www.airforce.com/careers/maintenance-and-repair/nondestructive-inspection https://www.airforce.com/careers/maintenance-and-repair/nond... I'm willing to bet that each individual B-52 has more paperwork on it and more eyeballs that have seen x-rays and ultrasounds of it than every single aerial firefighting platform in the world combined.