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It's always disappointing to see such uninformed and yet overconfident comments on HN. Replacing the eight small B-52 engines with four larger ones was consider

by nradov 2y ago

It's always disappointing to see such uninformed and yet overconfident comments on HN. Replacing the eight small B-52 engines with four larger ones was considered and rejected years ago because it would have forced much more extensive modifications to the airframe and other systems. https://www.twz.com/6825/engine-falls-off-b-52-during-a-training-sortie-over-north-dakota https://www.twz.com/6825/engine-falls-off-b-52-during-a-trai... And it's extremely difficult to convert civilian airliners into bombers. The pressure hulls aren't designed around bomb bays and they lack external hard points. Even though the P-8 is based on the 737 the design had to be extensively modified to accommodate weapons through a major program lasting years. The resulting aircraft are new production, not modifications of airliners.

jiggawatts 2y ago
You're saying that my argument that "8 engines is not simple" is invalid because... it would not be simple to replace them with modern efficient engines... because there are 8 of them. Yes. We agree: the setup is not standard, not simple, and requires 2x the maintenance that 1/2 the engines would for decades and decades. Older and established isn't necessarily "simpler" or "cheaper". The average annual maintenance cost of a B-52 is $70 million. The maintenance cost of a 747 or a similar sized plane is more like $4 million, and they operate far more hours than the B-52 fleet. A commercial plane equivalent to a B-52 costs something like $200M to purchase new, which is just three years of maintenance for a B-52! Sure, sure, the out-of-the-box default for a commercial wide-body airliner is not immediately usable as a strategic bomber, but it's not that hard to add a bomb bay, in-air fuel port, etc...
- seabird 2y ago
  You are comically off-base on this, man. We are talking about a nuclear bomber. They put fucking nukes on these things. We have 70 years of operational history showing that the 8 engine arrangement works, and there is no good reason to make anything more than the most minimal changes. Go ahead and do that until you're blue in the face with some inconsequential junk SaaS product or phone app or whatever, but warplanes (and especially this one) are not the place to do it. I'm just going to hope you're not actually serious about converting a commercial airliner to a bomber.
  - jiggawatts 2y ago
    The bomber isn’t nuclear. The payload is. The good reason to make changes is the hard reality that your opponents won’t slow down to accomodate your old, inefficient, maintenance-heavy fleet of bombers. Even during peacetime the B-52 fleet is burning money, money that DOGE assures the voting public cannot be wasted on frivolous matters such as HIV prevention. It’s like the Ukraine war. Perfectly good tanks turned out to be useless sitting ducks in the face of $500 drones. Why change anything? Because the enemy did. Because the rest of the world did.
    - nradov 2y ago
      Wow, you're really doubling down on the aggressive ignorance. Do you have any clue about what's involved in certifying a platform for the nuclear strike mission?
      - jiggawatts 2y ago
        Making such a plane, yes, I have a pretty decent clue. It's not that hard. It was done with early 1950s technology! Certifying, sadly... also yes. I work in government. Do you think the enemy cares whether you're properly certified or not? Similarly, do you think hackers care if your CISO has all of your security audit paperwork nicely rubber stamped? Do viruses care if your unpatched servers have been officially exempt from the update schedule? In war, only capability matters. Nothing else.
        nradov 2y ago
        There's quite a bit of extra hardware needed on the aircraft for the nuclear mission. As well as testing for stuff like weapons separation. None of that is easy or cheap on converted civilian designs. You would know this if you had bothered to do some basic research instead of posting ignorant and irrelevant comments. Like many arrogant engineers who love to pontificate about topics outside your area of expertise, I'm sure you're convinced you're right and everyone else is an idiot. So I'll pass on any further replies and let you believe that you "won".

by nradov 2y ago

jiggawatts 2y ago

You're saying that my argument that "8 engines is not simple" is invalid because... it would not be simple to replace them with modern efficient engines... because there are 8 of them. Yes. We agree: the setup is not standard, not simple, and requires 2x the maintenance that 1/2 the engines would for decades and decades. Older and established isn't necessarily "simpler" or "cheaper". The average annual maintenance cost of a B-52 is $70 million. The maintenance cost of a 747 or a similar sized plane is more like $4 million, and they operate far more hours than the B-52 fleet. A commercial plane equivalent to a B-52 costs something like $200M to purchase new, which is just three years of maintenance for a B-52! Sure, sure, the out-of-the-box default for a commercial wide-body airliner is not immediately usable as a strategic bomber, but it's not that hard to add a bomb bay, in-air fuel port, etc...

seabird 2y ago
You are comically off-base on this, man. We are talking about a nuclear bomber. They put fucking nukes on these things. We have 70 years of operational history showing that the 8 engine arrangement works, and there is no good reason to make anything more than the most minimal changes. Go ahead and do that until you're blue in the face with some inconsequential junk SaaS product or phone app or whatever, but warplanes (and especially this one) are not the place to do it. I'm just going to hope you're not actually serious about converting a commercial airliner to a bomber.
- jiggawatts 2y ago
  The bomber isn’t nuclear. The payload is. The good reason to make changes is the hard reality that your opponents won’t slow down to accomodate your old, inefficient, maintenance-heavy fleet of bombers. Even during peacetime the B-52 fleet is burning money, money that DOGE assures the voting public cannot be wasted on frivolous matters such as HIV prevention. It’s like the Ukraine war. Perfectly good tanks turned out to be useless sitting ducks in the face of $500 drones. Why change anything? Because the enemy did. Because the rest of the world did.
  - nradov 2y ago
    Wow, you're really doubling down on the aggressive ignorance. Do you have any clue about what's involved in certifying a platform for the nuclear strike mission?
    - jiggawatts 2y ago
      Making such a plane, yes, I have a pretty decent clue. It's not that hard. It was done with early 1950s technology! Certifying, sadly... also yes. I work in government. Do you think the enemy cares whether you're properly certified or not? Similarly, do you think hackers care if your CISO has all of your security audit paperwork nicely rubber stamped? Do viruses care if your unpatched servers have been officially exempt from the update schedule? In war, only capability matters. Nothing else.
      - nradov 2y ago
        There's quite a bit of extra hardware needed on the aircraft for the nuclear mission. As well as testing for stuff like weapons separation. None of that is easy or cheap on converted civilian designs. You would know this if you had bothered to do some basic research instead of posting ignorant and irrelevant comments. Like many arrogant engineers who love to pontificate about topics outside your area of expertise, I'm sure you're convinced you're right and everyone else is an idiot. So I'll pass on any further replies and let you believe that you "won".