Air Force commanders are now urging the Pentagon to deploy B-52s in Syria.
76 B-52s still make up the bulk of the United States’ long-range bomber fleet, and they are not retiring anytime soon. The next potential replacement — the Long Range Strike Bomber, which has yet to be designed — is decades away, so the B-52 is expected to keep flying until at least 2040. By then, taking one into combat will be the equivalent of flying a World War I biplane during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The Air Force to churn out more than 740 of the swept-wing B52 bombers at a then-unprecedented cost of around $8 million each. The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress is a long-range, subsonic, jet-powered strategic bomber. The B-52 was designed and built by Boeing, which has continued to provide support and upgrades. It has been operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) since the 1950s. The bomber is capable of carrying up to 70,000 pounds (32,000 kg) of weapons. The first flew in 1952 and the last was built in 1962.
The B52's rugged design has allowed it to go nearly anywhere and drop nearly anything the Pentagon desires, including both atomic bombs and leaflets.
Underwhelming jets have been put forth to take the place of the B52.
Even as the B52 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),
The Convair X-6 was a proposed experimental aircraft project to develop and evaluate a nuclear-powered jet aircraft. The project was to use a Convair B-36 bomber as a testbed aircraft, and though one NB-36H was modified during the early stages of the project, the program was canceled before the actual X-6 and its nuclear reactor engines were completed. The X-6 was part of a larger series of programs, costing US$7 billion in all, that ran from 1946 through 1961.
Project Pluto was a United States government program to develop nuclear powered ramjet engines for use in cruise missiles. Project Pluto was in the 1960s.
then the supersonic B-58 with dartlike wings (kept crashing), and
then the even faster B-70 (spewed highly toxic exhaust).
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, with its delicate radar-evading coating, had to be stored in a climate-controlled hangar to be effective, and its sensors at first could not tell a storm cloud from a mountain. It soon became known as the $2 billion bomber that cannot go out in the rain.
The Air Force is trying to change the image of the B-52 from indiscriminate carpet bomber to precision weapon. Laser-targeting pods attached to the wing of many of the bombers in recent years allow them to drop guided “smart” bombs.
The Long Range Bomber Program
The Pentagon awarded the most fiercely-fought weapons contest in more than a decade to Northrop Grumman Corp., a $21.4 billion initial deal to build new long-range bombers for the U.S. Air Force.
Northrop Grumman was selected over a Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. team to build the first 21 jets to replace aging B-52 and B-1 war planes. The contract eventually could be worth $80 billion and provide 100 planes total. The first aircraft are due to enter service around 2025.
The new radar-evading bomber is designed to fly undetected over potential adversaries such as Russia or China that have upgraded their air defenses. The plane is capable of firing conventional and nuclear weapons, becoming the third leg of the nuclear triad alongside submarine and land-based ballistic missiles
Pentagon officials in recent weeks have provided a few details on what the Air Force has called one of its top three priorities, alongside the Lockheed-built F-35 fighter and Boeing-built KC-46A refueling tanker.
The contract is broken up into two parts — the cost-plus incentive fee development contract awarded today, and a separate agreement on the first five low-rate initial production lots that will be fixed-price incentive fee. Those first five lots will cover the production of 21 bombers.
The service requested that two independent government cost estimators look at the program. The two groups projected that each bomber will cost $511 million in 2010 dollars on average if 100 planes are built, Air Force officials told reporters on Tuesday — substantially less than the original $550 million target cost set by then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. This translates to $564 million per plane in fiscal year 2016 dollars.
LRS-B’s projected unit cost is higher compared to the B-1, but significantly lower relative to the $1.5 billion price tag of Northrop’s B-2, according to an Air Force handout. The expected development cost overall for LRS-B is also lower than for the B-2, at $23.5 billion.
SOURCES- Wall Street Journal, Defense News, wikipedia, NY Times
http://www.seattletimes.com/
After 60 years, B-52 bombers slow, rusty and frighteningly effective
A B-52 undergoes maintenance at Barksdale Air Force Base in
Louisiana. The bombers, scheduled for retirement years ago, are now
expected to keep flying until at least 2040. (EDMUND D FOUNTAIN/NYT)
The B-52, originally
scheduled for retirement generations ago, has outlived its replacement.
And its replacement’s replacement. And its replacement’s replacement’s
replacement.
OVER THE GREAT PLAINS — Glance down from the ageless expanse of
blue sky and look around the cockpit of the Air Force’s largest bomber,
where the panorama is more dated: banks of steam gauges quiver above
aluminum levers built during the Eisenhower administration, obsolete
knobs and dials unused in decades gather dust.
Much of the rest of the mammoth B-52 bomber is just as antiquated. Vacuum tubes have been replaced with microchips, and the once-standard ashtrays are gone. But eight engines along the wings still connect to the cockpit by yards of cables and pulleys, and the navigator often charts a course with a slide rule.
“It’s like stepping back in time,” said Capt. Lance Adsit, 28, the pilot. He banked left to start a mock bombing run, wrestling a control yoke forged decades before he was born. Time had stripped it of paint.
“I love the B-52,” Adsit said. “But the fact that this is still flying is really insane.”
A few minutes later, his onboard navigation computers crashed.
The B-52 is an Air Force plane that refuses to die. Originally scheduled for retirement generations ago, it continues to be deployed in conflict after conflict. It dropped the first hydrogen bomb in nuclear tests at the Bikini Atoll in 1956, and it laser-guided bombs in Afghanistan in 2006. It has outlived its replacement. And its replacement’s replacement. And its replacement’s replacement’s replacement.
Air Force commanders are now urging the Pentagon to deploy B-52s in Syria.
“We’re ready, we’re hungry, we’re eager to be in the fight,” said Col. Kristin Goodwin, who commands the 2nd Bomb Wing at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, where about half the bombers are based.
The bomber, in its 60th year of active service, is slow, primitive and weighed down by an infamy lingering from the carpet bombing of Vietnam in the 1960s. But 76 B-52s make up the bulk of the United States’ long-range bomber fleet, and they are not retiring anytime soon. The next potential replacement — the Long Range Strike Bomber, which has yet to be designed — is decades away, so the B-52 is expected to keep flying until at least 2040. By then, taking one into combat will be the equivalent of flying a World War I biplane during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“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.”
Officially, the B-52 is called the Stratofortress, but flight crews long ago nicknamed it the BUFF, a colorful acronym that the Air Force euphemistically paraphrases as Big Ugly Fat Fellow.
Too outmoded to be a stealth bomber, the B-52 has become the anti-stealth bomber: a loud, obvious and menacing albatross. It has pummeled armored divisions in Iraq and has laid thunderous walls of destruction over Taliban positions in Afghanistan.
“The big plane was very good,” said one beaming Northern Alliance commander in 2001. In more recent years, it has flown only what the Air Force calls “assurance and deterrence” missions near North Korea and Russia. In 2013, when China claimed disputed airspace over the South China Sea, two B-52s soared through in defiance.
“The BUFF is like the rook in a chess game,” said Maj. Mark Burley, the co-pilot for the training mission over the Great Plains. “Just by how you position it on the board, it changes the posture of your adversary.”
In 1982, President Reagan warned: “Many of our B-52 bombers are now older than the pilots who fly them.” Today, there is a B-52 pilot whose father and grandfather flew the plane.
Reagan rushed production of the B-1, which was designed to fly fast and low beneath enemy defenses. It was expected to replace the B-52 in the 1990s, but in a prelude of future problems, the first B-1 unveiled in 1985, before a crowd of 30,000, failed to start. Design flaws and engine fires sidelined the plane during the Persian Gulf War and have limited its use since.
Next came the B-2 stealth bomber in 1997. But the B-2, with its delicate radar-evading coating, had to be stored in a climate-controlled hangar to be effective, and its sensors at first could not tell a storm cloud from a mountain. It soon became known as the $2 billion bomber that cannot go out in the rain.
The B-52 became a technologically humble — but still frighteningly effective — stand-in.
The Air Force is trying to change the image of the B-52 from indiscriminate carpet bomber to precision weapon. Laser-targeting pods, attached to wings of many of the bombers in recent years, allow them to drop guided “smart” bombs. Also in recent years, the big bombers circling high above Afghanistan acted as close air support. “We’re as accurate as a fighter,” said Lt. Col. Sarah Hall, a B-52 pilot who flew missions over Afghanistan.
Ground crews scouring the aging frames for rust often find graffiti in hidden nooks by previous generations; a recent discovery, perhaps commenting on the planes’ age, featured primitive cave-style animal paintings.
Despite intensive maintenance, the B-52s’ ages are starting to show. On a recent training flight out of Barksdale Air Force Base after three days of rain, leaks in a bomber left its seats soaked and the control panel glistening. One engine refused to start, and then some wiring shorted.
“This is really the full BUFF experience,” the co-pilot said with a patient grin. “But once we get airborne, we’re usually OK.”
A few minutes later, the bomber with a crew of five roared into the sky and banked toward its mock bombing target in Texas.
The Buzz
The North American XB-70 Valkyrie was the largest and fastest bomber ever built by the United States, but the massive six-engine Mach 3.0-capable jet never entered production. Only one surviving prototype sits in a museum in Dayton, Ohio, even as the Boeing B-52 it was supposed to one day replace continues to soldier on.
The idea behind the XB-70 originated in the 1950s when it was assumed ever-greater speeds and altitudes would enable American bombers to survive against Soviet air defenses unmolested on their way to delivering their doomsday payloads. At the time, the only effective defense against bombers were fighters and antiaircraft artillery. Even then, anti-aircraft guns were only marginally effective and interceptors were increasingly challenged by ever improving bomber performance.
However, with the advent of surface-to-air missiles (SAM), that began to change—the balance started to tip in favor of the defender. While the U.S. Air Force was aware of Soviet advances in SAM technology, the Pentagon didn’t start to understand the scope of the problem until Francis Gary Powers’ Lockheed U-2 spy plane was shot down while overflying the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960. But development of the XB-70 continued nonetheless.
(Recommended: 5 Places World War III Could Break Out)
With the growing realization that Soviet SAMs posed an increasing threat to American bombers, the Pentagon started to explore low-level penetration as an alternative. Low-level penetration involved flying under the radar horizon using terrain to mask a bomber’s approach, which greatly reduces enemy response times. Moreover, the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles greatly reduced the United States’ reliance on manned bombers. Many leading military strategists of the time believed bombers were too vulnerable to survive the journey into Soviet airspace. As a result, President John F. Kennedy decided to cancel the XB-70 as a frontline bomber program on March 28, 1961.
Meanwhile, the XB-70 test program continued. The jet made its first flight on Sept 21, 1964, when it flew from Palmdale to Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. But the first XB-70 proved to be a disappointment—it had poor directional stability above Mach 2.5 and made only one flight above Mach 3.0. The second jet, which flew on July 17, 1965, added five degrees of dihedral on the wings for better supersonic stability.
Tragedy struck on June 8, 1966, when the second XB-70 prototype was destroyed in a crash after a midair collision with its F-104N chase plane. Two people were killed and one was severely injured during the accident. The loss of the second aircraft—which was much more capable than the first—was a huge set back. Testing, however, continued until Feb. 4, 1969. Ultimately, the first XB-70 logged eighty-three flights totaling 160 hours and sixteen minutes, while the second XB-70 logged forty-six flights totaling ninety-two hours and twenty-two minutes according to NASA.
(Recommended: Is the F-35 Heading to Syria?)
The XB-70, while a technological wonder at the time, was the wrong plane for the wrong time. It came at a time when ballistic missiles were thought to be supplanting manned bombers. Moreover, it was being developed at a time when it was increasingly apparent that high speed and high altitude were not sufficient protection against surface-to-air missiles or the next generation of Soviet fighters.
But the nail in the coffin was the jet’s exorbitant price tag and lack of mission flexibility—the B-70 couldn’t be adapted for the low level role. Let’s hope today’s shadowy Long Range Strike Bomber fares better.
(Recommended: Russia's 'F-22' Is Simply Amazing)
Dave Majumdar is the defense editor for The National Interest. You can follow him on Twitter: @davemajumdar.
Much of the rest of the mammoth B-52 bomber is just as antiquated. Vacuum tubes have been replaced with microchips, and the once-standard ashtrays are gone. But eight engines along the wings still connect to the cockpit by yards of cables and pulleys, and the navigator often charts a course with a slide rule.
“It’s like stepping back in time,” said Capt. Lance Adsit, 28, the pilot. He banked left to start a mock bombing run, wrestling a control yoke forged decades before he was born. Time had stripped it of paint.
“I love the B-52,” Adsit said. “But the fact that this is still flying is really insane.”
A few minutes later, his onboard navigation computers crashed.
The B-52 is an Air Force plane that refuses to die. Originally scheduled for retirement generations ago, it continues to be deployed in conflict after conflict. It dropped the first hydrogen bomb in nuclear tests at the Bikini Atoll in 1956, and it laser-guided bombs in Afghanistan in 2006. It has outlived its replacement. And its replacement’s replacement. And its replacement’s replacement’s replacement.
Air Force commanders are now urging the Pentagon to deploy B-52s in Syria.
“We’re ready, we’re hungry, we’re eager to be in the fight,” said Col. Kristin Goodwin, who commands the 2nd Bomb Wing at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, where about half the bombers are based.
The bomber, in its 60th year of active service, is slow, primitive and weighed down by an infamy lingering from the carpet bombing of Vietnam in the 1960s. But 76 B-52s make up the bulk of the United States’ long-range bomber fleet, and they are not retiring anytime soon. The next potential replacement — the Long Range Strike Bomber, which has yet to be designed — is decades away, so the B-52 is expected to keep flying until at least 2040. By then, taking one into combat will be the equivalent of flying a World War I biplane during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Replacements fall short
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 atomic bombs — and leaflets. But it is also due to the 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,” 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.”
Officially, the B-52 is called the Stratofortress, but flight crews long ago nicknamed it the BUFF, a colorful acronym that the Air Force euphemistically paraphrases as Big Ugly Fat Fellow.
Too outmoded to be a stealth bomber, the B-52 has become the anti-stealth bomber: a loud, obvious and menacing albatross. It has pummeled armored divisions in Iraq and has laid thunderous walls of destruction over Taliban positions in Afghanistan.
“The big plane was very good,” said one beaming Northern Alliance commander in 2001. In more recent years, it has flown only what the Air Force calls “assurance and deterrence” missions near North Korea and Russia. In 2013, when China claimed disputed airspace over the South China Sea, two B-52s soared through in defiance.
“The BUFF is like the rook in a chess game,” said Maj. Mark Burley, the co-pilot for the training mission over the Great Plains. “Just by how you position it on the board, it changes the posture of your adversary.”
Embarrassing failures
A front-page story in The New York Times in 1966 said all B-52s would need to retire by 1975 because they would “be too old to continue beyond that point.” But no viable alternative emerged.In 1982, President Reagan warned: “Many of our B-52 bombers are now older than the pilots who fly them.” Today, there is a B-52 pilot whose father and grandfather flew the plane.
Reagan rushed production of the B-1, which was designed to fly fast and low beneath enemy defenses. It was expected to replace the B-52 in the 1990s, but in a prelude of future problems, the first B-1 unveiled in 1985, before a crowd of 30,000, failed to start. Design flaws and engine fires sidelined the plane during the Persian Gulf War and have limited its use since.
Next came the B-2 stealth bomber in 1997. But the B-2, with its delicate radar-evading coating, had to be stored in a climate-controlled hangar to be effective, and its sensors at first could not tell a storm cloud from a mountain. It soon became known as the $2 billion bomber that cannot go out in the rain.
The B-52 became a technologically humble — but still frighteningly effective — stand-in.
The Air Force is trying to change the image of the B-52 from indiscriminate carpet bomber to precision weapon. Laser-targeting pods, attached to wings of many of the bombers in recent years, allow them to drop guided “smart” bombs. Also in recent years, the big bombers circling high above Afghanistan acted as close air support. “We’re as accurate as a fighter,” said Lt. Col. Sarah Hall, a B-52 pilot who flew missions over Afghanistan.
Airborne museum piece
While its weaponry has been upgraded, the rest of the plane can look like a midcentury museum exhibit.Ground crews scouring the aging frames for rust often find graffiti in hidden nooks by previous generations; a recent discovery, perhaps commenting on the planes’ age, featured primitive cave-style animal paintings.
Despite intensive maintenance, the B-52s’ ages are starting to show. On a recent training flight out of Barksdale Air Force Base after three days of rain, leaks in a bomber left its seats soaked and the control panel glistening. One engine refused to start, and then some wiring shorted.
“This is really the full BUFF experience,” the co-pilot said with a patient grin. “But once we get airborne, we’re usually OK.”
A few minutes later, the bomber with a crew of five roared into the sky and banked toward its mock bombing target in Texas.
The Buzz
The XB-70: America's Mach 3 Super Bomber That Never Was
The North American XB-70 Valkyrie was the largest and fastest bomber ever built by the United States, but the massive six-engine Mach 3.0-capable jet never entered production. Only one surviving prototype sits in a museum in Dayton, Ohio, even as the Boeing B-52 it was supposed to one day replace continues to soldier on.
The idea behind the XB-70 originated in the 1950s when it was assumed ever-greater speeds and altitudes would enable American bombers to survive against Soviet air defenses unmolested on their way to delivering their doomsday payloads. At the time, the only effective defense against bombers were fighters and antiaircraft artillery. Even then, anti-aircraft guns were only marginally effective and interceptors were increasingly challenged by ever improving bomber performance.
However, with the advent of surface-to-air missiles (SAM), that began to change—the balance started to tip in favor of the defender. While the U.S. Air Force was aware of Soviet advances in SAM technology, the Pentagon didn’t start to understand the scope of the problem until Francis Gary Powers’ Lockheed U-2 spy plane was shot down while overflying the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960. But development of the XB-70 continued nonetheless.
(Recommended: 5 Places World War III Could Break Out)
With the growing realization that Soviet SAMs posed an increasing threat to American bombers, the Pentagon started to explore low-level penetration as an alternative. Low-level penetration involved flying under the radar horizon using terrain to mask a bomber’s approach, which greatly reduces enemy response times. Moreover, the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles greatly reduced the United States’ reliance on manned bombers. Many leading military strategists of the time believed bombers were too vulnerable to survive the journey into Soviet airspace. As a result, President John F. Kennedy decided to cancel the XB-70 as a frontline bomber program on March 28, 1961.
Meanwhile, the XB-70 test program continued. The jet made its first flight on Sept 21, 1964, when it flew from Palmdale to Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. But the first XB-70 proved to be a disappointment—it had poor directional stability above Mach 2.5 and made only one flight above Mach 3.0. The second jet, which flew on July 17, 1965, added five degrees of dihedral on the wings for better supersonic stability.
Tragedy struck on June 8, 1966, when the second XB-70 prototype was destroyed in a crash after a midair collision with its F-104N chase plane. Two people were killed and one was severely injured during the accident. The loss of the second aircraft—which was much more capable than the first—was a huge set back. Testing, however, continued until Feb. 4, 1969. Ultimately, the first XB-70 logged eighty-three flights totaling 160 hours and sixteen minutes, while the second XB-70 logged forty-six flights totaling ninety-two hours and twenty-two minutes according to NASA.
(Recommended: Is the F-35 Heading to Syria?)
The XB-70, while a technological wonder at the time, was the wrong plane for the wrong time. It came at a time when ballistic missiles were thought to be supplanting manned bombers. Moreover, it was being developed at a time when it was increasingly apparent that high speed and high altitude were not sufficient protection against surface-to-air missiles or the next generation of Soviet fighters.
But the nail in the coffin was the jet’s exorbitant price tag and lack of mission flexibility—the B-70 couldn’t be adapted for the low level role. Let’s hope today’s shadowy Long Range Strike Bomber fares better.
(Recommended: Russia's 'F-22' Is Simply Amazing)
Dave Majumdar is the defense editor for The National Interest. You can follow him on Twitter: @davemajumdar.
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