Mourning the B52 crew

They gave their lives for their country - God bless them and their families.

 

A Plane design that has been in service for 70 years failed? How many vehicles do you see on the road that haven't changed their basic design since 1955? Do you think maybe there's a reason for that? Not even the bloat of the military industrial complex could get funding for the next generation of stratofortress at scale.

How would you feel if you bought a plane ticket and the plane you were flying in was old as a B-52? The military don't care about that: First B-52s to get new engines this year - Defense One

 

The B-1 and B-2 are much newer de$ign$ than the B-52H. But there are some things the B-52 still does better and/or less expensively.

 

TL ; DR
The B-52 ain't new, and it's NOT pretty - but it gets the job done - AAAAAAND it might be 'safer' and 'better' that you think.


USAF bean counters use two metrics:
Mission-capable (MC) availability rate and Flight hour costs.

The BUFF is still a fantastic value by all metrics.
The BONE (B-one) has actually had higher hull loss and fatality rates than the BUFF AND B2 especially when you exclude combat losses!
Of course the B2 has had zero crew loss (thus far) but it's hideously expensive to operate so they're all relatively "low mileage" examples.

USAF's shining stars are the F-16 and the A-10.
Cheap to fly.
Reliable.
Good safety records.
The F-16 is over 50 years old and yes kids......they are STILL in serial production today!
SO is the '15 - but for a somewhat 'different' reason.
(F-15 QA) - proving the old adage about an "ill wind."

MC rates are ALWAYS the "tell."
One of the reasons I heap lavish condemnation for the Penguin (F35) is that it makes up for it's eye-wateringly high operating costs by only having a 25-30% MC rate.
The F-16's MC rates are double (or nearly treble) with only 15% of the flight costs per hour and the A-10 is better yet!

My beloved USN's F/A-18 sports an 80+ percentage MC rate but we have to haul 'em around on boats for the most part and this weeds out the hangar queens and demands a different maintenance strategery.

 

Gotta love the A-10 -- what a proven flying tank it is (how Boeing used to design its products).

F-16's longevity was due to a frustrated general officer wanting a fighter's fighter... and that lack of bloat and focus on dogfighting performance (at reduced cost and complexity vs. other Cold War designs), turned out prophetic in 2026.

If it still meets all mission objectives (and a classified amt of 'and then some' on latest blocks), with only updates... then airframes will remain in service. The problem seems to be a sort of administrative one, tbh.

It's a beeyotch to inspect every nook and cranny of a military airframe, in service. One, the spaces aren't really conducive to up-close inspection, inside a wing. General officers want readiness, and even the most talented flight-line cadre have their limits, as well as the maintenance stds they're upholding.

Say an engineer for the then-new B-52, says to inspect all wingroot components, every 50000 flight hrs for cracking. The engineer has not witnessed a wing come off a B-52, so can only spec the schedule based on previous airframes and their degradation, and produce an educated guess. But this'll be much less informed, if the airframe's a new design not in svc long enough to test these protocols. AFAIK, the B-52 was the only jet-powered heavy bomber in the arsenal, before the B-1 -- so in 1952, it certainly was a new design. Before it were all turboprop or piston planes, so their schedules were modded to what seemed most logical and prudent, I'm guessing.

Given they've served thru Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan tho... those educated guesses were pretty damned good. However with internal, invisible stresses on the 70-yo aluminium (which doesn't have the elastic qualities of steel, microscopically cracking rather than springing back) manual of arms wasn't sufficient to prevent the tragedy (excepting human error / nature). It's not the only B-52 to crash in the past 20y, but the only one where an airframe failure rather than a human one, may be responsible.

 

Perhaps even more astonishing is that we live in a new era that is going to destroy the worst bloat of the military industrial complex. Specifically a single thousand dollar drone with explosives duct taped to is not more capable than a 3 million dollar Patriot missile... And million dollar tanks are also no longer effective on the battlefield because of these thousand dollar drones.

So we live in an era where B52 bombers from the 50's is the end of an era and we'll never have much need to waste our money on these massive flying machines because drone swarms are far cheaper and far more effective and don't put the lives of soldiers at risk. We live in a new world where the mightiest military superpowers in Russia and the US are starting wars that they lose because the countries they start the wars against have near the same military abilities as these failed military superpowers.

The entire global power structure and military insurgency scenario in coming decades will clearly spell the end of US and Russia Hegemony. And because China is so far ahead when it comes to dominating the manufacture of batteries, drone motors and drone motor controllers, China now gets to decide which countries get limits placed on their orders and which countries have an unlimited supply.

 

The Patriot was originally designed in the 60's, and wasn't really fielded until the 80's. The original idea was knocking down V2s reworked into knock-offs like the Scud. Patriots utilize a "shoot-shoot-look" engagement strategery (similar to Aegis) and it's meant primarily for ballistic inbounds and/or fast high-fliers that the Rooskies used to loft from standoff range at altitude.
Things you don't want to knock out a high value target.
They're really NOT meant to counter lawnmower FPV drones or defend a large patch of ground.
They're using them 'cause they're in stock and in inventory.
The brilliance of the Iron Dome system is that they use 'look-look-shoot' (or don't shoot) by determining where the missile will fall - and not expending rounds to protect an open field or a few sheep.
It's effective against missiles.
Less so against FPV drones which are more difficult to predict.
Shaheed drones are not battery powered.
BEVs still have a significant power and cost deficit when compared with small, internal combustion piston engines that drive a rear pusher propeller...

There's no such thing as a million dollar main battle tank - it's more like $15-25 million and you need something more than a DJI drone, a hand grenade and some electrical tape to knock one out.
What you're probably thinking about is something like a shoulder fired "fire and forget" missile like our Javelin or the Brit's NLAW.
They're about $350,000 - a shot all in for the US model. Probably a tenth of that cost for the British model.....because (a) it's a knock-off and (ii) the British have a common sense military procurement system that doesn't rely on trying to pay off 500 legislators.
The Commie Kurds Syria managed to knock out a few German Leopards with some left over Soviet anti-tank rockets, but that's only because the Turkeys bought an expensive and very capable main battle tank, and then forgot to read the owner's manual.
Much to the everlasting shame of the Turks - they were mostly (actual biological) female warriors.

Russia never has had a 'hegemony.'
The OLD Soviet Union held some limited regional hegemony—but never achieved the total global supremacy it lusted for.
-Not long after they hauled down the sickle and hammer, they couldn't even invade Georgia successfully.
The Nation - not the state.

Not to pick nits, but I think it was a colonel. (Boyd?)
Generals are....um.....'generally' the kind of people who GIVE us programmes that line officers battle against as much as the enemy.
The Army's M7/M18, the LCS, the B1-B, DDG-2000, USAF's F35 and Pegasus, and on.......and on.....