Fatal takeoff accident at Edward’s Sunday. It became a burnt black spot by the runway. This suggests a structural failure at the worst time like the recent FedEx crash. Sympathy for their families. Bob Wilson
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 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.
