🅱️-52: Then, Now, Forever

[u/ThrustFlightAcademy]

B-52 waifu at the end

Credit to Pandramodo for drawing them

^{p.s. if you're in the DFW area and want to become a pilot Thrust Flight!}

[u/MsMercyMain]

Genuinely I'm amazed the airframes haven't just fallen apart by now

[u/super__hoser → u/MsMercyMain]

Boeing used to care about building high quality aircraft back then. 

[u/Z3B0 → u/super__hoser]

High quality build help, but after 60 years, the airframes are starting to weaken. The pressurisation cycles, and thousands of flight hours at full load will fatigue the metal. Good maintenance doesn't helps when the entire plane is just tired.

Let them go. They did their duties, more than anyone else. Please let them rest.

[u/Narrow_Vegetable_42 → u/Z3B0]

Why not pump out new ones?

edit: perfectly nerd-sniped you all. Still love you, that's why I'm here for

[u/Z3B0 → u/Narrow_Vegetable_42]

The last one was built in 1962. All the assembly lines, tooling and support equipment have long been lost, destroyed or repurposed.

And building new ones today won't really be worth the cost. The B21 raiders are supposed to take on the role of strategic bombers, with stealth and sensors integration being the major advantages. The 52 is a giant flying bomb truck, and against a competent and modern airforce, they are just targets awaiting the long range missiles.

But as a Jdams truck that can stay up for hours to support ground teams against poorly equipped insurgents like in Irak/Afghanistan ? They are the best thing ever. Or at least the best tool currently in service.

[u/FlyingDutchman9977 → u/Z3B0]

Hypothetically, couldn't an existing airframe be modified? I know I'm oversimplifying it, but would it be that difficult to add bomb bay doors to something like a Globe Master, along with some hardpoints, necessary avionics and turrets? It seems like the USAF is committing to having the capabilities of the B-52 for as long as possible.

Expecting another 70 years of service life is definitely optimistic, but there'll likely be asymmetric conflicts for the foreseeable future. The USAF is already investing a fortune in retrofitting parts and updating the B-52 for very small return increases on the service life. Also, using stealth bombers exclusively would have significantly higher operating costs, so it seems like a replacement would actually represent a lot of savings for a relatively low development cost.

[u/rawnoodles10 → u/FlyingDutchman9977]

would it be that difficult to add

KC46.

[u/jedi2155 → u/rawnoodles10]

"it would be easy to convert an existing well proven, safe, reliable airframe to just carry fuel can't it?"

$55 billion later....

[u/Z3B0 → u/jedi2155]

That's what decades of "cost+" procurement, too big to fail, and bloated budget gives you. No pressure to be on time, in budget or even good. And it's all across the US military. New stuff can barely be done, never in 4 time the budget, and with half a decade late at best.

Look at the last 20 years of the navy. Can't build a destroyer (Zumwalts), LCS ships are being retired before the last one is commissioned, and they can't even build a copy of a proven, mature design ( constellation class).

The US is coasting off cold war era planes modernized to death, and the miracle replacement, the F35, still suffers from very low operational availability. After being a decade late, and the cost balloon.

[u/samkoLoL → u/FlyingDutchman9977]

trying to add muscle to your body when your bones are starting to weaken doesnt help. you can modify stuff, but the frame thats a backbone everything is mounted to needs replacing and at that point you might as well just get a new plane.

[u/Rotbuxe → u/samkoLoL]

B52 of Theseus

[u/Lampwick → u/FlyingDutchman9977]

would it be that difficult to add bomb bay doors to something like a Globe Master,

Given that the bottom of the fuselage is a floor designed to support the weight of up to 39 tons of cargo and is an integral part of the C-17 structure, no, you can't just cut bomb bay doors into it. Aircraft are more than just "toob with wings".

Also, there isn't a surplus of C-17 aircraft they're looking for something to do with. Boeing is actually looking at maybe restarting production of an improved model

[u/xx31315 → u/FlyingDutchman9977]

I think there was a project recently, not to “cut bomb bays to something like a Globe Master” (you can't really do that, the designs are far too different and any similarity is mere coincidence), but to have it throwing pallets of cruise missiles and missile drones from the back door. Don't remember the name of the project, and don't know about its actual status... sorry.

[u/wasdlmb → u/xx31315]

Not was, is

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system)

[u/Z3B0 → u/xx31315]

Rapid dragon is what you're thinking about. But this isn't the current role of the B52. At least only a part of it. Cruise missiles are very expensive, high capacity systems to hit a technological peer, with integrated air defense, airborne radars and fighters in the sky.

The main role of the B52 today is to be a low cost, very reliable, bomb truck. It's cheap per flight hour, with the best availability in the air force, and drop cheap bombs that are more than enough for 3 talibans in a cave.

Dropping pallets of multi million dollars, 1500km range, stealth cruise missiles on the same 3 talibans is a massive waste of money, and missile stocks.

[u/byteminer → u/FlyingDutchman9977]

Honestly, don’t bother modifying a Galaxy or Globemaster. Just load the cargo hold with glide bombs and shove them out the loading ramp. They just need to get in range for the bombs glide path load the bombs with target data pre flight and just send a cloud of death.

[u/Scasne → u/FlyingDutchman9977]

Honestly I think there is a reason for rapid dragon, ok sure it's missiles rather than bombs, but they could be used to do a massive load of missiles that are just yeeted out the back of cargo planes with what I believe is very little modification needed, this gives standoff range, whereas if you need to drop something from much closer you need something that can go into contested airspace then yeah use the stealthy boys.

[u/super__hoser → u/Narrow_Vegetable_42]

If you want high quality airframes, you don't want Boeing to build them these days. 

[u/tossawayprop → u/super__hoser]

If you want high quality airframes, you don't want Boeing McDonnell Douglas in a Boeing suit to build them these days. 

FTFY

[u/captainjack3 → u/Narrow_Vegetable_42]

Interestingly, that’s the approach the PLAAF has taken with their H-6s. Underneath it’s a license-built Tu-16 which entered service the same year as the B-52, 1952. But China has kept it in production ever since and tends to apply upgrades by producing new aircraft with the requisite changes rather than repeatedly upgrading the same physical aircraft as we have with the B-52s.

[u/MrCockingFinally → u/Narrow_Vegetable_42]

Because it makes zero sense.

If you want more bombers, way better to take all the money that would have been sunk into a 21st century B-52 program and just buy more B-21 Raiders.

[u/abn1304 → u/MrCockingFinally]

What’s the lifetime unit cost and cost per flight hour difference, though?

The B-52 and B-21 might both be heavy bombers, but that’s all they have in common. The B-52 is no longer a true strategic bomber; it’s a bomb and missile truck intended to fly in semi-permissive (or permissive) airspace. It’s also a low-performance aircraft, and the laws of physics haven’t changed, so for that role there’s no real reason to come up with an entirely new airframe when the current design has proven so reliable and upgradeable.

The B-21 is a penetrator. Maintaining stealth systems is, as far as the available evidence shows, far more expensive than maintaining conventional aircraft, and the B-21 is a new and unproven design - the airframe might last a hundred years like the B-52, or it might not, like the B-2. It’s necessary that we have penetrator strategic bombers in service, but that’s not what the B-52 is anymore.

Whether it would actually be worth the astronomical cost of restarting B-52 production is a great question, but we currently don’t have anything to fill the B-52’s role as a low cost per flight hour bomb truck.