Dave Phillipps has an interesting article in The New York Times about B-52's and why the Air Force's largest bomber, now in its 60th year of active service and scheduled to fly until 2040, are not retiring anytime soon. "Many of our B-52 bombers are now older than the pilots who fly them," said Ronald Reagan in 1980. Today, there is a B-52 pilot whose father and grandfather flew the plane.
Originally slated for retirement generations ago, the B.U.F.F. — a colorful acronym that the Air Force euphemistically paraphrases as Big Ugly Fat Fellow - continues to be deployed in conflict after conflict. It dropped the first hydrogen bomb in the Bikini Islands in 1956, and laser-guided bombs in Afghanistan in 2006. It has outlived its replacement. And its replacement's replacement. And its replacement's replacement's replacement. 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 both atomic bombs and leaflets. But it is also due to the decidedly 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," says Owen Coté. "Turns out whenever we try to improve on the B-52, we run into problems, so we still have the B-52."
The usefulness of the large bomber — and bombers in general — has come under question in the modern era of insurgent wars and stateless armies. In the Persian Gulf war, Kosovo, Afghanistan and the Iraq war, the lumbering jets, well-established as a symbol of death and destruction, demoralized enemy ground troops by first dropping tons of leaflets with messages like "flee and live, or stay and die," then returning the next day with tons of explosives. In recent years, it has flown what the Air Force calls "assurance and deterrence" missions near North Korea and Russia. Two B-52 strategic bombers recently flew defiantly near artificial Chinese-built islands in the South China Sea and were contacted by Chinese ground controllers but continued their mission undeterred. "The B.U.F.F. is like the rook in a chess game," says Maj. Mark Burleys. "Just by how you position it on the board, it changes the posture of your adversary."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Knowledge Troll on Wednesday December 09 2015, @04:15PM
The B-52 is big, old, ugly, old, simple, old, big, old, yada yada yada yada yada. Think of it this way: you send in waves of fighter jets, attack choppers, and maybe even a clandestine operations team to first destroy or degrade the air warning and defense systems. To make things more modern you hack their air defense network and either remove your attacking planes, move them to a false location, or invent things that don't exist. The attackers go LOL while the enemy rips their hair out of their head in confusion. Install new portable air space monitoring equipment and make your presence known and defend what you just achieved with more of those jet fighters.
Once you accomplish that it doesn't mater if a flying garbage truck moves around at 2 mph in the sky: you drop weapons on what ever you feel like with little risk.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2015, @04:31PM
It's becoming clear it's good to have both stealth and non-stealth for different phases of conflicts or mission types. Non-stealth is often cheaper, more reliable, and more efficient. We shouldn't put all our eggs in the stealth basket.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Knowledge Troll on Wednesday December 09 2015, @04:38PM
We shouldn't put all our eggs in the stealth basket.
Turns out stealth by radar energy absorption or scattering is being reduced in effectiveness. Non-cooperative radar systems use all the stray RF in the environment, like cell towers, FM stations, TV stations, etc and I believe a known map of the physical layout of the environment and the location of the non-cooperating RF sources. You can't absorb it all because there is too much and you can't scatter it because it comes from every angle.
As I recall it essentially carves a hole out in space you look for instead of an object that does exist. It might also use extremely sophisticated Doppler processing. At this point advanced countries may already be able to work around other's advanced stealth inside their land. If not now probably soon unless other stealth changes happen. And of course once a location is studied you have to disable all the civilian sources of RF to be able to hide your aircraft.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2015, @05:40PM
The mighty B-52 will never retire until the Islamic scum are eradicated from the planet.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by lgw on Wednesday December 09 2015, @07:04PM
Sure, radar "daylight imaging" has potential, but it doesn't help much with high-altitude bombing. The B1 was invented in a time before practical stealth, and before smart weapons, and so it was (poorly) optimized to fly "under the radar" and do low-altitude precision bombing runs: none of which is relevant to the modern world. The B2 is fundamentally a strategic bomber: it's not invisible on radar, but it's hard to spot, harder to be sure what it is, and nearly impossible to get missile lock on. For dropping a few nukes before interceptors can reach it, it can't be beat, and passive radar approaches don't help at high altitude.
Modern fighters (if that's what we're calling the F35, plus the awesome F22) are "stealthy", but that's really about making missile lock difficult, because for all the reasons you highlight they're not strategically invisible. Don't underestimate the value of getting missile lock on an enemy fighter a few miles further out that it gets missile lock on you, however.
The B52 is, of course, simply a convenient way to drop a shitload of bombs on a target with no remaining air defenses (which is every conflict we've been in since Vietnam), much more cheaply than fighter-delivered bombs. With smart bombs (and other neat weapons dropped like bombs - the line between "drone" and "bomb" is blurry), simply getting tonnage of ordnance somewhere above the target is the main thing, and the B52 excels at that.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2015, @11:01PM
We discussed this previously WRT The F-35: A Gold-Plated Turkey [soylentnews.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday December 09 2015, @06:57PM
That is why the AC-130 won't be going anywhere, had a customer in desert storm and they loved the AC-130 because he said the fighter jocks could clear out the planes and choppers but were lousy at hitting holed up enemies on the ground while that big slow ass AC-130 would do a big slow wide circle and just lay hell on an area.
But if we have gotten to the point that bombers don't need defenses why bother making new ones?
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @06:48AM
Once you accomplish that it doesn't mater
No mother! You heartless bastard!