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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday December 09 2015, @03:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the can't-seem-to-make-a-better-mousetrap dept.

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."


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 09 2015, @05:03PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday December 09 2015, @05:03PM (#274003)

    The scam is actually more sophisticated than that. It goes something like this:
    1. One of the favorite air force contractors (e.g. Boeing) builds a really nice aircraft that is better than anything anybody else has.
    2. After a while (typically a decade or two), we sell some of these aircraft, or at least some of the technology behind them, off to our allies. After all, they're on our side, and we want to make sure that our allies can beat the Russians and Chinese and such.
    3. The air force goes to Congress and says "Everybody else has what we have. In order to remain in a leadership position, we need something better." Congress agrees, for reasons that include bribery, bringing home the bacon, and just plain being duped.
    4. The air force goes to their favorite contractors and has them design and build an even nicer new aircraft, and the gravy train continues.

    The classic result of this sort of stupidity is the F-35, a plane that has cost $400 billion and currently has flown precisely 0 combat missions.

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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Wednesday December 09 2015, @07:01PM

    by frojack (1554) on Wednesday December 09 2015, @07:01PM (#274064) Journal

    Cute story, but totally non-germane, and mostly wrong.

    The B-52 was never flown by anybody other than the US. So your entire scenario fails at your second point.

    Boeing has only been a favorite of the Pentagon for large bombers, and they have always had a difficult time wining fighter or small tactical bomber contracts, until they decided to BUY the companies that were winning those contracts. Far more combat aircraft types were built by Grumman, McDonnell Douglas, and General Dynamics, Convair, and Lockheed. Boeing seems to have restricted itself to large tankers and bombers of yesteryear.

    The Airforce has always been running to keep ahead of the Russians, not to keep ahead of allies we've sold planes to.

    Multi-roll aircraft like the F35 and the FA-18 were never the Pentagon's idea. That nonsense was pushed on them by Congress.

    So just about every claim you made was wrong or somehow twisted.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @06:46AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @06:46AM (#274299)

      So your entire scenario fails at your second point.

      Gawd, I hate it when that happens!