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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2015, @11:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2015, @11:04PM (#274161)

    [The entire] Tu-95 [force] never made an actual bombing run with anything but training dummies.

    Apparently, in the 1980s, the Soviets' mismanaged State Capitalist economy couldn't afford a gigaton of bombs to carpet bomb Afghanistan the way that USA did at Tora Bora. [wikipedia.org]

    ...a severe and fierce bombardment began...not one second passed without warplanes hovering over our heads...[America] exhausted all efforts to blow up and annihilate this tiny spot--wiping it out altogether...

    (...and, despite this, USA didn't get its primary target--Bin Laden.)

    The current Russian plutocracy (friends of Putin) doesn't seem to do significantly better at generating large piles of public cash to squander.

    -- gewg_

  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday December 10 2015, @01:06AM

    by frojack (1554) on Thursday December 10 2015, @01:06AM (#274183) Journal

    Apparently, in the 1980s, the Soviets' mismanaged State Capitalist economy couldn't afford a gigaton of bombs to carpet bomb Afghanistan the way that USA did at Tora Bora.

    You really don't understand what carpet bombing is, do you gewg_ ?

    Hint: it isn't something you would do in mountains.

    Besides, Bin Laudin was log gone by that point, he had already skedaddled 6-8 miles south to Pakistan before the marines arrived to back up the special forces.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @01:54AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @01:54AM (#274198)

      Carpet bombing, also known as saturation bombing, is a large aerial bombing done in a progressive manner to inflict damage in every part of a selected area of land. The phrase evokes the image of explosions completely covering an area, in the same way that a carpet covers a floor.

      Is it effective in mountains?
      Unlikely. That was kinda my point.

      Bin [Laden] was [long] gone by that point

      Sorry if I didn't make that clear.
      Again, USA military policy (as well as the rest of its foreign policy) is incredibly stupid.

      -- gewg_

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Thursday December 10 2015, @06:53AM

      by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday December 10 2015, @06:53AM (#274302) Journal

      You really don't understand what carpet bombing is, do you gewg_ ?

      Hint: it isn't something you would do in mountains.

      You might, if you were the Bush administration, who had given its word to the Bin Laden family of Saudi Arabia to not actually harm their wayward son . . . Frojack, you are as off as both the Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman stories on this one. Let it go, bro, let it go. The US carpet bombs mountains, even if that bombing does not turn the mountains into carpets.