What's the deal with the B-52? They came up with this thing in the 50's and it's essentially the only workhorse strategic bomber we have and continue to operate. They plan to use these things until 2045 (almost 100 year service length for an aircraft) but we don't make them anymore and the youngest one is over 50 years old.
They start these frickers with explosions and most people flying them and servicing them are generations removed from the initial production. This is this the closet shit to 40k tech cult shit I've ever seen.
What do we even do when these get shot down in a shooting war? They're fricking irreplaceable yet they continue to do wacky shit with them like daisy chaining them across the ocean to bomb inconsequential shit for giggles.
much smarter and more militarily experienced people than you have determined there's nothing to worry about
it justwerks, simple as
They are replacing the engines with 8 modern turbofans nicked from business jets. Replacing the engines with larger more efficient engines from airliners wasn't really an option because that would have required re-designing entire tail section of plane. B-52 has pretty massive tail, but absolutely tiny rudder, so they also use thrust control as control method in cases of emergency.
The B-52 the greatest capability to deliver stand-off munitions as well as a higher readiness than contemparies by its very design.
>Why haven't they replaced it?
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I imagine the USAF has done some modelling of what it would cost to create a modern B-52 replacement and found that just keeping the B-52 was just more cost effective.
Probably should add that the design is less maintenance heavy because variable sweep (B-1) and stealth components (B-2) can be a great difficulty to maintain
Both B-2's and B-1B's will be retired before B-52's under current plans. Basically B-21 will replace both of those and they plan to keep that production line running long term so it might be replacement for B-52's as well, unless they get new ideas in next couple decades.
The 1st and 2nd gen guys' uniforms look so much better, what the frick was USAF thinking? Or is he just wearing a dumb looking variant?
Side guys are wearing service dress while center guy is wearing mess dress. At least that is the guess I'm taking from leaf dress equivalents.
Yeah, it definitely gave off officer style dinner dress whites with mini-medals vibes (former USN gay here) so your assessment mayjyhtjr be correct.
Last sentence is bullshit. Consider the a-10. It costs money to keep around. It would make sense to retire it and use the extra money to make something more modern. But congress won't allow it.
It's a relic of the days when the US needed massive strategic bomber fleets to deliver nuclear weapons. There's no need to make a new one because those days are long gone, so we can make do with a smaller fleet of more sophisticated stealth bombers and obviously ballistic missiles. But they're kept around because even old and outmoded for what they were designed for, they're still supremely effective bomb carriers for when you don't need to worry about SAM or fighter cover, or cruise missile carriers for when you do.
I grew up near Barksdale AFB. on drill days they always came back in a bunched formation and flew over the base before peeling off and landing, and they literally darkened the sky from horizon to horizon. sad to think there's only 50 or so still flying, but otoh it's nice not having to do duck and cover drills every other thursday.
>What do we even do when these get shot down in a shooting war?
have enough left over to tide you until 2045, presumably
north vietnam shot down a bunch of them
there hasnt been any big tech breakthrough for strategic bombers so replacing it is a waste of money
its job is to carry a metric frickton of long range missiles and it does it very well
Man, I want a DCS simulator game all about B-52's
They've served in like every major conflict since Vietnam so you can have so many cool scenarios to fly across the last hundred years. Including spooky what-ifs like doing the grand tour turning the USSR to glass until you get shot down or run out of fuel.
The Slim Pickens bomb run would be an awesome mission to see from the wienerpit's (and pilot, at the end of it) perspective.
My buddy flies a buff and all his squadron mates cosplay as f16s in dcs funnily enough
A large number of B-52s were retired early due to either START or SALT, I'm not going to bother checking which. Those airframes are literally just sitting around accumulating no flight hours and waiting to be reactivated or used for spare parts to keep the active fleet flying.
Didn' the airframes get irreparably damaged as one of the clauses of the treaty ?
unrelated but I always liked the sheer scale these things operate on. Precision is for nerds, let's flatten some fricking cities
>The road and the village for scale
Jesus, you hear about bombing but actually seeing just how many miles a single run can effect...
they don't drop bombs like that anymore, these days every bomb they drop is guided or it's a cruise missile
The spread would be even more erection-inducing, if every single bomb of the loadout has a JDAM tail package.
I mean Russia operates Tu-95s and China fricking Tu-16s so I think we’re fine.
I'd guess its cheaper to fly than the fancy stealth bombers
>What's the deal with the M2? They com up with it in the 20's and it's essentially the only workhorse HMG we have and contuse to operate.
Why is OP such a homosexual?
The difference is, M2s are still being made.
Shit works.
Of course, we aren't going to be using it against modern IADS, but there are a lot of people in the world who don't have modern IADS, who we still want to bomb.
thats the neat part, it would just carry 20 JASSMs and drop them outside of standoff distance
We have reached the civilizational peak and entered the slow decline. That's why you see jet aircrafts being replaced by propellers, the civil infrastructure stopped being expanded and properly maintained and no more skyscrapers being build in the west. It seemed perfectly reasonable to late Romans to give up on "uneconomical" stuff their forefathers build.