The newest B-52 in the Air Force fleet was built the same year as this truck...
57 years ago. That is, the last B-52 built for the Air Force entered service in 1962. The rest of our B-52 fleet is older than that. Pretty amazing to be relying on 60 year old planes.
They expect B-52s to remain in active service through 2050.
Replies to: The newest B-52 in the Air Force fleet was built the same year as this truck...
It's a good thing we also have
the B-1 & B-2, the F-15E, the F-18D, cruise missiles and drones.
And, the original B-52 from the year of your truck was a straight-wing turboprop, whereas today's B-52s are swept-wing turbojets, the point being that we don't operate the 1950s version of the B-52 any more.
The B-52H is the only version still around
and that model was extensively remodeled. The original fuselages for the B52A & B52B were built in the early 1950s (prototypes were built in 1946, but mass production didn't start until later). The last B-52H was built and delivered in 1962.
You want a new bomber? Or more B-2Bs? We still have cruise missiles and ICBMs, as well as nukes on missiles launched from submarines. I haven't read anything about why we need more bombers, but maybe I missed it?
Link: http://airman.dodlive.mil/2018/04/16/b-52h-stratofortress/
Nah. We probably don't need more. And yet, we still use 57 year old planes.
That tells me that the 57 year old planes can do something that the 18 year old and the 30 year old planes can't do.
Maybe we should build some new B-52's to replace the old ones. Seems like an ageless design...like they got it right, and the technology hasn't improved much. But, mechanical fatigue is real. A 60 year old fuselage is...well, 60 years old. I'm just amazed that we are confident in 60 year old planes. No matter how you slice it, that is amazing.
But don't get me started on the nukes themselves. We haven't tested one in over 30 years. I've posted on that before. I just have to wonder how confident we can be in our ability to destroy the world. Probably a reasonable chance they will work, I guess.
They've always had wonky bomb bay doors.
Slim pickings on the technology there.
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The original straight-wing turboprop is from 1946...when this truck was built.
They built 744 B-52's, 100 B-1B's (newest one is 30 years old), and 21 B-2's (newest is 18 years old).
Re: It's a good thing we also have this little bomb dropped in the 80's
I'm clearly not an expert on weapons delivery, but what about the B-2s and all those billions?
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We have 21 B-2's, each with about 60% the payload of a B-52.
Hard to comprehend that we built 744 B-52's.
As an aside I was reading about ADX Florence SuperMax
One of the scum living there in a concrete cell 23 hours a day with no human contact is Noshir Gowadia- Former engineer for the U.S. Department of Defense and principal designer of the B-2 stealth bomber; convicted in 2011 of using classified information to assist the People's Republic of China in producing cruise missiles with stealth technology.