O.T. again -- B-52 bombers will remain operational another 40 years ! (This is amazing).
March 12, 1999
B-52 Bomber Will Fly 40 More Years
Filed at 5:15 p.m. EST
By The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The granddaddy of America's bombers, the Vietnam
War-era B-52, is going to have to fly four decades into the new century, the
Air Force says. By the time it gives way to a new generation, it will be
80-plus years old.
Most pilots who fly B-52s today were not yet born when their planes entered
service in the early 1960s. And those same planes will be flying well into the
21st century with pilots of a generation yet to come.
That certainly speaks highly of an airplane that already has more than tripled
its original life expectancy.
''Structurally, they are in great shape,'' Lt. Gen. Ron Marcotte said Friday.
As commander of the 8th Air Force at Barksdale Air Force Base, La. -- home
to 47 B-52s -- Marcotte flies the bombers regularly and says that thanks to
exceptional maintenance, the planes are ''doing extremely well.''
The first B-52s began their Air Force duty in June 1955; the B-52s now
flying were built in 1961.
''It's amazing,'' said Glenn Buchan, a Rand Corp. expert on strategic
bombers. ''The B-52 is one of the most remarkably successful airplanes
every built.'' In fact, Buchan said in an interview Friday, the B-52 might be
the best model on which to develop the next generation of long-range
bombers -- a large plane capable of carrying many different weapons and
firing them from a great distance.
The Air Force is not ready to invest in a new generation of bombers,
however. Over the next decade or so, the Air Force will devote most of its
aircraft development dollars to the F-22 stealth fighter to replace the F-15
Strike Eagle and the so-called Joint Strike Fighter to replace the F-16 Fighting
Falcon.
''Preserve what we have'' in bombers, is the way Air Force Secretary F.
Whitten Peters described the strategy Friday. He and Gen. Michael Ryan, the
Air Force chief of staff, briefed reporters on a congressionally mandated
''white paper'' on the future of the long-range bomber fleet.
The upshot is that the B-52, along with the younger B-1B Lancer and the new
stealthy B-2 Spirit, will be kept around until approximately 2037, by which
time the Air Force calculates that attrition will have reduced the fleet below
the minimum 170 aircraft. The B-52s may fly to 2045. Planning for a
replacement bomber might start in 2013.
There currently are 190 long-range bombers in the active fleet: 93 B-1s, 76
B-52s and 21 B-2s. Only 130 of those planes are fully combat ready,
however. The rest are in various states of back-up readiness.
The role of strategic bombing has changed greatly since the Cold War, when
the nation's leaders believed the United States needed a fleet capable of
penetrating the formidable air defenses of the Soviet Union. If war came, it
was expected to go nuclear, and the bombers were the backbone of U.S.
strategy.
That has changed with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today the bombers
are used routinely in tactical strikes such as the four-day air campaign last
December against Iraq. Today a group of B-52s is standing by at RAF
Fairford in England for possible use in NATO-authorized air strikes against
Serbia.
The B-52s' home bases are Barksdale Air Force Base, La., and Minot Air
Force Base, N.D.; the B-1s are mainly at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., and
Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, and the B-2s are at Whiteman Air Force Base,
Mo.
Known officially as the Stratofortress, the B-52's crews affectionately call it
the BUFF (Big Ugly Fat Fellow). Its wingspan of 185 feet makes it wider
than it is long (159 feet), and it stands 40 feet high. With eight turbofan jet
engines, it can carry 70,000 pounds of bombs, missiles and other weapons
and fly 8,800 miles before refueling.
The H model of the B-52 rolled off the Boeing Co. assembly lines at a cost of
$9 million per plane, and the first one entered service May 9, 1961 with the
379th Bomb Wing at Wurtsmith Air Force Base, Mich. Even taking decades
of inflation into account, that is a far cry from the $2 billion it cost to field
the B-2.
All these years later, the B-52 still carries the most diverse assortment of
weapons in the bomber fleet.
In a conventional role, the B-52 is capable of launching Harpoon anti-ship
missiles, unguided ''dumb'' bombs, cruise missiles, sea mines,
precision-guided bombs and cluster munitions used against ground targets.
In a nuclear role, it can launch the AGM-86B strategic nuclear cruise missile,
the AGM-129A advanced nuclear cruise missile, and two kinds of nuclear
gravity bombs, the B-83 and B-61. The B-2's only nuclear weapons are the
two gravity bombs. The B-1 bomber -- originally designed for a nuclear role
only -- has been switched to a strictly non-nuclear role.
Ryan said the Air Force is spending $3.6 billion over the next 10 years to
improve communications and other capabilities on the bomber fleet, and its
sees about another $1 billion in needed improvements not yet funded.
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company |
