America’s favorite septuagenarian bomber is about to get another upgrade.
The B-52J is the latest iteration of the iconic B-52 Stratofortress, a long-range strategic bomber that has been a cornerstone of the United States Air Force (USAF) since its introduction in the 1950s. Yes, you read that right. The same Air Force that is desperate to retire the F-22A Raptor after only 20 years of using what most consider to be the world’s most advanced warplane has also operated a long-range bomber since Harry Truman was president.
Despite the fact that there have been a total of eight variants of this legendary bomber, the aircraft has basically remained the same in that time. Until now. The “J” represents a major modernization program (that’s why the Air Force opted to skip “I” and go to J, because it is two generations removed from the B-52H). In fact, the immediate predecessor to the newest incarnation of the Stratofortress, which is known as the B-52H, was first deployed in the 1960s.
That means that the B-52 has not had a major overhaul in its design since the Vietnam War!
All these modifications will ensure that the B-52 remains flying until 2050. In other words, a whole century after it was first deployed. I’d hate to harp on a point made earlier, but it boggles the mind that the Air Force is completely sanguine with keeping a bomber flying that was designed at a time before human beings had satellites in orbit and televisions were run off vacuum tubes and they are completely gung-ho to retire air-superiority stealth warplanes that are barely 20 years old.
The mind reels at this, actually.
Anyway, the B-52J is expected to have several key capabilities that differentiate it from its predecessors. It will ultimately cost $48.6 billion for the overhaul, by the way. One of the most significant upgrades is the replacement of the bomber’s original Pratt & Whitney TF33 engines with the new Rolls-Royce F130 engines.
That’s $675,000,000 per each B-52 America still has flying, which is a lot of cheddar, getting up around the (lowballed) theoretical unit cost for a brand spanking new B-21 Raider.
This change will increase fuel efficiency and range while curbing emissions as well as significantly reducing maintenance costs. The new engines will also be quieter and produce minimal smoke, giving the B-52J a stealthier profile.
That last bit is key to this. As it stands, the Air Force has made a concerted effort for decades to transition its forces to stealth. This makes sense, given the kind of countermeasures that American enemies are developing. Yet, for the duration of the Air Force’s stealth craze, they relied upon an old bomber that was anything but stealthy.
In addition to the new engines, the B-52J will receive a new radar system, a modified variant of the F/A-18EF Super Hornet’s APG-79 AESA radar. This new radar will provide the bomber with greatly improved radar range and situational awareness, while also taking up less space than the older mechanically scanned radar. The B-52J will have a cleaner look, with the removal of blisters that currently house the AN/ASQ-151 Electro-Optical Viewing System (EVS).
The B-52J is expected to be a versatile platform, capable of carrying a wide range of weapons, from gravity bombs to cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons. This flexibility will allow the bomber to engage the enemy with “affordable mass,” precision-guided munitions, and highly specialized, “exquisite” weapons as needed.
The USAF plans to have a fleet of 76 B-52Js, which will be the result of the modernization of the current fleet of 76 B-52Hs. The new Stratofortress is expected to be available for operational use by the end of the decade, with the initial operations capability (IOC) expected in 2033.
Vague difficulties with various program components skipped.
With so many systems moving to drones and with the advent of highly complex air defense systems protecting possible targets of these bombers, what is the point of these systems? These are valid questions and concerns. Ultimately, though, B-52s have long served multiple roles. From bombing distant targets to launching hypersonic weapons to being used as testbeds for new platforms.
These new B-52s could be helpful in keeping the US competitive with its foes.
For example, they could go from being strategic long-range bombers to become motherships for swarms of drones.
On the one hand, $48.6 billion is a lot of money to spend on airframes that rolled off the line at least 60 years ago (the last new B-52 was delivered in 1963). On the other hand, if you’re going to use strategic bombers, the B-1 Lancer is nearly 50 years old itself, and there are only 63 in service, and only 21 B-2 Spirits (including AV-11, which had to be almost completely rebuilt after a fire), so there’s still a need for the B-52. Plus the B-52 has embraced mission creep as a survival strategy, and is used in all sorts of roles never envisioned by it’s original designers, from launching cruise missiles to laying naval mines.
Could you use it to fly drones? Sure, but it will never be as effective as designing a purpose-built aircraft or as cheap as retrofitting a commercial airline platform for that role. Going forward, the B-52 will probably be used for the same mission it’s worked since the Vietnam War: Dropping large quantities of conventional munitions on America’s enemies.
One final reason to keep the B-52 around is that it still seems to scare the shit out of those same enemies…
Tags: Air Force, aircraft, B-52, Budget, drones, F-22, Military, nuclear weapons
Word is the deletion of the EVS/CCTV fairings on the underside of the nose will increase cruising speed by 34-35kts due to drag reduction. When I read that I couldn’t believe those fairings produced that much drag.
Long overdue. re-engining was a no brainer since before I could vote. Don’t know about the AESA they chose, and why they’re giving up the EO capability. prolly $$$ and graft.
There are only 19 B-2 Spirits left.
One big advantage of the B-52: There are hundreds of carcasses at the Davis-Monthan AFB boneyard which can be rehabilitated at Barksdale AFB to replace wrecks.
This isn’t a procurement dollars trade-off, it’s a maintenance dollars trade off. They can’t build B-21s fast enough, and something has to be kept flying until those all come on line. The maint dollars spent on these 1960s airframes and engines must be immense.
I have seen reporting, however, that maint per flight hour on B-1 and B-2 are higher, so it seems retaining the B-52 with this program as justification, and retiring the Bone and the B-2 first, will net out lowest.
The Old Dog flies on.
I note that they didn’t go with the Vee tail, but rearware firing anti-air shrapnel rockets are still possible.
Please tell me Boeing isn’t involved.
In related news, Barry Wilmore & Sunita Williams are in a pickle …
What happened to, or with, the B-2 Spirit?
You mean as a whole, or the one in the fire? The U.S. is still flying them.
The one that caught on fire had an engine fire and required over three years of rebuilding.
“The same Air Force that is desperate to retire the F-22A Raptor after only 20 years “
The Air Force is seeking to retire only the first couple blocks of F-22s, about 30 aircraft, not the whole fleet. The first two blocks are substantially different than the later ones, not easily upgradeable to combat status, and are currently used only for training of F-22 pilots. The differences are substantial enough that Air Force says they’re actually achieving negative training; the new F 22 pilots have to relearn some things when they move to the combat-coded versions. The Air Force will eventually retire all the F 22s, but not until NGAD is coming online.
“The new engines will also be quieter and produce minimal smoke, giving the B-52J a stealthier profile. That last bit is key to this. “
Hooey. The major reason for the engine upgrade is that it finally makes sense from a maintenance budget viewpoint. It’s not about fuel economy, it’s certainly not about “stealth” or smoke. These are trivial factors.
The TF33 engine has become eye-wateringly expensive to overhaul, and it requires overhaul every few hundred hours. It’s risen from a few hundred thousand dollars per overhaul in the early 1990s to something like $2 million per engine today.
The Air Force was previously constrained from doing anything about it, because it didn’t make budgetary sense until it got to be so damn expensive. Swapping out the engines and requalifying them with the air frame is a lot more complicated and expensive than most people give it credit for, and the Air Force was using the TF33 on several other airframes, as well as the B-52. If they were going to replace the TF33 in prior years, they would have to replace it in all of the air frames, not just the B-52, and the integration costs for several aircraft types was hugely expensive. The USAF managed to do it for KC-135s back in the 80s, but i’m surprisingly it turned out to be more expensive than planned, and it was a single type of air frame basically. It would make no sense to just swap the engines on the B-52, but still have to maintain the TF 33 for all the other platforms.
Now those other airframes have been or are being retired. For example the WC-135s are gone. The E-3 was originally a fleet of 33 US birds plus 18 NATO and a few others scattered among allies, and all engined with the TF-33. Now about half of those are gone, and the US is moving to the E-7 wedgetail as an interim replacement until they figure out what the future AWACS is going to look like… or if it’s even going to be a single airplane type. I don’t know what NATO is going to do, but if the US stop supporting the TF 33, which is the plan, then they’re gonna have to either pick it up themselves, or move to another platform.
The new B-52 engine achieves two major goals: replicate the current performance of the TF33, and eliminate the overhaul requirement altogether.
Replicating the TF 33 performance is important for keeping the integration cost of the effort to a minimum. The B-52 design cannot incorporate a more powerful (and certainly not a less powerful) engine. I love the B-52 as an icon, but it has a lot of design compromises and flaws. Sticking a more powerful engine under the wing would essential require redesigning the entire rest of the aircraft. Not a player.
The new engine is really a modification of a Rolls-Royce engine that has been in use for I think 15 years (and is in use with other USAF aircraft). It has a well documented maintenance history, and the commercial version of it has a mean time between overhaul of something like 10 or 12,000 hours, compared to the few hundred for the TF33.
The lifespan of the B-5 airframe is measured in flying hours, and the short pole in the flying hour tent is the amount of flying hours left in its wings, which is about 12,000 hours average for the H model IIRC. The B-52H spent a lot of time sitting nuclear alert rather than flying, and even when they fly for training purposes, it’s only about 400 hours per year per airframe. (this is where they get the projections for the lifespan: 12,000 flying hours divided by 400 per year is another 30 years). Since the meantime, between overall essentially equals the amount of flying hours left in your room, it means they will never have to change out the engine for scheduled maintenance ever again. That’s a huge savings over the TF 33, and that’s what justifies making the engine change. Of course there will be some engines that are damaged and need to be changed for non-scheduled maintenance purposes, but there will be spares to handle that.
In other words, the guy who wrote the article for the National Interest entirely missed the point.
OK, some nits:
“the last new B-52 was delivered in 1963.”
Actually, 61-0040 rolled offthe line in 1962, and its 62nd birthday was two days ago, 22 June. It’s only two years younger than I am, but unlike me, it’s still on active duty.
“the Air Force opted to skip “I” and go to J, because it is two generations removed from the B-52H”
No. The letter “I” is avoided because it looks like the numeral 1. The Air Force considered designating the engine upgrade “J” and then the avionics upgrade as “K” but ultimately just rolled them into one. The new engines are required to provide enough electrical power for the new avionics, so it really is a package deal.
The “I” has been used occasionally to ID models of aircraft sold to Israel, e.g. F-15I, but I think those were actually just manufacturer marketing, not official USAF designations.
“Despite the fact that there have been a total of eight variants of this legendary bomber, the aircraft has basically remained the same in that time. ”
Again no. Even within the original series, the G &H models are substantially different from the A through F models. And since then the G and H models were upgraded several times with more advanced avionics. I believe there was a wing strengthening upgrade along the way as well.
“Going forward, the B-52 will probably be used for the same mission it’s worked since the Vietnam War: Dropping large quantities of conventional munitions on America’s enemies.”
Eh, it will have that capability, but that is not why being kept on board. Carrying lots of long range cruise and hypersonic missiles is the main purpose of the B-52 in the future. It’s long loiter time, with its stand off range of its weapons and its new EW suite keeps it out of harms way makes this possible.
Even the original B-52s (and British V bombers) were designed to carry long range nuclear-armed missiles, starting with the 1950s era Skybolt.
“Word is the deletion of the EVS/CCTV fairings on the underside of the nose will increase cruising speed by 34-35kts due to drag reduction. When I read that I couldn’t believe those fairings produced that much drag.”
When the fairings were added it was found that they induced problems at high speed, so the maximum speed was lowered from 0.9 Mach to 0.84 I think. It makes sense that if you remove the fairings, you can go back to the original spec, except that there are other changes being made, like the engines, but also some new antennas, so will have to wait and see how testing of the whole new configuration goes.
“Long overdue. re-engining was a no brainer since before I could vote. Don’t know about the AESA they chose, and why they’re giving up the EO capability. prolly $$$ and graft.”
Reengining has been a much bigger bag of worms than most people give it credit for, and for the reasons I signed in above it didn’t make sense until the cost of the engine overhaul went through the roof and into the stratosphere.
The functions of the EO/EVS have largely been superseded by the Litening and Sniper Pods that are mounted on the inboard wing hard point. I’m guessing they didn’t remove the EO/EVS because it didn’t cost anything to leave it in, other than lightly lower maximum airspeed. The new avionics upgrades will inturn remove the need for having the separate Litening or Sniper pod. And the AESA radar will give the B-52 a giant step in defensive and offensive EW capability.
The TF33 (P&W JT3D) has a specified overhaul interval of 6,000 hours. Some get pulled for overhaul at half this interval due to adverse inspection results. Most of these adverse inspections find premature blade coating deterioration, which is a plague on all Western turbojets right now, including all the new commercial engines. Why you get treated to monthly news items with the photos of a flaming engines on a Boeing or Airbus craft.
Something is widespread wrong with metal CrAlY blade coatings. They used to be much more reliable.
The most significant impediment to replacing the TF33 low bypass turbofan on the B-52 with a modern, commercial-derived high bypass turbofan has been SAC’s requirement for a 10 minute maximum quick start capability with smokeless gunpowder starter cartridges. No commercial engine has this option and it is not easily incorporated into any existing engine design.
The gunpowder quick starter system allows the B-52 to get airborne before Russian or Chinese ICBMs destroy them in a national emergency. Cart starting a B-52 takes about an hour. It appears that the Air Farce has finally decided to sacrifice this quick, no cart, start capability. This renders the B-52 worthless as a strategic deterrence.
Man, who would’ve thought mixing “I” in with numbers would make everything so complex?
I would note one other factor that may affect this upgrade. The B-52 is made by Boeing. It is literally as old as I am, and was being built a few miles away from where I was going to elementary school in Wichita in the 1950’s. This was back when Boeing made rugged, long lasting, aircraft.
Today, they are known for civilian airliners. And for staffing their company with “Didn’t Earn it” staff for political reasons. Their airliners are known for major problems and becoming notorious for aborting flights. It is noteworthy that the executive suite and board of directors are now made up of accountant types and not engineers given the problems they have had for the last few years. Including the just named CEO. This is not a good sign for this version of the B-52 to come into production and be effectively deployed.
I hope for the best for the B-52J, and I fear for a DEI result.
Subotai Bahadur
1. Nuclear deterrence has not been the raison d’être for B-52s for awhile. Nuclear capability was removed from at least 30 of the 76 remaining operational B-52s years ago to meet treaty limits. Some in Congress would like to put it back. In any case if the USAF wants to quick-start a B-52 they will put a start cart next to each bird, or install an APU. New commercial engines don’t take an hour to get going. And realistically, silo- and submarine based ICBMs have been the real deterrent for decades. USAF planners have known this since the 1950s. SAC worked hard but they knew even on their best day only a small percentage of bombers would survive a serious Soviet first-strike. And now we have only a small percentage of bombers left. It’s a question whether the Russians could even launch an ICBM without blowing themselves up, but the Chinese are probably a different story.
2. The specified MTBO for the TF33 is 6000 hours but the reality is far below that. Even in 2010s the AVERAGE was between 2000 and 3000 hours. In any case it is the cost of the overhaul that is driving the train. Also the Boneyard is closing in on depletion of spare parts cannibalized from retired TF33 engine, with one estimate being it will be exhausted by 2030. Retiring some more E-3s will help, but not much.
Not surprised that there’s no change in payload given they are not doing the whole-new-wing thing as they did on the C-5 fleet when it got new engines. Likely the complexity and expense of that rewinging exercise informed the decision here.
The thing that struck me when I went digging into this was the difference in bomb load between the B-52 and the currently-rumored load of the B-21 – basically the B-52 can carry more than three times the rumored B-21 bomb load by weight.
That payload difference means to put the same splodey weight onto target you’d need three times as many B-21s as B-52s.
The article is thorough, but a bit misleading in terms of the time frame.
Until a couple of months ago, the IOP was scheduled for 2030, and even that was the result of numerous delays.
It was only then revised to 2033.
It’s a typical Pentagon / Air Force / Boeing screw up
Overhaul cost of a single Rolls-Royce BR725 A1-12 (the civilian F130 used on the Gulfstream G650) is currently $ 4.5 million. Specified full overhaul interval (TBO, not MTBO) for the BR725 in G650 service is 7,000 hours. There is also a mid life interval maintenance required for each BR725 in G650 service at 3,500 hours, which is quoted at $ 2.25 million.
Not an appreciably different life cycle cost from the P&W TF33 (JT3D) when you do the math. Full overhaul costs of turbofans typically run 25% to 40% of new engine cost.