Posts Tagged ‘B-52’

Grandpa BUFF Gets An Upgrade

Sunday, June 23rd, 2024

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…

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Posted in Budget, Military | 18 Comments »

LinkSwarm for May 17, 2019

Friday, May 17th, 2019

Just been one of those weeks…

  • Are Brennan, Clapper and Comey ratting on each other? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • This is more than infuriating: “Kentucky Judges Pre-Signed Blank Legal Documents So That Child Services Could Take Custody of Kids on Nights and Weekends.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • No sooner did I put up my own piece on jihad in the Sahel than the BBC published this extensive piece about the same subject, including how jihadists came to Mali in the wake of Obama’s supergenius intervention in Libya.

    The religious extremists imposed strict sharia law. In Timbuktu and beyond, they smashed shrines built for Sufi mystics, burned manuscripts and destroyed ancient artefacts.

    The priceless texts would have all been lost had it not been for the old guardian families who protected what they could.

    Tuaregs and Islamists disagreed over the way their new state of Azawad should be run and began to fight each other.

    The government asked for foreign military help and the former colonial power France answered the call.

    French troops arrived in January 2013 and were joined by African forces. Within a month, they had driven the violent extremists out into the desert and retaken the River Niger towns.

    Plus the usual UN fecklessness. Read the whole thing.

  • “CONFIRMED: Google Gives Left-Wing Websites Preference Over Conservative Ones, Audit Finds.”
  • Denmark’s main leftwing party realizes that uncontrolled, unassimilated immigration hurts the poor. “For me, it is becoming increasingly clear that the price of unregulated globalisation, mass immigration and the free movement of labour is paid for by the lower classes.”
  • The New York media can’t talk about skyrocketing antisemetic attacks against Jews in New York City. Why? Because the attackers are black and Hispanic.
  • Idaho is ending some regulations. Which ones? All of them. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • So that botched Houston drug raid is looking even more botched, as forensic evidence shows the people in the house they wrongly targeted didn’t even fire their weapons at police, and all police gunshot wounds were inflicted by other officers. It seems like just about every aspect of the raid was a lie. At this point, it seems like some rogue HPD cops straight-up murdered Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas for reasons nobody has yet been able to identify.
  • Speaking of infuriating abuses of power: “San Francisco Police Go After Journalist Who Revealed Public Defender’s Affair, Overdose.”
  • State district judge rules Houston Proposition B unconstitutional. That was the one to give firefighters pay parity with police officers, and one Houston mayor Sylvester Turner was fighting tooth and nail.
  • Why people die in Houston car accidents. A whole lot of “Pedestrian failed to yield to vehicle,” failure to drive in one lane” and “failure to control speed,” plus the usual smattering of alcohol. (Hat tip: Kemberlee Kaye.)
  • No federal high speed rail money for California. Good.
  • Is Democratic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib a terrorist sympathizer? Well, here’s evidence from five of her closest friends, so you can judge for yourself:

  • The Air Force brings a B-52H back from the bone yard for active service duty. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Atheist visits places in America his fellow liberals forgot about, and finds not only a sense of place, but an abundance of faith:

    When I first went to the Bronx, I expected that the people there, those most affected by the coldness and ruthlessness of the world, would share my atheism. Instead, I found a strong belief in the supernatural, and a faith that manifested in many ways, mostly as a belief in the Bible.

    Everyone I met there who was living homeless or battling an addiction held a deep faith. Street walking is stunningly dangerous work, and everyone has stories of being cut, attacked, and threatened, or stories of others who were killed. Everyone has to deal with the danger. Few work without a mix of heroin, Xanax, or crack. None without faith. “You know what kept me through all that? God. Whenever I got into the car, God got into the car with me.”

    There are dirty Bibles in crack houses, Qur’ans in abandoned buildings. There is a picture of the Last Supper that moves with a couple living on the streets. Rosaries, crucifixes, and religious icons are worn for protection and good luck. Pages of the Bible are torn out, folded up, and kept in pockets, to be pulled out and fingered nervously, or read over in times of stress, or held during prayers.

  • Latest Remainer complaint “Brexit Party logo ‘subconsciously manipulates voters into backing Farage.'”

  • Hot take: “Ha ha! Gene Simmons of KISS at the Pentagon! Stupid Trump!” Deeper take: As part of a military outreach program, to talk about how his mother, a concentration camp survivor who recently died at age 93, loved America and teared up watching the TV sign-off flag. “America is the promised land. For everybody.”
  • When I removed Creeping Sharia from the blogroll because it was no longer up, I didn’t realize that it had just been deplatformed by WordPress. (Hat tip: A comment from regular blog reader Howard.)
  • Supermodel appears nude in protest of not enough black babies being aborted in Alabama.
  • You know what Germany needs? Stricter crossbow regulation. (Hat tip: Amy Alkon.)
  • Haven’t seen this yet, but I want to: “The Guns and Gunplay of The Highwaymen Were Actually Accurate.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Not buying this, not even sure it will work, but buying buying your own biohacking lab is a pretty cyberpunk thing to do…
  • Voynich manuscript decoded?
  • Grumpy Cat, RIP. (Hat tip: Dwight.)

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    Posted in Border Control, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Texas | 2 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for February 22, 2019

    Friday, February 22nd, 2019

    Enjoy a 2/22 LinkSwarm!

  • “Trump Is On Solid Legal Ground In Declaring A Border Emergency To Build A Wall.”

    A review of existing federal laws makes clear that President Donald Trump has clear statutory authority to build a border wall pursuant to a declaration of a national emergency. Arguments to the contrary either mischaracterize or completely ignore existing federal emergency declarations and appropriations laws that delegate to the president temporary and limited authority to reprogram already appropriated funding toward the creation of a border wall between the United States and Mexico.

  • When lawmakers want to talk to President Donald Trump, they just pick up the phone. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Andy Ngo helpfully provides an extensive list of fake hate crimes in the Trump era.
  • “Covington teen Nick Sandmann sues The Washington Post for $250M.”
  • Shocker: Washington Post tells the truth about guns:

    Gun homicides have dropped substantially over the past 25 years — but most Americans believe the opposite to be true. Why? Perhaps in part because of the media focus on multiple-victim shooting incidents in recent years. Perhaps, too, because of the number and deadliness of those incidents. We’ve noted before that the number of fatalities in major mass-shooting incidents has increased dramatically in recent years; it’s possible that people are conflating increases in frequency and deadliness of mass shootings with the United States getting more dangerous generally.

  • New York Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez adapts quickly to the ways of Washington, puts her boyfriend on her congressional payroll. But that’s not all! She also featherbedded him on her campaign payroll by laundering the funds through a third party.
  • The fight between Second Amendment activists and Michael Bloomberg’s money:

    The time for division is not now. We need a strong NRA. If you quit NRA over bump stocks or red flag laws, you aren’t helping. I’m not saying we can’t have disagreement, but we all need to be rowing in the same direction and understanding what’s important. Miguel notes that activists in Florida are concentrating on Open Carry. I would advise concentrating on stopping the ballot measure Bloomberg is going to foist on you in 2020. NRA has to have money to fight that. We cannot write off the third most populous state. We will never be able to outspend Bloomberg, but we sure as hell can out-organize him. We have a blueprint, and last I heard the dude who pulled off defeating the Massachusetts handgun ban is still alive. The odds were stacked against him too.

    Forget about the fucking bump stocks. It’s not where the fight is. That’s over. The fight is preserving the right to own semi-automatic firearms. That’s ultimately what they want, because they are well aware no state’s gun culture has ever come back from an assault weapons ban. Gun bans are a death blow to the culture. If you want to get the hard-core activists worked up over saving an impractical range toy, or in some misguided effort to (badly) get around the machine gun restrictions, you’re not paying attention to where the actual fight is.

  • “Government report reveals CBO was scandalously off in Obamacare estimates.”
  • The Supreme Court unanimously rules that there are limits to civil asset forfeiture under the Eighth Amendment. Good. Now congress should tackle such abuse legislatively.
  • Note the obvious truth that the media is overwhelmingly liberal? Expect to be attacked.
  • Nicolas Maduro would rather let his own people continue to starve rather than let foreign food aid reach them. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • His army evidently relies on Cuban military personnel. Too bad for him that Cuba’s military intervention in Angola showed the world that Cuban troops sucked. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • “Even the UN IPCC says we’re not headed for climate disaster.”
  • The boy who inflated the concept of wolf:

    Suppose that instead of one shepherd boy, there are a few dozen. They are tired of the villagers dismissing their complaints about less threatening creatures like stray dogs and coyotes. One of them proposes a plan: they will start using the word “wolf” to refer to all menacing animals. They agree and the new usage catches on. For a while, the villagers are indeed more responsive to their complaints. The plan backfires, however, when a real wolf arrives and cries of “Wolf!” fail to trigger the alarm they once did.

    What the boys in the story do with the word “wolf,” modern intellectuals do with words like “violence.” When ordinary people think of violence, they think of things like bombs exploding, gunfire, and brawls. Most dictionary definitions of “violence” mention physical harm or force. Academics, ignoring common usage, speak of “administrative violence,” “data violence,” “epistemic violence” and other heretofore unknown forms of violence.

    Ditto “Gas-lighting.” (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • Pro-top: Try not to steal guns from the SHOT show.
  • The English-language narrator of Islamic State execution videos has been captured.
  • Gay magazine takes the Mullah’s side to own Trump:

  • Former women’s tennis champion and out lesbian Martina Navratilova vilified for daring to point out that men shouldn’t be competing in women’s sports.
  • “Medical examiner barred from Travis County courtrooms amid Rangers investigation.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Stafford: the Texas city without property taxes.
  • B-1s to be retired before B-52s.
  • Followup: But they’re buying more F-15s. (Hat tip: The Political Hat.)
  • Philadelphia’s stupid soda tax has not reduced consumption, brought in less revenue than expected, and has cost Philadelphia over 200 jobs. Also, corrupt union officials helped push it through as a “screw you” to the Teamsters. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Lt. Governor Dan Patrick bitchslaps some shoddy journalism from the Houston Chronicle so hard they had to retract the story. (Hat tip: Cahnman’s Musings, though the Scribed link is broken.)
  • Giant “nightmare bee” previously thought to be extinct found alive. Pleasant dreams:

  • A new football league, the Alliance of American Football, just debuted. Their main bread and butter isn’t ticket sales or broadcast rights, its refining technology to help boost sports gambling.
  • Trump-supporting comedian Terrance K. Williams recovering from a car accident:

  • Speaking of Williams:

  • Instant classic:

  • “Atheist Requiring Evidence To Believe Anything Knows For Certain Trump Colluded With Russia.”
  • La zzzzOOOOOMMMMMMMzzzz Le schzzzzzzcchh-Mmmmmmmmmwaaaaaaahh!

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas | 2 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for April 22, 2016

    Friday, April 22nd, 2016

    As today is a made-up celebration called “Earth Day,” be sure to have beef for dinner…

  • Reminder: “Officials at VA’s Phoenix hospital manipulated wait-time data to make it appear they were connecting doctors and veterans seeking appointments much faster than they actually were. This was done so VA managers at the Arizona facility could keep getting generous performance bonuses. They got their bonuses but dozens of waiting veterans died.” So how did the VA address the problem? They hired someone accused of doing the exact same thing at another hospital.
  • Huge ObamaCare premium hikes are coming down the pike in 2017. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “The largest health insurer in the U.S. has started pulling out of select Obamacare exchanges.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Eight more ObamaCare co-ops are about to bite the dust.
  • Meanwhile, ObamaCare is helping enourage opioid addiction.
  • Thanks to Obama’s supergenius management, the Taliban are now winning in Afghanistan.
  • “The National Labor Relations Board suspended a top-ranking Philadelphia official after receiving complaints that he helped raise money from unions for his pro-union charity.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Following a congressional subpoena over Benghazi, Hillary’s state department staff hid requested files in another department. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Is Rhode Island closing 66% of polling places for next week’s presidential primaries? Something smells.
  • How Ted Cruz could beat Hillary Clinton. “Clin­ton is en­ter­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion with glar­ing vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies of her own. Her im­age is tox­ic to Re­pub­lic­ans and in­de­pend­ents, and her pop­ular­ity among Demo­crats is now at an all-time low as a pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate, ac­cord­ing to Gal­lup’s polling. It won’t take a top-tier Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ate to win.” Also: “Cruz con­sist­ently runs far more com­pet­it­ively against Clin­ton than Trump does.”
  • “It’s not just Wall Street banks. Most companies and groups that paid Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to speak between 2013 and 2015 have lobbied federal agencies in recent years, and more than one-third are government contractors, an Associated Press review has found. Their interests are sprawling and would follow Clinton to the White House should she win election this fall.”
  • Donald Trump jumps on the social justice warrior tranny bathroom bandwagon.
  • Evidently accused pedophile Terry Bean is the one whose organizations are pushing tranny bathroom bills down America’s throats. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Trump convention manager Paul Manafort engages in the time-honored traditional rhetorical device know as “lying your ass off.”
  • Thomas Sowell on campaign lies and dodgy statistics.
  • “Although our panel’s original estimates had Trump finishing with 1,175 pledged delegates, my revised deterministic projections have him at 1,155, and the probabilistic version has him at 1,159.”
  • Ted Cruz has done heavy organizing in California.
  • Man indicted for selling school supplies to Detroit schools he didn’t actually deliver…with the connivance of several principles receiving kickbacks. Now, remind me: Which party has controlled Detroit for half a century?
  • Venezuela instituting four hours of blackouts a day, in addition to the previously mentioned three day weekends. That socialist paradise just keeps
  • Brazil impeaches their President.
  • Won’t someone please think of poor, penniless Boeing?
  • When low-fat dogma trumped science: hamburger study data showed exact opposite of study’s conclusions.
  • Navy chief starving Marine air corps.
  • “What Women Really Want Is The Patriarchy.”
  • “‘White Privilege’ Is a Racial Slur.”
  • “Walden is less a cornerstone work of environmental literature than the original cabin porn: a fantasy about rustic life divorced from the reality of living in the woods, and, especially, a fantasy about escaping the entanglements and responsibilities of living among other people.”
  • Mexico’s Popocatepetl volcano erupts. Popocatepetl is less than 50 miles from Mexico City…
  • Goldman Sachs pays $5 billion fine to “settle claims that it misled mortgage bond investors during the financial crisis.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Pratt & Whitney pushing a B-52 engine upgrade.
  • The woman who can’t remember her own past. (Hat tip: Bill Crider.)
  • Lileks: “Who wouldn’t want to lounge around in a set from a 1970s failed Gene Roddenberry pilot?” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Son, that’s no way to treat steaks. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Military, ObamaCare, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions | No Comments »

    North Korea Threatens to Nuke Austin

    Friday, March 29th, 2013

    So North Korea is kicking its Crazy Invalid act up a notch with Kim Jong-Un threatening to attack the United States.

    Which part of the U.S., you asking?

    Would you believe Austin?

    Dude, we’re all pissed off about the bag ban and the high cost of SXSW badges, but that’s a major overreaction.

    Here, apropos of nothing in particular, is a video about the B-52:

    And here, also apropos of nothing in particular, is a video of a B-2 hitting targets with 80 500 pound JDAM bombs.

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    Posted in Austin, Foreign Policy, Military, video | 1 Comment »