I hope the crew are okay, but from the look of the aftermath and the fact there's no mention of the crew yet, I assume not all survived. Shortly after takeoff is one of the most challenging times for an incident. Low altitude, low-speed and full fuel means things can go very bad, very fast.
Just after takeoff is the worst time to have a problem. Hopefully they had the minimum crew. Also hopefully it wasn't carrying a nuke and/or it wasn't compromised.
It has an ejection system, but some go up and some go down depending on their position in the aircraft. The two navigator seats eject downwards, they would not have had a chance. Given when the accident occurred (just after takeoff), and that there's not yet been any report on the crew, it's unlikely the other crew managed to eject.
You are correct. Typically, if the pilots run into a critical emergency and have the chance, they'll try to pitch the aircraft upwards to give the navs a chance of survival after ejection, but it's pretty rare that's feasible.
I don't know how it is anymore, but it apparently used to be an unspoken rule that if the downstairs crew couldn't eject and survive, the upstairs crew wouldn't either.
As to why the ejection system is like this? Because the B-52 was originally designed as a high-altitude bomber.
> It would be unjust to the pilot and co-pilot were I not to make it clear, in conclusion, that it was their duty to eject from the aircraft when they did. I am satisfied that there could have been no hope of controlling the aircraft after the initial impact. In these circumstances, it was the duty of the captain to give the order to abandon the aircraft and of all those who were on board to obey it if they were able to do so. Both the pilot and co-pilot realised when they gave their orders that, owing to the low altitude, the other occupants had no chance of escape, and they considered that their own chances were negligible
Almost certainly no cleanup before that photo was taken. The accident occurred at 1120, and the article was "last updated" at 1302, 1 hour 42 minutes is not enough time to cleanup a site like that when they still have to do the accident investigation.
It would likely have had full fuel tanks so that's probably why we can see little debris.
Is there something systemic behind these frequent incidents with military aircraft? It is using old, legacy equipment? Is it due to using rushed, streamlined procedures designed for war-time even outside an active battle environment? Are there just many, many military flights daily so statistically one will be in the news every couple weeks?
IMO the danger to US service members outside of combat seems way too high. It's a well known fact most fatalities occur during training than during combat. (Sure this due to there being many more training exercises than active combat engagements but from a policy perspective it is very worrying).
The US military has 10-15,000 airframes. The US military trains hard and flies a lot of hours so accidents and failures are not completely preventable. They explicitly plan to lose an average of 2 airframes per month due to attrition, which is roughly their historical average. The crew is able to escape most of the time.
It may seem odd that they plan for these losses but the optimal amount of risk is non-zero. Excessive safety-ism interferes with effective training and operations, which risks lives in other ways. They aren't reckless but over-prioritizing never risking a life in training would defeat the purpose of it and institutionalize behavior that is ill-suited for actual warfare where risk is unavoidable.
Statistically the military environment is quite safe, particularly for young males, relative to the median lifestyle in the US. That is true even in some war zones, ironically.
It's only notable now because of how safe aircraft are now and how rare these incidents are. Like, of the 116 B-58 Hustlers built, 24 were lost in crashes. Over 200 B-47's were lost during its service life, killing 464 crew members.
I would guess that when you are training you are still doing activities that are not as safe as just traveling from point A to B: flying low, pointing the nose at the ground, landing a helicopter in a less than ideal spot (it seems like half of those are helicopters), etc. That hypothesis doesn't really apply well to transport planes or B52s though. Military pilots probably spend a higher overall fraction of their flying career as trainees?
They are very rare these days compared to the 1950s-80. I presume it's a combination of aircraft design developing and also the scale of the military and the intense training during the Cold War.
Have a flick through these links listing losses or two RAF types, it's quite sobering.
> Broken Arrow is a code phrase that refers to an accidental event that involves nuclear weapons, warheads or components that does not create a risk of nuclear war.
It's common in news headlines when an event is very recent or a story is still developing. A report about, say, the US bombing a previously unreported site in Iran several weeks ago would be in the past tense "US bombed <site> in Iran". When the US bombs Iran today, it'll be titled "US bombs <site> in Iran".
I worked on B-52s and other aircraft. Their systems (bomb/nav/comm/etc) were refreshed many times and the airframes inspected and improved regularly.
The reason B-52s are still around is because they are combat-effective and cost-effective relative to other aircraft, such as the B-1 and B-2 (both of which I also worked on). Whatever replaces the B-52 will have to be something new and something cost-effective. I don't think that currently exists.
The B-1 has only been combat/cost effective in more recent years after an extended rough patch spanning decades -- actually, I'm not even sure it's cost-effective. The B-2 has always been combat-effective, but was never cost-effective to operate or maintain.
Cost-effective might not be the best description. If the B2 is able to target SAMs with very low losses, then it could still be cost-effective compared to significant losses of other airframes and crews.
Cost-effective is the best description. It doesn't have to be a totality. For total operation costs (training/missions/acquisition/maintenance/capabilites), the B-52 is cheaper by orders of magnitude.
The B-2 does have its place and is better suited for certain jobs, albeit at too high a cost. The B-21 is purported to lower that. We'll see.
Edit: Looks like current B-2 operational/maintenance costs are now down to only about 2x that of the B-52, which is an impressive reduction (no sarcasm).
With eight engines mounted on external nacelles, it is the complete opposite of stealth. You need complete air superiority to use it without fear of being shot down.
The eight engines is a side effect of of how large the aircraft is vs how big the engines of the day were. they are basically business jet engines by modern standards.
During the recent engine replacement project using one full sized engine per boom instead of the twin small engine nacelle was seriously considered. So 4 engines instead of 8. I suspect the reason the twin nacelle was kept was that going to 4 engines required more engineering rework than they were happy with. It certainly would have improved the b-52's range and fuel efficiency.
Either way probably a net zero on the stealth consideration.
Fun fact: with the re-engine project the b-52 now has the same engines as the A-10.
You're still only talking about the cost side. You're not talking about the effect side. So they're 2x the cost, but how much did they save in reduced casualties?
One does not simply take out a SAM system with a cruise missile, especially when that SAM system can also target the cruise missile. So how do you get a cruise missile to launch from the right spot where the SAM system radar can’t see it coming?
Sure they are - the s300 system for example can be redployed quite rapidly & some like Buk have the radar even integrated with the launcher.
Also only the radar really transmits, so even if you hit it the, separate launchers might still be intact & guided by another radar if you don't destroy them.
This is why modern remotely guided middle strike drones are so dangerous for SAMs - they can basically search an area for all the SAM system components and destroy them all or most of them. Potentially much more effective than a homing missile hitting just the radar at maximum.
The b-52's role on the modern battlefield is basically a cruise missile truck. It lets you launch a bunch of cruise missiles(cough, I mean kamikazi drones, gotta use the modern lingo) from random locations.
None of the major defense contractors (new or old) would be interested in doing this unless they could greatly pad out their numbers. There's a lot more money (see F-35) in building out a new system and landing the huge maintenance contract for the first 10+ years associated with it. A B-52 clone would be financially great for USAF if it could be built at an appropriate price since they have the maintenance capability for that airframe already, but no one would sell them one at the right price.
The B-21, a cheaper version of the B-2, makes more sense as new bomber since it can do the normal bomber jobs and the B-52 job of nuclear cruise missiles.
B-52 engine refurbishment is going to cost $15 billion for 70 odd bombers, or $214 million each. $750 million is current cost of B-21.
Northrup has built a couple of prototypes and supposed to deliver first one next year. The B-21 program is going really fast. Air Force are ordering 145, which is slightly more than the B-1, B-2, and B-52s.
Please do more research. They are most decidedly not “simply too old”. They have been “refreshed” many times over - from engines, to flight electronics, to targeting and comms systems, to airframe structures, to coffeemaker automation.
On a practical level, computer power and FEM etc. have changed aero/astro and the relevant physics at the level you can do engineering with, from people I know in those industries.
> Similarly, the M4 or direct derivatives continuing to be the main rifle for the majority of infantry is also stupid.
Man this is so far off topic, but I would consider myself somewhat well educated and personally and professionally experienced on this topic, and I very much would love to know what problems you see with the M4A1 weapon system in 2026.
Nit: at some point you start getting metal fatigue issues (see Aloha Airlines Flight 243) but in general yes: fuel efficiency and fleet standardization.
Also airliners usually just become cargo planes for quite a long time before retirement. Eg. there's a bunch of DC-3s still being commercially operated. Jet engine noise regs killed a bunch of early jets, but older prop aircraft are still going strong.
> Out of curiosity, do they not pressurize the cargo hold?
Well, the DC-3 is a fun example, because it wasn't pressurized to start with.
But no, normally converted freight aircraft are fully pressurized; it's more expensive and more intrusive to redesign the plane to have a cockpit pressure bulkhead than it is to just leave the whole thing pressurized. There are some exceptions like the Beluga, usually due to door design constraints (at some point, making a cockpit pressure bulkhead becomes easier than making a giant pressurized door). This trend in retrofits might change; flat aft-pressure-bulkhead retrofits are becoming a thing to increase cubic footage capacity, and at some point someone might decide that the effort required to engineer and certify a cockpit bulkhead would be worth some advantage in door design or cargo capacity in a broader sense. But for now, they're usually fully pressurized.
The main reason why planes get a second life in freight is that freight carriers have _way_ more options for utilization; they fly fewer hours overall, hold the plane until it's completely full, and utilize different airports and routes. A loud, inefficient plane is OK to fly twice a day between two fixed airports with no noise restrictions, but useless to a passenger carrier who wants to make four or five turns between whatever airports are necessary and doesn't have guaranteed utilization to cover the overhead - right back to your original point, which I don't think anyone was really disagreeing with.
> Also airliners usually just become cargo planes for quite a long time before retirement.
Yes, but that's a function of how fuel economy and capital impact the overall economics.
Cargo = (usually) one flight per night.
Passenger = (usually) many flights per day.
It's important for cargo airlines to have low capital costs for an asset that spends a lot of time not making money, but it's important for a passenger airline to have low operating costs for an asset that's burning fuel all the time.
Passenger airplanes are repurposed for cargo when newer, more fuel efficient airplanes come on the market.
Planes don't age in the same way cars do. There is a maintenance schedule that inspects and replaces almost literally every component at some point. So the engines on these planes can be just a year old for example.
And the military has a tendency to also upgrade the avionics and capabilities at several points in the lifetime of a program. So there is a lot of tech in these planes that's much newer than 60 years old.
Also true for most aircraft in the US military fleet that aren't of the most recent generation. Depot maintenance strips them down, and pretty much everything but the frame itself could have been replaced by this point for anything over 30-40 years of age. They also do form, fit, function for LRUs so that the a new LRU can be dropped in and connected to the existing aircraft as much as possible, allowing for more gradual changes over time.
The USAF has been neglected for a long time. The service has seen reductions in both headcount and airframes with no gains in efficiency or effectiveness.
Too many types of aircraft to operate and maintain, with too few people to do it and too few available airframes to maintain a combat capability.
A friend who served was assigned to fix broken planes quickly. He and his fellow mechanics could be punished for not being ready to make urgent repairs, so they maintained a stock of commonly used parts in the hangar.
One year, a congressional efficiency mandate required that AFBs return any parts that hadn't been issued in the previous (90 days?). Returning their stock just because it hadn't been needed in the last 12 weeks undermined their readiness requirements, so the staff found a way around this limitation: periodically discard qty 1 of any seldom-used part and order another one to show proof of need. The congressional anti-waste attempt only served to fill their dumpster.
Along with investigating airframe selections, it would be worthwhile to audit the branches for these kinds of perverse incentives, to hear from people at all levels about which policies are helpful and which cause needless waste.
I don't know what timeframe your friend served, but when I was in the Air Force, leadership was constantly making a big deal about FWA (fraud, waste, and abuse). Now I wonder if it was in response to them finding out about schemes like these.
I also remember our shop being under (unwritten!) pressure from the squadron commander to spend every cent we were budgeted for (without going over!) to make sure we got at least that much last year.
The B-52 lives in an awkward niche. Bomb trucks over utterly unprotected airspace might just not be a thing anymore.
If that holds for the forseen future, the B-52 will not have a real successor.
Currently, it looks like non-precision bulk bombing is just obsolete.
We "depend" on the B-52 because it still works, and there's a lot of chance it shouldn't get a replacement.
Are there any other planes we "depend" on that are old but not being replaced? Our tanker fleet is old but we are looking to replace it. Maybe some transports are getting old? But they probably don't need a new design. EWACS is old but also seeing new systems being built.
The B-52 has hands with the JASSM, ALCM, LRASM. No need to get close to pack a punch. Yeah a successor would likely be a LO blended wing body design, but the idea of cheap to operate big truck is fine.
There are systems that are in bombers that Rapid Dragon does not deal with, and you need to expand the transport fleet that the Army and Navy and you also want for other missions. It's great for pounding fixed positions where you can load up and program on ground but not readjust in the air based on how it's going.
Also not all munitions work effectively with it. A dedicated bomber enables things like MOAB.
I hope the crew are okay, but from the look of the aftermath and the fact there's no mention of the crew yet, I assume not all survived. Shortly after takeoff is one of the most challenging times for an incident. Low altitude, low-speed and full fuel means things can go very bad, very fast.
It’s been confirmed that the entire crew perished, and sadly the max complement of eight was aboard.
RIP!
As a betting man… this is not survivable
Just after takeoff is the worst time to have a problem. Hopefully they had the minimum crew. Also hopefully it wasn't carrying a nuke and/or it wasn't compromised.
They have maximum crew possible which is 8. All confirmed dead.
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Kindly request that you keep your requests he keep his guesses to himself to yourself.
there are sadly all too many cases like this: the Concorde's last flight comes to mind. Just horrible.
RIP
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B-52 crew has to bail out, no ejection option.
It has an ejection system, but some go up and some go down depending on their position in the aircraft. The two navigator seats eject downwards, they would not have had a chance. Given when the accident occurred (just after takeoff), and that there's not yet been any report on the crew, it's unlikely the other crew managed to eject.
You are correct. Typically, if the pilots run into a critical emergency and have the chance, they'll try to pitch the aircraft upwards to give the navs a chance of survival after ejection, but it's pretty rare that's feasible.
I don't know how it is anymore, but it apparently used to be an unspoken rule that if the downstairs crew couldn't eject and survive, the upstairs crew wouldn't either.
As to why the ejection system is like this? Because the B-52 was originally designed as a high-altitude bomber.
The Avro Vulcan was similar, the two cockpit crew had ejector seats but the three others didn't.
There were a few crashes where the cockpit crew ejected, this being one at London Heathrow.
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1956/dec/...
> It would be unjust to the pilot and co-pilot were I not to make it clear, in conclusion, that it was their duty to eject from the aircraft when they did. I am satisfied that there could have been no hope of controlling the aircraft after the initial impact. In these circumstances, it was the duty of the captain to give the order to abandon the aircraft and of all those who were on board to obey it if they were able to do so. Both the pilot and co-pilot realised when they gave their orders that, owing to the low altitude, the other occupants had no chance of escape, and they considered that their own chances were negligible
https://ktla.com/news/california/b52-bomber-crash-edwards-ai... - Another report, includes an image of the crash site and more than just two paragraphs.
Is this after cleanup? There's almost zero wreckage and if it was at takeoff it shouldn't have enough speed or descent angle to atomize.
Almost certainly no cleanup before that photo was taken. The accident occurred at 1120, and the article was "last updated" at 1302, 1 hour 42 minutes is not enough time to cleanup a site like that when they still have to do the accident investigation.
It would likely have had full fuel tanks so that's probably why we can see little debris.
There was a post crash fire, and that would be a lot of fuel burning.
Look at the fairfield airshow crash, there nothing left but a bit of the tail.
Edwards Air Base is supposed to be testing new engines for the B-52J upgrade. I wonder if this test flight was part of that program.
F-18 went down the other day as well.
And Tu-22M3 today as well. Not a good day for bombers
A Tu-22M3 going down makes it better day for Ukraine
Statement put out by Edwards AFB, press conference scheduled for 4:15pm PDT.
https://www.edwards.af.mil/News/Display/Article/4517897/b-52...
Video of the 1994 B-52 crash at Fairchild Air Force Base:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2OIxo00UeM
I don't understand the fascination with watching people die. I'd rather not, thanks.
as a pilot - it's a reminder that if the pros can make a mistake then I absolutely can and I better not take anything for granted when I fly.
I remember watching a documentary about this crash. The pilot was known to violate rules and in this case he banked too much if I remember correctly.
Is there something systemic behind these frequent incidents with military aircraft? It is using old, legacy equipment? Is it due to using rushed, streamlined procedures designed for war-time even outside an active battle environment? Are there just many, many military flights daily so statistically one will be in the news every couple weeks?
IMO the danger to US service members outside of combat seems way too high. It's a well known fact most fatalities occur during training than during combat. (Sure this due to there being many more training exercises than active combat engagements but from a policy perspective it is very worrying).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...
The US military has 10-15,000 airframes. The US military trains hard and flies a lot of hours so accidents and failures are not completely preventable. They explicitly plan to lose an average of 2 airframes per month due to attrition, which is roughly their historical average. The crew is able to escape most of the time.
It may seem odd that they plan for these losses but the optimal amount of risk is non-zero. Excessive safety-ism interferes with effective training and operations, which risks lives in other ways. They aren't reckless but over-prioritizing never risking a life in training would defeat the purpose of it and institutionalize behavior that is ill-suited for actual warfare where risk is unavoidable.
Statistically the military environment is quite safe, particularly for young males, relative to the median lifestyle in the US. That is true even in some war zones, ironically.
It's only notable now because of how safe aircraft are now and how rare these incidents are. Like, of the 116 B-58 Hustlers built, 24 were lost in crashes. Over 200 B-47's were lost during its service life, killing 464 crew members.
This is the first B-52 crash in almost 20 years.
I would guess that when you are training you are still doing activities that are not as safe as just traveling from point A to B: flying low, pointing the nose at the ground, landing a helicopter in a less than ideal spot (it seems like half of those are helicopters), etc. That hypothesis doesn't really apply well to transport planes or B52s though. Military pilots probably spend a higher overall fraction of their flying career as trainees?
They are very rare these days compared to the 1950s-80. I presume it's a combination of aircraft design developing and also the scale of the military and the intense training during the Cold War.
Have a flick through these links listing losses or two RAF types, it's quite sobering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/harrier...
A Russian bomber was seen nose diving today too.
Strictly speaking that was a Soviet bomber. The Russians ended up with them, but they can't make more of them, at least not right now.
The Tu-22M is almost as old as the B-52. They don't want to make more.
They want, but can't
you fly jets long enough something like this happens
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What do you think "broken arrow" is?
> Broken Arrow is a code phrase that refers to an accidental event that involves nuclear weapons, warheads or components that does not create a risk of nuclear war.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Arrow_%28military%2...
I know what it is, the GP clearly thinks it's something else.
Why? B-52s have been involved in broken arrow accidents in the past. Quite a few are from B-52 crashes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear...
It seems to be a bad day for strategic bombers with a B-52 down in the USA while a Russian Tu-22M3 'Backfire' went down in Irkutsk:
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/russian-s...
why present tense?
It's common in news headlines when an event is very recent or a story is still developing. A report about, say, the US bombing a previously unreported site in Iran several weeks ago would be in the past tense "US bombed <site> in Iran". When the US bombs Iran today, it'll be titled "US bombs <site> in Iran".
Why is stuff like this on Hackernews?
Because a HN user posted the link and other HN users upvoted it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_news_website
They stopped making the B-52 64 years ago. The US military is depending on planes that are simply too old and need to be refreshed.
I worked on B-52s and other aircraft. Their systems (bomb/nav/comm/etc) were refreshed many times and the airframes inspected and improved regularly.
The reason B-52s are still around is because they are combat-effective and cost-effective relative to other aircraft, such as the B-1 and B-2 (both of which I also worked on). Whatever replaces the B-52 will have to be something new and something cost-effective. I don't think that currently exists.
The B-1 has only been combat/cost effective in more recent years after an extended rough patch spanning decades -- actually, I'm not even sure it's cost-effective. The B-2 has always been combat-effective, but was never cost-effective to operate or maintain.
Cost-effective might not be the best description. If the B2 is able to target SAMs with very low losses, then it could still be cost-effective compared to significant losses of other airframes and crews.
Cost-effective is the best description. It doesn't have to be a totality. For total operation costs (training/missions/acquisition/maintenance/capabilites), the B-52 is cheaper by orders of magnitude.
The B-2 does have its place and is better suited for certain jobs, albeit at too high a cost. The B-21 is purported to lower that. We'll see.
Edit: Looks like current B-2 operational/maintenance costs are now down to only about 2x that of the B-52, which is an impressive reduction (no sarcasm).
Why not just start making new B-52's again?
Is there a shortage of B-52 airframes?
They get upgraded regularly, the only reason to make more bombers is to try something different.
With eight engines mounted on external nacelles, it is the complete opposite of stealth. You need complete air superiority to use it without fear of being shot down.
The eight engines is a side effect of of how large the aircraft is vs how big the engines of the day were. they are basically business jet engines by modern standards.
During the recent engine replacement project using one full sized engine per boom instead of the twin small engine nacelle was seriously considered. So 4 engines instead of 8. I suspect the reason the twin nacelle was kept was that going to 4 engines required more engineering rework than they were happy with. It certainly would have improved the b-52's range and fuel efficiency.
Either way probably a net zero on the stealth consideration.
Fun fact: with the re-engine project the b-52 now has the same engines as the A-10.
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You're still only talking about the cost side. You're not talking about the effect side. So they're 2x the cost, but how much did they save in reduced casualties?
If you have updated satellite imagery and can hit the SAM with a cruise missile you don't need the B2.
Middle strike drone swarm is more likely in 2026 & as a bonus you can post the footage from it as a music video.
One does not simply take out a SAM system with a cruise missile, especially when that SAM system can also target the cruise missile. So how do you get a cruise missile to launch from the right spot where the SAM system radar can’t see it coming?
By using low-observable ("stealth") cruise missiles that fly at extremely low altitudes using terrain avoidance radar.
> using low-observable ("stealth") cruise missiles that fly at extremely low altitudes using terrain avoidance radar
Do we have this class of anti-radiation weapon?
I'm pretty sure we have this class of cruise missile. It can be used as an anti-radiation weapon if you point it at a location that has a radar on it.
If the radar is mobile, that means that you need a true anti-radiation missile, but SAM radars aren't mobile, are they?
Sure they are - the s300 system for example can be redployed quite rapidly & some like Buk have the radar even integrated with the launcher.
Also only the radar really transmits, so even if you hit it the, separate launchers might still be intact & guided by another radar if you don't destroy them.
This is why modern remotely guided middle strike drones are so dangerous for SAMs - they can basically search an area for all the SAM system components and destroy them all or most of them. Potentially much more effective than a homing missile hitting just the radar at maximum.
The b-52's role on the modern battlefield is basically a cruise missile truck. It lets you launch a bunch of cruise missiles(cough, I mean kamikazi drones, gotta use the modern lingo) from random locations.
Plot twist: some of the best precision cruise missiles are air-launched.
Can now be air launched by cargo plane as well.
why can't they reproduce it like they do shelby kit cars?
None of the major defense contractors (new or old) would be interested in doing this unless they could greatly pad out their numbers. There's a lot more money (see F-35) in building out a new system and landing the huge maintenance contract for the first 10+ years associated with it. A B-52 clone would be financially great for USAF if it could be built at an appropriate price since they have the maintenance capability for that airframe already, but no one would sell them one at the right price.
The B-21, a cheaper version of the B-2, makes more sense as new bomber since it can do the normal bomber jobs and the B-52 job of nuclear cruise missiles.
B-52 engine refurbishment is going to cost $15 billion for 70 odd bombers, or $214 million each. $750 million is current cost of B-21.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-21_Raider
Notice all the references to the B-21 are future tense.
Northrup has built a couple of prototypes and supposed to deliver first one next year. The B-21 program is going really fast. Air Force are ordering 145, which is slightly more than the B-1, B-2, and B-52s.
It is just easy to not trust official predictions but of course "past performance is not indicative of future results". So we will see.
Please do more research. They are most decidedly not “simply too old”. They have been “refreshed” many times over - from engines, to flight electronics, to targeting and comms systems, to airframe structures, to coffeemaker automation.
Sounds like a lot like ship of Theseus. The B-52 now is not not the same B-52 64 years ago.
The airframes still date closer in time to the Wright-Patterson Kitty Hawk flight than to today.
How much physics has changed between Kitty Hawk and today?
On a practical level, computer power and FEM etc. have changed aero/astro and the relevant physics at the level you can do engineering with, from people I know in those industries.
These airframes aren't physics, they're engineering.
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Mentour Pilot covered the B-52 history
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbCeKNcr6Wk
> Similarly, the M4 or direct derivatives continuing to be the main rifle for the majority of infantry is also stupid.
Man this is so far off topic, but I would consider myself somewhat well educated and personally and professionally experienced on this topic, and I very much would love to know what problems you see with the M4A1 weapon system in 2026.
> planes that are simply too old
Planes don’t really age like that, at least not if they’re serviced. They’re constantly being rebuilt and inspected.
The only reason airliner fleets churn as much as they do is fuel efficiency and maintenance standardization.
Nit: at some point you start getting metal fatigue issues (see Aloha Airlines Flight 243) but in general yes: fuel efficiency and fleet standardization.
Also airliners usually just become cargo planes for quite a long time before retirement. Eg. there's a bunch of DC-3s still being commercially operated. Jet engine noise regs killed a bunch of early jets, but older prop aircraft are still going strong.
> Nit: at some point you start getting metal fatigue issues
Good point. The B-52 doesn’t pressurize the whole fuselage. Just the crew compartment.
> airliners usually just become cargo planes for quite a long time before retirement
Out of curiosity, do they not pressurize the cargo hold?
> Out of curiosity, do they not pressurize the cargo hold?
Well, the DC-3 is a fun example, because it wasn't pressurized to start with.
But no, normally converted freight aircraft are fully pressurized; it's more expensive and more intrusive to redesign the plane to have a cockpit pressure bulkhead than it is to just leave the whole thing pressurized. There are some exceptions like the Beluga, usually due to door design constraints (at some point, making a cockpit pressure bulkhead becomes easier than making a giant pressurized door). This trend in retrofits might change; flat aft-pressure-bulkhead retrofits are becoming a thing to increase cubic footage capacity, and at some point someone might decide that the effort required to engineer and certify a cockpit bulkhead would be worth some advantage in door design or cargo capacity in a broader sense. But for now, they're usually fully pressurized.
The main reason why planes get a second life in freight is that freight carriers have _way_ more options for utilization; they fly fewer hours overall, hold the plane until it's completely full, and utilize different airports and routes. A loud, inefficient plane is OK to fly twice a day between two fixed airports with no noise restrictions, but useless to a passenger carrier who wants to make four or five turns between whatever airports are necessary and doesn't have guaranteed utilization to cover the overhead - right back to your original point, which I don't think anyone was really disagreeing with.
> Also airliners usually just become cargo planes for quite a long time before retirement.
Yes, but that's a function of how fuel economy and capital impact the overall economics.
Cargo = (usually) one flight per night.
Passenger = (usually) many flights per day.
It's important for cargo airlines to have low capital costs for an asset that spends a lot of time not making money, but it's important for a passenger airline to have low operating costs for an asset that's burning fuel all the time.
Passenger airplanes are repurposed for cargo when newer, more fuel efficient airplanes come on the market.
Planes don't age in the same way cars do. There is a maintenance schedule that inspects and replaces almost literally every component at some point. So the engines on these planes can be just a year old for example.
And the military has a tendency to also upgrade the avionics and capabilities at several points in the lifetime of a program. So there is a lot of tech in these planes that's much newer than 60 years old.
Aged out weapons design is a flying target.
War profiteers say motherhood statements about the crew but don't care.
60 years of new weapons design opportunities was pocketed in pork by the politicians bought and paid for.
True, but the B-52s that are currently in operation are very much a Bomber of Theseus situation.
Also true for most aircraft in the US military fleet that aren't of the most recent generation. Depot maintenance strips them down, and pretty much everything but the frame itself could have been replaced by this point for anything over 30-40 years of age. They also do form, fit, function for LRUs so that the a new LRU can be dropped in and connected to the existing aircraft as much as possible, allowing for more gradual changes over time.
The USAF has been neglected for a long time. The service has seen reductions in both headcount and airframes with no gains in efficiency or effectiveness.
Too many types of aircraft to operate and maintain, with too few people to do it and too few available airframes to maintain a combat capability.
A friend who served was assigned to fix broken planes quickly. He and his fellow mechanics could be punished for not being ready to make urgent repairs, so they maintained a stock of commonly used parts in the hangar.
One year, a congressional efficiency mandate required that AFBs return any parts that hadn't been issued in the previous (90 days?). Returning their stock just because it hadn't been needed in the last 12 weeks undermined their readiness requirements, so the staff found a way around this limitation: periodically discard qty 1 of any seldom-used part and order another one to show proof of need. The congressional anti-waste attempt only served to fill their dumpster.
Along with investigating airframe selections, it would be worthwhile to audit the branches for these kinds of perverse incentives, to hear from people at all levels about which policies are helpful and which cause needless waste.
I don't know what timeframe your friend served, but when I was in the Air Force, leadership was constantly making a big deal about FWA (fraud, waste, and abuse). Now I wonder if it was in response to them finding out about schemes like these.
I also remember our shop being under (unwritten!) pressure from the squadron commander to spend every cent we were budgeted for (without going over!) to make sure we got at least that much last year.
George Will mentioned in a recent article that some of the B-52s used against Iran were built before the first Beatles album.
The B-52 lives in an awkward niche. Bomb trucks over utterly unprotected airspace might just not be a thing anymore.
If that holds for the forseen future, the B-52 will not have a real successor.
Currently, it looks like non-precision bulk bombing is just obsolete.
We "depend" on the B-52 because it still works, and there's a lot of chance it shouldn't get a replacement.
Are there any other planes we "depend" on that are old but not being replaced? Our tanker fleet is old but we are looking to replace it. Maybe some transports are getting old? But they probably don't need a new design. EWACS is old but also seeing new systems being built.
The B-52 has hands with the JASSM, ALCM, LRASM. No need to get close to pack a punch. Yeah a successor would likely be a LO blended wing body design, but the idea of cheap to operate big truck is fine.
If you want cheap missile truck, then Rapid Dragon, dropping missiles from cargo aircraft, is the answer.
The B-21 is the B-52 successor, and has to worry less about being shot down.
There are systems that are in bombers that Rapid Dragon does not deal with, and you need to expand the transport fleet that the Army and Navy and you also want for other missions. It's great for pounding fixed positions where you can load up and program on ground but not readjust in the air based on how it's going.
Also not all munitions work effectively with it. A dedicated bomber enables things like MOAB.
The C-130 is ubiquitous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-130_Hercules
The US plans to replace both JSTAR and AWACS with Golden Dome? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...