Commentary
With testing underway at NASA’s Stennis Space Center for the B-52’s shiny new engines, a quick overview of the comprehensive package of upgrades and modernizations that will keep the B-52 flying well into the 2050s seems appropriate. But given the B-52’s age, it’s only natural to wonder why the Air Force is making such a large commitment to such an aged airframe. However, in coming to understand the B-52’s history and capabilities, it makes sense.
The first B-52 took to the skies on April 15, 1952. And the last B-52, a B-52H, was delivered in October 1962. Today, over 70 years after its first flight, 76 B-52s, affectionally known as BUFFs (Big, Ugly, Fat Fellows), are still flying. Being the Air Force’s heavy bomber with the lowest operating cost and longest range, they’re still playing a critical role in projecting U.S. airpower. Most recently, two B-52s found themselves in the news when on March 21 they were intercepted by a Russian SU-35 fighter as they approached Russian airspace over the Baltic Sea. Thankfully, the interception was peacefully resolved, but once again, B-52s found themselves on the frontline of projecting American air power.
Looking back, the first B-52 first dropped bombs in anger in 1965 during Operation Arc Light in Vietnam. And over the course of the Vietnam War, the B-52 conducted many thousands of sorties and dropped millions of pounds of bombs. During Operation Linebacker II, B-52s dropped over 15,000 tons of ordnance on North Vietnam over a 10-day period. Less than a month later, on Jan. 27, 1973, North Vietnam signed the Paris Peace Accords that paved the way for 591 prisoners of war to be returned to the United States. Many believe it was the pounding delivered by B-52s during Operation Linebacker that induced North Vietnam to negotiate a peace agreement.
During Desert Storm, B-52s flew 1,741 sorties and dropped 27,000 tons of ordnance while achieving an admirable 86.2 percent mission capable rate (pdf). In 2016, as part of ongoing efforts to destroy ISIS, B-52s flew approximately 1,800 sorties. The B-52 was also used in Afghanistan.
Bottom line, since becoming operational, the B-52 has been involved in every major U.S. conflict. And because of the B-52’s unmatched combination of payload, range, and its relatively low cost per flight hour of just $88,354, the Air Force is planning on investing billions to upgrade and modernize its B-52 fleet. The planned upgrades include new engines, a powerful new AESA radar, new avionics, and new weapons capabilities. The cost of these upgrades could reach $11.9 billion. And upon completion of the upgrades, the Air Force will likely redesignate the 76 B-52Hs as B-52Js.
Planned Upgrades
New Engines
With upgraded new, more fuel-efficient engines, the B-52 is expected to gain 20 percent more range, pushing its unrefueled range to a whopping 10,000 miles. The competition to determine which vendor would win the right to provide the new engines was conducted under the auspices of the Air Force’s B-52 Commercial Engine Replacement Program (CERP). The CERP mandated that the new engines be comparable in power to the original TF-33 engines—about 17,000 pounds of thrust. And to ensure that enough ground clearance between the engines and runway was maintained, only engines of similar size and profile would be considered.Three major jet engine manufacturers, Roll Royce, GE, and Pratt & Whitney, competed to earn the business, with Rolls Royce’s F130 engine winning the $2.6 billion project on Sept. 24, 2021. Along with being a more reliable engine, the F130 engine will burn 30 percent less fuel while delivering the same power as the legacy engines.
Over the life of the contract, Rolls-Royce will build 650 F130s to equip the 76 B-52s and has already begun conducting engine testing at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, Mississippi. The re-engining of the entire B-52H fleet is expected to be completed by September 2038.
Along with providing better fuel efficiency, better reliability, and increased range, the eight F130 engines are expected to provide enough power to increase electrical power generation to meet the needs of the B-52’s new, more powerful radar and ungraded avionics.
New Radar
Northrop Grumman and Raytheon competed to provide the B-52s with a new active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar. In this competition, Raytheon beat out Northrop with an offering based on technology and hardware from its APG-79/APG-82 family of AESA radars that have been used on planes such as the F-15 Eagle. The B-52’s new low probability of intercept radar will be harder to detect, even as it provides better detection and discrimination for land, air, and sea targets–and threats. The new radar has yet to be named.Avionics
Many of the B-52Hs have already been upgraded with Boeing’s Combat Network Communications Technology (CONECT), with the final CONECT upgrade expected to be completed by the end of 2023. CONECT gives our B-52s new communication data links, full-color LCD displays with real-time intelligence feeds overlain on moving maps, a state-of-the-art computing network, and the capability to do in-flight retargeting of weapon and mission parameters. While a very significant upgrade, the CONECT upgrade contract is considered to be an interim upgrade en route to future upgrades in communications, electronic warfare, electronic countermeasures, and so on. These modernizations, along with its new radar, could potentially allow the B-52’s crew size to drop from five to four.Collectively, the described upgrades are the most extensive ever received by the B-52. Col. Louis Ruscetta, senior materiel leader for the B-52 modernization program, described the radar and engine upgrades as being “the largest modification in the history” of the aircraft. With the completion of the planned $11 billion plus in upgrades, the cumulative cost of the upgrades performed on each of the B-52Hs over their life is far greater than their $98 million (2018 dollars) per unit purchase price.
When these extensive and expensive upgrades are completed, the Air Force is planning on redesignating the 76 B-52Hs as B-52Js. And these modernized B-52Js are projected to fly well into the 2050s, continuing their service to the Air Force as platforms from which to launch/drop large numbers of stand-off weapons and bombs on America’s enemies.
Finally, it’s beyond cool that kids in the 2050s may have great, great grandfathers who will have flown the actual planes they see flying and still protecting America.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
