BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. — Because it idled on the flight line here, a B-52H Stratofortress referred to as the Red Gremlin II looked much the identical because it did within the Nineteen Sixties.
However the U.S. Air Force’s B-52 bomber fleet is showing its age, and the Red Gremlin II is not any exception.
On a crisp, clear morning in January, its five-person aircrew from the eleventh Bomb Squadron ran through preflight checks for a training mission, tallying up what was broken and the way serious the issues were.
Instructor pilot Lt. Col. Michael DeVita’s digital display — a comparatively recent system referred to as the Combat Network Communications Technology, or CONECT — wasn’t working. The radar altimeter was down. And the targeting pod display, needed for a key element of the planned simulated bombing, was on the fritz. At one point, DeVita, the squadron commander, leaned over and gave a stubborn dial three solid taps to unstick it.
For the last six many years, the Red Gremlin II and the opposite 75 B-52s still in use have been the backbone of the Air Force’s bomber fleet.
They’ve conducted around-the-clock nuclear alert missions at the sting of Soviet airspace in addition to massive bombing campaigns throughout the Vietnam War. They helped perform strikes on Iraq that paved the best way for the rapid ground assault of Operation Desert Storm. And in recent times, these aircraft conducted precision-guided strikes against the Taliban and the Islamic State group.
Now the Stratofortress must last one other 36 years.
The Air Force is preparing to bring on its newest stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider, and retire the aging B-1 Lancer and B-2 Spirit. Sometime within the 2030s, the service plans to have a fleet of two bombers — not less than 100 B-21s and the present fleet of 76 B-52s, modernized top to bottom with a slate of upgrades.
It’s essentially the most sweeping revamp of the U.S. bomber fleet in greater than a generation.
This $48.6 billion overhaul is meant to maintain the (eventually redubbed) B-52J operational until about 2060 — meaning the Air Force may very well be flying nearly century-old bombers. When the last B-52 was delivered in 1962, it was expected to last 20 years, the Defense Department’s inspector general said in a November 2023 report.
The service is preparing for the overhaul, rethinking day-to-day maintenance and reevaluating its strategy for a way a fleet made up of two bomber types would operate against a sophisticated enemy.
“The B-21 with the B-52J [will be] a really powerful, integrated force,” Maj. Gen. Jason Armagost, commander of eighth Air Force, said in a January interview here, sporting a B-21 patch on his uniform sleeve. The combined fleet can be able to conducting a big selection of operations and striking an array of enemy targets, possibly armed with the newest hypersonic weapons.
The centerpiece of the B-52J modernization shall be the substitute of the bomber’s original ’60s-era Pratt & Whitney TF33 engines with recent Rolls-Royce-made F130 engines; that $2.6 billion effort is referred to as the Industrial Engine Alternative Program. The Air Force expects the primary test B-52J will start ground and flight tests in late 2028, and for more B-52s to receive recent engines throughout the 2030s.
But that’s not all: The B-52J can even receive a brand new modern radar, improved avionics, the Long Range Standoff weapon to perform nuclear strikes from a distance, communication upgrades, recent digital displays replacing dozens of old analog dials, recent wheels and brakes, and other improvements.
The Air Force is counting on all these advances to work. In the event that they don’t, the service could find itself with perhaps as much as 40% of its planned bomber fleet unable to maintain up with wartime requirements.
The Air Force must make the B-52 modernization succeed, said Heather Penney, a retired F-16 pilot and senior resident fellow on the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “Long-range strike is completely nonnegotiable. Bombers are it.”
Air Force historian Brian Laslie said the actual fact the B-52 continues to be within the air, and will proceed flying until around its centenary, is remarkable.
“If there was an airplane that was flying today that was 100 years old, we’ve got to return to 1924,” Laslie said. “We’re talking in regards to the [Boeing P-26] Peashooters, the [Curtiss] JN-3 and JN-4 Jennys [a series of World War I-era biplanes]. We’re talking about canvas and wire and wood airplanes. 100 years ago, we don’t even have enclosed cockpits [or] retractable landing gear.”
Experts like Penney argue the US has underinvested in its bomber fleet because the Nineteen Nineties, including truncating its B-2 purchase by greater than 100 planes, letting the B-1 fleet decay, and waiting too long to start out working on the B-21. Consequently, she said, the Air Force is asking the B-52 to shoulder a burden no bomber has before.
“We’re asking geriatric B-52s to be that backbone while we’re waiting for B-21 to find a way to return on board,” Penney said.
In search of ‘showstoppers’
Before a B-52 takes off, DeVita said, it’s common for its crew to search out not less than one thing is broken throughout the preflight check process. Often maintainers can fix the issue on the flight line and the crew takes off with a completely operational jet. But sometimes, he added, a broken system can’t be fixed in time, and the crew must resolve whether its loss can be bad enough to clean the mission.
Of the 744 Stratofortresses the Air Force built between 1954 and 1962, 10% remain — and the years have taken a toll. The aircraft’s mission-capable rate has steadily declined over the past decade, from a contemporary high of 78% in 2012 to 59% in 2022 — essentially the most recent 12 months for which statistics can be found.
The bomber’s 185-foot wingspan means it must often remain outdoors, exposed to the weather, including frigid winters at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, searing Middle Eastern heat and sand, and corrosive salt air from the Pacific Ocean. Key parts have turn into increasingly unavailable, as the businesses that made them have moved onto other business or just closed.
The B-52 could also be old, but it surely’s a hardy plane, said Capt. Jonathan Newark, the trainer weapon systems officer for the training flight. And regardless that a few of its systems may look “antiquated,” he said, they get the job done. He gestured to a panel with thick, black keys he uses to punch in targeting data.
“You have a look at this keyboard, it looks like something out of the Cold War. Dr. Strangelove, right?” Newark said, referring to the 1964 film about nuclear war that prominently features the B-52. “But we could do each mission set using this keyboard … all the best way as much as our most advanced weapons.”
Back on the runway, the Red Gremlin II idled greater than a half hour longer than expected, with the engines emitting a low and regular whine, while maintainers tried to get the targeting pod screen to operate. But a fix would have taken too long, so the crew decided to get the flight going.
“We’re balancing what training we are able to get done,” Newark said. “I don’t have any showstoppers [on this flight]. The scholars which might be here can still get all of the training they need. [The targeting pod practice would be] nice to have, not necessarily something we wanted today. There’s numerous things like that — the radar altimeter doesn’t work.”
“We’re in a position to make an aircrew decision to fly without it,” he added. “We try this rather a lot with airplanes which might be slightly bit older.”
Issues with the engines, hydraulics or flight surfaces can be deal-breakers in any situation, Newark said. But in combat, a B-52 crew shall be more willing to fly with minor problems on their plane since the mission must get done.
So the crew of the bomber, call sign Scout 93, strapped on their parachutes, buckled into their seats and roared into the sky to fulfill up with a KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueling tanker near Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Top-to-bottom upgrades
The scope of this modernization project is unprecedented within the B-52′s history, said Col. David Miller, director of logistics and engineering at Air Force Global Strike Command.
And Armagost noted the service expects the B-52′s engine upgrades will provide improved efficiency and range. But the brand new Rolls-Royce engines are also expected to be quieter and more reliable than the present engines, plus they wouldn’t must depend upon an outdated supply chain for spare parts.
“If we’re on a [bomber task force] mission in Indonesia, we’ll probably have parts available for those [new] engines which might be pretty close, somewhat than having to schedule a C-17 [cargo aircraft] to fly an engine from” the US, Armagost said.
The B-52J will receive a contemporary energetic electronically scanned array radar to enhance its navigation, self-defense and targeting capabilities. The B-52′s current, outdated mechanically scanned radar is at the top of its life and is increasingly difficult to support, Armagost said.
But making the B-52 recent again is simply one step in the method. The Air Force can also be attempting to map out how best to make use of it in a war against advanced forces that would deny airspace to the U.S. and allies.
Such a conflict would represent a dramatic shift away from the relatively open airspaces during which B-52s have operated for the last 20 years. And the modernization on the best way is important to keeping the B-52 able to interact the enemy, Armagost said. That can mean determining the easiest way for the B-52J to work alongside the B-21 now in development.
The B-21 Raider, with its next-generation stealth capabilities, was designed to conduct penetrating strike missions against an adversary with advanced air defenses, resembling China, while the B-52J — about as stealth-less as will be — would perform standoff strikes, launching missiles at enemy targets from outside contested airspace.
But Armagost doesn’t expect a “siloed” approach to how the service will use its fleet of two bomber types, with one or the opposite individually designated to perform certain sorts of missions. What’s more likely, he said, is the B-52J and B-21 working in concert, together with other U.S. forces or partners, in integrated multidomain operations that would include working with cyber and maritime assets.
“Their capabilities are inherently different,” Armagost explained. “But a penetrating strike force, [including the B-21], might open up opportunities for a standoff strike force, [like the B-52], that then has follow-on opportunities for reacquiring denied or contested airspace.”
He envisions the B-52J conducting the type of integrated operations that paved the best way for Desert Storm or the opening salvoes of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
In the course of the Gulf War, for instance, B-52s flew 1,741 missions and dropped 27,000 tons of munitions, including Conventional Air Launched Cruise Missiles and standard bombs. They targeted airfields, aircraft, command-and-control sites, power facilities, and Republican Guard positions, while allowing allied ground forces to brush through and swiftly win the war.
And in a single night mission within the opening phase of the Iraq War, B-52s launched 100 cruise missiles at targets before happening to fly not less than 100 additional missions within the conflict’s first few weeks.
Such a campaign would allow “a 100-hour ground war due to what’s been conducted through an air operation,” Armagost said. “Then the resulting joint environment becomes completely different than what it was prior to that.”
The Air Force is drawing up “robust” concepts of operations for a way the B-21 will perform missions, he added, including alongside the B-52, which can also be helping Air Force Global Strike Command discover potential future capability gaps and how one can address them.
The weapons arming the B-52J will likely run the gamut, Armagost said — all the pieces from gravity bombs that provide “inexpensive mass,” to cruise missiles for carrying out strikes beyond the range of enemy air defenses, to precision-guided munitions and highly specialized, “exquisite” weapons like hypersonics.
“If it could fly or be dropped off an aircraft, the B-52 has probably done it,” he said.
The Air Force has used B-52s to check prototype hypersonic weapons in recent times, and Armagost “absolutely” sees them as a daily a part of the Stratofortress’ future arsenal.
Although hypersonic weapons have the potential to supply tremendous capabilities — including flying faster than Mach 5 and maneuvering in such a way as to avoid countermeasures — they carry price tags so steep that the B-52J would want cheaper and more traditional bombs, too, he added.
“The whole lot is a selection, particularly in relation to aviation,” Armagost said. “If it flies fast or is maneuverable, all the pieces’s a trade-off. That’s why gravity weapons probably will all the time be a thing.”
Broken tech ‘makes combat rather a lot harder’
After a virtually six-hour flight that included flying alongside one other B-52, aerial refueling with a KC-135 Stratotanker out of Illinois’ Scott Air Force Base, and simulated bombing practice, the crew of the Red Gremlin II turned back to Barksdale. Its student pilot, 1st Lt. Clay Hultgren, practiced touch-and-go landings time and again, after which brought the bomber to a secure stop.
In the course of the post-flight debrief, instructors took stock of how the flight went — and regarded the toll the broken equipment took on their lessons. The radar altimeter began working after the bomber took off, but even when it stayed broken it wouldn’t have been an enormous deal.
The crew was in a position to successfully complete a lot of the planned bombing simulations, except an task to search out and goal mobile equipment.
“We weren’t in a position to try this because we didn’t have a targeting pod,” DeVita said. “So [we have an] alibi for that.”
And losing the bomber’s CONECT screen — a system rolled out within the mid-2010s that gives detailed, moving color maps and helps with digital targeting — was a serious “limiting factor,” DeVita added. The crew of the Red Gremlin II as a substitute had to make use of the legacy navigation system DeVita learned to fly on years ago.
Losing the CONECT screen also meant the weapon systems officer and electronic warfare stations didn’t have the maps that might have made their jobs easier, DeVita said.
“That’s a problem,” he explained. “It makes combat rather a lot harder to be precise and to do numerous the things that we walked out the door to do today. In order that was unlucky.”
While the B-52′s massive modernization is important, Penney fears what the Air Force might find when it takes a better look under its hood. Six many years of flying could have left it with metal fatigue, corrosion, stress fractures and other hidden structural issues, the retired F-16 pilot said.
She compared the potential dangers facing the B-52 to the unwelcome surprises the service found when it re-engined massive C-5 Galaxy transport aircraft within the 2010s.
“They ended up having to chop the planned variety of [C-5] upgrades nearly in half because once they opened up the aircraft, they found numerous stuff that they didn’t expect,” she said. “They ended up having to do numerous unplanned [service life extension work], essentially, and that ended up eating into the available money they’d for this system.”
Air Force Global Strike Command said in a response to Defense News’ inquiry that the service assessed the B-52s before deciding to modernize them, and located their underlying structures were strong enough to last through the plane’s prolonged life span.
Penney said she also worries in regards to the risks that come from concurrency because the Air Force attempts multiple major upgrades on a plane briefly succession, if not concurrently. Any one in every of those upgrades — re-engining, installing a brand new radar, updating avionics and so forth — can be a serious effort by itself, she added.
“These are programs which might be long overdue and are utterly vital if the B-52 goes to find a way to execute what we want it to do in today’s — and last into the long run’s — strategic environment,” she said.
If the B-52 modernization finally ends up significantly more complicated than expected, and thus delayed, Penney explained, the Air Force could also be forced to increase the lifetime of some B-1s or B-2s beyond their planned early retirements within the 2030s just to maintain enough operational bombers.
And if the Air Force opens up the B-52 and finds structural problems severe enough to jeopardize the re-engining?
“We will’t even go there,” Penney said. “It’s such a must-do. We cannot fail.”
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.