Why has the B-52 lived so long?

>>33776910
Carries a lot of shit.

>>33776910
>carries a lot of shit
>pretty reliable
Why would it not?

>>33776910

Not many innovations towards the "carrying things" part of innovation have been made since then. It's all about upgrading avionics: the C-130 is in a similar situation where the airframe design has remained unchanged yet they equip it with increasingly spohisticated equipment.

>>33776988
Makes sense. What is with the no production since the 60s bit though? Has all the tooling been lost?

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>>33776910
Here are the factors that relegate aircraft to the scrap pile.

-Air frame fatigue
>This fucker is never gonna snap in half. It was over engineered. Same story with the C5, and the hercs. They will outlive everything.
-Payload
>Carries a fuck ton. With small PGM this means it can orbit a battlefield and rain precise death. Can also carry the biggest shit. So that's not a problem.
-efficiency
>Engines are kinda shitty, but there are so many spares that it sorta pays for itself, however fuel was getting costly, now its not so bad. If the Buff gets 2 commercial high efficiency engines we might see the fucker just put the U2 out of business with how high that piece of shit will be able to fly.
-Maintenance
>as a maintainer, its kinda awful. As the air-force, its still pretty cheap.
-Changes in force projection/ doctrine obsolesce
>Jet is fast enough, has long enough legs, and we have enough airbases to stage it just about anywhere. Weapons are also getting longer and longer legs, and the jet has room for enough electronics to stock all the best buys in the fucking nation. So that's not a problem.

There you have it. the B-52 platform might be a centennial platform unless we find a way to do very cheap supersonic aircraft with a very large payload. Possibly a multi role bomber/ cargo aircraft would be enough to put the Buff down due to economics, but even then...probably not.

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>>33777063
Tooling is toast. The USAF assumed several times over it would replace the B-52, with the B-58, the B-1, the B-2, Strike Eagles. It is still around, and ends up getting one off lots of new parts for upgrading existing air frames. There are still a number of sleepers in the boneyard, so no worries there.

3d printing brings a whole new dimension to the table as that tech matures.

>new engine never
Sucks that they keep putting it off

>>33777097
Alright. What would it take to make new tooling? Would we have to reverse engineer our own aircraft?

>>33777120
no i think we have the technical drawings, those should have tooling diagrams included

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>>33777133
New BUFFs when

my autism scared him off
shit

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>>33777152
No need.

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>>33776910

>>33777324
Yeah, but what would be cooler? Reopening production lines on a 50+ year old workhorse or making a gay B-2?

>>33776910
As others have stated:
>Can carry a ton of shit
>Avionics are modular
>Loiter time is ridiculous
>Parts are plentiful
>While some have been scrapped, others are just mothballed and can be resurrected in no time

Basically, there is no need to get rid of it, plus its iconic too, nothing quite puts the fear of god into the enemy like a flying bus filled with a shitload of bombs (i.e. Operation Arc Light).

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>>33777357
Anything that brings us closer to the endgame of Empire Earth is cooler in my book.

>>33777425
So both would be good. Imagine having the B-52 and B-21 production lines side by side.

>>33777444
But will they be bombing cavemen?

>>33777456
They will be bombing everything.

>>33776910
because it was made to fullfil a very specific role - long distance big payload bomber - in the era when long range bombers have been already figured out in terms of design, construction and expectancies. And it does it so well that there has been no need to replace it - because replacement would do it just as well, maybe very marginally better for much higher costs.

When they wanted stealthy bomber, they made one. But for non-stealthy bomber, this is as good as it gets - as long as you don't need supersonic bombers, then Tu-160 just wins.

>>33776910
Its a sexy beast, does the job well, and parts are plentiful

New B-52s? They haven't even come up with a plan to put new engines on the B-52s we already have. Then again, they have enough spare TF-33s sitting around that I guess they don't think they need to.

>>33777456

You shouldn't bully the Sentinelese just because they're savages.

Chinooks are almost 60 years old too

>>33777502

>sexy
>does job well
>parts are plentiful

This can all be argued... if i felt like arguing.

>>33777073
that pic does not do justice at to how much the b-36 dwarfs the b-52 in person

go to the usaf museum if you get a chance