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Associated Press

In the topsy-turvy world of US strategic bombers, older and uglier sometimes beats newer and snazzier.
As the US Air Force charts a bomber future in line with the Pentagon’s new focus on potential war with China or Russia, the youngest and flashiest – the stealthy B-2, costing a hair-raising US$2 billion each – is to be retired first. The oldest and stodgiest – the Vietnam-era B-52 – will go last. It could still be flying when it is 100 years old.
This might seem to defy logic, but the elite group of men and women who have flown the bat-winged B-2 Spirit accept the reasons for phasing it out when a next-generation bomber comes on line.
“In my mind, it actually does make sense to have the B-2 as an eventual retirement candidate,” says John Avery, who flew the B-2 for 14 years from Whiteman Air Force Base in western Missouri.

The US Air Force sees it as a matter of money, numbers and strategy.
The US Air Force expects to spend at least US$55 billion to field an all-new, nuclear-capable bomber for the future, the B-21 Raider, at the same time the Pentagon will be spending hundreds of billions of dollars to replace all of the other major elements of the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal. The US Air Force also is spending heavily on new fighters and refuelling aircraft, and like the rest of the military it foresees tighter defence budgets ahead.
The B-2’s viability suffers from the fact that only 21 were built, of which 20 remain. That leaves little slack in the supply chain for unique spare parts. It is thus comparatively expensive to maintain and to fly. It also is seen as increasingly vulnerable against air defences of emerging war threats like China.
Then there is the fact that the B-52, which entered service in the mid-1950s and is known to crews as the Big Ugly Fat Fellow, keeps finding ways to stay relevant. It is equipped to drop or launch the widest array of weapons in the entire US Air Force inventory.
US Air Force ramps up flyovers near China in sign of rising tension
The plane is so valuable that the US Air Force twice in recent years has brought a B-52 back from the grave – taking long-retired planes from a desert “boneyard” in Arizona and restoring them to active service.
Developed in secrecy in the 1980s, the B-2 was rolled out as a revolutionary weapon – the first long-range bomber built with stealth, or radar-evading, technology designed to defeat the best Soviet air defences.
By the time the first B-2 was delivered to the US Air Force in 1993, however, the Soviet Union had disintegrated and the Cold War had ended. The plane made its combat debut in the 1999 Kosovo war. It flew a limited number of combat sorties over Iraq and Afghanistan and has launched only five combat sorties since 2011, all in Libya.


The last was a 2017 strike notable for the fact that it pitted the world’s most expensive and exotic bomber against a flimsy camp of Islamic State militants.
“It has proved its worth in the fight, over time,” says Colonel Jeffrey Schreiner, who has flown the B-2 for 19 years and is commander of the 509th Bomb Wing at Whiteman, which flies and maintains the full fleet.
But after two decades of fighting small wars and insurgencies, the Pentagon is shifting its main focus to what it calls “great power competition” with a rising China and a resurgent Russia, in an era of stiffer air defences that expose B-2 vulnerabilities.
Pentagon announces new mission for secretive X-37B space plane
Thus the Pentagon’s commitment to the bomber of the future – the B-21 Raider. The US Air Force has committed to buying at least 100 of them. The plane is being developed in secrecy to be a do-it-all strategic bomber. A prototype is being built now, but the first flight is not considered likely before 2022.

Bombers are legend, but their results are sometimes regretted. A B-2 bomber scarred US-China relations in 1999 when it bombed Beijing’s embassy in the Serbian capital of Belgrade, killing three people. China denounced the attack as a “barbaric act”, while the US insisted it was a grievous error.
The US Air Force had planned to keep its B-2s flying until 2058 but will instead retire them as the B-21 Raider arrives in this decade. Also retiring early will be the B-1B Lancer, which is the only one of the three bomber types that is no longer nuclear-capable. The US Air Force proposes to eliminate 17 of its 62 Lancers in the coming year.
The B-52, however, will fly on. It is so old that it made a mark on American pop culture more than half a century ago. It lent its name to a 1960s beehive hairstyle that resembled the plane’s nose cone, and the plane featured prominently in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 black comedy, Dr Strangelove.
More than once, the B-52 seemed destined to go out of style.

“We’re talking about a plane that ceased production in 1962 based on a design that was formulated in the late 1940s,” says Loren Thompson, a defence analyst at the Lexington Institute, a Washington think-tank.
Rather than retire it, the US Air Force is planning to equip the Boeing behemoth with new engines, new radar technology and other upgrades to keep it flying into the 2050s. It will be a “stand off” platform from which to launch cruise missiles and other weapons from beyond the reach of hostile air defences.
In Thompson’s view, the US Air Force is making a simple calculation: the B-52 costs far less to operate and maintain than the newer but finickier B-2.
“They decided the B-52 was good enough,” he says.



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Defence

In future bomber force, US to retire stealthy B-2 before Vietnam-era B-52

US B-52 bombers during the Vietnam war in 1965. File photo: AFP

An artist rendering shows the first image of a new Northrop Grumman Corp long-range bomber B21 in this image released on Feb. 26, 2016. File photo: US Air Force/Reuters

Destroyed cars rest on the parking lot outside the Chinese embassy 08 May 1999 after NATO air raid hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. NATO missiles fell on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade as the city suffered its heaviest bombardment in six weeks of NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia. Chinese authorities say at least two people died, and two were unaccounted for. NATO spokesman Jamie Shea acknowledged the alliance had bombed 'the wrong building'. AFP PHOTO/EPA

The B-2’s viability suffers from the fact that only 21 were built, of which 20 remain. Photo: AFP

US Air Force ramps up flyovers near China in sign of rising tension and risk of conflict between world powers

Flyovers by B-1B Lancer bombers over waters off China are a sign of increasing tension between China and the United States. Photo: Handout

A 9th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron B-1B Lancer lands at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, May 14, 2020, after completing a training mission in the East China Sea. The 9th EBS deployed to Guam along with 200 Airmen assigned to the 7th Bomb Wing at Dyess AFB, Texas, as part of a Bomber Task Force and is supporting Pacific Air Forcesâ strategic deterrence missions and commitment to the security and stability of the Indo-Pacific region. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman River Bruce)

US Air Force wants to retire some of its most well-known aircraft

A US Air Force B-1B Lancer strategic bomber. Photo: US Air Force

In this image provided by the U.S. Air Force, a U.S. Air Force B1-B Lancer pulls away from a KC-135 Stratotanker after refueling during a mission from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, into Japanese air space on Aug. 31, 2017. Two B1-Bs, with U.S. Marine Corps' F-35Bs, made contact with Koku Jieitai (Japan Air Self-Defense Force) aircraft over waters near Kyushu, and then were joined by Republic of Korea aircraft over the Korean Peninsula. (Senior Airman John Linzmeier/U.S. Air Force via AP)

Airmen reconfigure weapons on an A-10 Thunderbolt II at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, November 19, 2019. US Air Force/Staff Sgt. Brad Tipton

Wyoming Air National Guardsmen prepare a C-130H for a mission out of Cheyenne, February 27, 2019. US Air Force/Master Sgt. Robert Trubia

A US Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aircraft. US Air Force via Reuters

A KC-135 refuels an F-16 US National Guard/Master Sgt. Mark A. Moore

News

World

United States & Canada


Bat-winged B-2 Spirit to be phased out as Pentagon plans to keep B-52 flying into the 2050s
First flight of all-new, nuclear-capable B-21 Raider unlikely to happen before 2022



In the topsy-turvy world of US strategic bombers, older and uglier sometimes beats newer and snazzier.


Aviation

US-China relations

Russia

In future bomber force, US to retire stealthy B-2 before Vietnam-era B-52

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} Bat-winged B-2 Spirit to be phased out as Pentagon plans to keep B-52 flying into the 2050s First flight of all-new, nuclear-capable B-21 Raider unlikely to happen before 2022

Bat-winged B-2 Spirit to be phased out as Pentagon plans to keep B-52 flying into the 2050s

First flight of all-new, nuclear-capable B-21 Raider unlikely to happen before 2022