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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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 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.
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.