re: New B-52 engines will keep em flying for 100 years.

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see, that right there is why we elected trump.

any other president would just sign a blank check and say go build something completely new, trump asks why we cant just change engines?

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you realize they have been discussing this since before trump was in office right?

and also that isnt how it works at all... the military has a budget and they decide how to spend it, not the president. the DoD knows they'll be around a lot longer than whoever is in office at any given point

I wish people constantly gave me credit for things they like that I had absolutely nothing to do with

This is the second time the AF has proposed replacing the engines with a modern design. I believe it was the early 1980s, they had decided on using 4 GE turbofans as used on the 747. But some DOD bean counter looked at the fuel consumption of the existing engine compared to the new engines, and determined that for the cost of replacing the engines they could operate the existing engines for another 20 years, and killed the upgrade. Several years later it was discovered that when comparing operational cost the analyst had used a simple comparison based only on the cost of fuel. The additional cost of in air fueling which would largely be eliminated with the new engines was not factored into the comparison.

The airplane equivalent of a Toyota Landcruiser?

Can’t be no cat diesel. Summbitches always breaking.

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New B-52 engines will keep em flying for 100 years.

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Do they have to re-rivet from time to time to hold the frame and skin together?

Yeah, high bypass engines make sense. I'm all for it.

I’d say they’re usually at the lower end of the T-38 track. Not sure if you can get them out of T-1s or not. When I went through UPT you couldn’t, but the AF goes back and forth on it.

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Very cool! Had no idea they could last that long.

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I wish I could last as long as a B-52 Bomber.

My grandfather flew these in WWII and several years afterwards. He was part of the Berlin airlift and a whole bunch of other crazy bombing missions. His planes were often hit with artillery or shrapnel and cane back looking like Swiss cheese. Luckily, the military put steel underneath the captains seats and on his last mission of the war, an artillery shell went through the bottom of the plane and busted his legs all up. That steel saved his life and his crew. He was in a hospital bed for 18 months afterwards and walked with a limp/cane for the rest of his life.

Not only are these birds amazing feats of engineering but the people who flew them are some of the greatest too.

Edited for my stupidity. Check with my dad and it was a B-24 not a B-52. Either way, my grandfather still was a badass pilot.

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another thing that this will do is reduce the need for tankers...and that is a BIG deal!!!!

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Naw with the shite show KC-46 failing at every turn, the KC-135 which is as old as the BUFF is in high demand. The number of BUFFS flying is minimal in relation to all the other aircraft the tankers support to include Navy assets and foreign refuelings, not to mention training sorties for all the pipe line pilots.