"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn)
08/20/2013 at 09:35 • Filed to: Planelopnik
2
14|
"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn)
08/20/2013 at 09:35 • Filed to: Planelopnik | 2
| 14 |
Despite the bomber's more than half-century of service, the Air Force believes that modifications and overhauls have made the B-52 ageless. Now engineers and technicians are working on a contract worth up to $11.9 billion for an array of upgrades to bring the B-52 Stratofortress fleet into the 21st century. Read more at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .
El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
> ttyymmnn
08/20/2013 at 09:38 |
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Psh, stop the cheap jobs, and build a new one, a stealth one, that can carry nukes and lasers and shit.
McMike
> ttyymmnn
08/20/2013 at 09:45 |
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How many more generations of pilots can we get behind the stick in these things?
http://www.minot.af.mil/news/story.asp… One more?
Dukie - Jalopnik Emergency Management Asshole
> El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
08/20/2013 at 09:48 |
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BUFFs already carry nukes and lasers. Also, some shit.
FJ80WaitinForaLSV8
> ttyymmnn
08/20/2013 at 10:02 |
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Don't take this the wrong way, I love the buff. But... what I've never understood is why they can't do something like the P-8 Poseidon program with a 747 or 777 to make a low buck replacement for the B-52.
This questions probably exposes my complete lack of aeronautical engineering.
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ttyymmnn
> FJ80WaitinForaLSV8
08/20/2013 at 10:10 |
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I'm not an engineer either, but it would probably cost astronomical amounts of money to re-engineer an airframe like that. You would really be starting over with a mostly clean sheet of paper. It's much cheaper to take a purpose-built bomber and upgrade the systems.
Mosqvich
> ttyymmnn
08/20/2013 at 10:13 |
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When I was at Minot, the word we got was that Buff was likely to have a 100 year service life before they are all finally retired. Think about that - 100 years.
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ttyymmnn
> Mosqvich
08/20/2013 at 10:16 |
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And what really puts that number into perspective is that it's only been 110 years since the First Flight.
Destructive Tester
> ttyymmnn
08/20/2013 at 10:32 |
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The thing that makes me cringe when I read this is the fact that all the money will go toward the airframe with almost nothing being spent on the support infastructure for the aircraft. My job involves trying to keep equipment from the 1950's working with no replacement parts. Its kind of like trying to DD an all-original Bel-Air using only OEM parts for replacement...
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FJ80WaitinForaLSV8
> ttyymmnn
08/20/2013 at 10:37 |
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Yeah probably right. The mods on the 737 needed to convert it to the P-8 would probably pale in comparison to the mods needed to add a massive bomb bay to a 747. That being said, there have been some pretty outlandishly modded 747's in the past.
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Mosqvich
> ttyymmnn
08/20/2013 at 10:38 |
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Absolutely. Somewhere I have an awesome picture of a B-52 flying under the helo you see in the pic. We were at 10,000 ft doing some testing and the Buff went under us, it was awesome.
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ttyymmnn
> Mosqvich
08/20/2013 at 10:40 |
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Now that I would like to see.
ChiffChaff
> ttyymmnn
08/20/2013 at 12:59 |
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If there's bucks for this, then why not some few dollars for the awesome A-10.
Morgan Rock
> ChiffChaff
08/21/2013 at 11:30 |
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My avatar agrees with you.
SteyrTMP
> ttyymmnn
08/22/2013 at 20:39 |
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There was an entire series of books about a B52 upgraded... with a Concorde-style nose, and all sorts of interesting mods. I'll have to see if I can find the title... It was during my library shelf-surfing days, A-Z, reading everything that looked readable, so I have no clue who the author was.
Edit: Dur. Dale Brown, Flight of the Old Dog, and the rest of the long series. I recall them to be pretty fun to read.