In a future bomber force, old & ugly beats new & snazzy

Stealth B-2 is to be retired first; the Vietnam-era B-52 could fly when it is 100 years old

Whiteman Air Force Base (US), July 25: In the topsyturvy world of US strategic bombers, older and uglier sometimes beats newer and snazzier. As the 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 hairraising $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. He and his wife, Jennifer, were the first married couple to serve as B-2 pilots; she was the first woman to fly it in combat. The Air Force sees it as a matter of money, numbers and strategy. The

Air Force expects to spend at least $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 nations nuclear weapons arsenal.

The 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 Air Force inventory. The plane is so valuable that the 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.

Strategic bombers have a storied place in US military history, from the early days of the former Strategic Air Command when the only way America and the former Soviet Union could launch nuclear weapons at each other was by air, to the B-52’s carpet bombing missions in Vietnam. 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 radarevading, technology designed to defeat the best Soviet air defences.

By the time the first B-2 was delivered to the 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 group militants.

THE B-2 is comparatively expensive to maintain and to fly. It also is seen as increasingly vulnerable against air defences of emerging war threats like China. 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.