So first there was an article about the B-52s getting new blast curtains for the cockpit, now the USAF is spending time and money to get B-52 crews up to speed for nuclear strike missions.  Yet we have two newer strategic bombers in the inventory specifically designed for nuclear strike...what the heck would happen that all the B-1s and B-2s are not enough and we actually need B-52s carrying nukes again as well?

 

Doesn't this seem an odd way to spend time and money during long term COIN wars that have no realistic possibility of going nuclear? 

Limiting the number of B-52s is not stupid, unless you want to risk another arms race.

And more likely is that military commmanders see the current U.S. Air Force inventory numbers as satisafactory, and see no need for more heavy bombers.

 

Also do you think the defence budget would support the reactivation and operation of a large number of heavy bombers, when as Krag said, we are in the middle of two longterm COIN wars.  If one B-52 can cover all of Afghanistan, we still have 75 aircraft left to be detailed for other missions. What do we need more for?

You know, lack of imagination, is why people like you perplex people like me

 

 There is a lot you can do with a B-52. Launching SATELLITES is one of them.

 

 

 

Been doing that for a while.

 

Limit the numbers? I wish we had two hundred of them.

 

There is a lot I could do with a couple of hundred launch platforms that can get me up six miles above heavy air. And no, I don't mean blowing people up, either.

 

Herald

 

   

 

 

 

 

Looks like it doesn't have to be a buff. Pegasus could be carried aloft by an L-1011. Looks like orbital sciences has had 40 Pegasus shots with only 3 failures.

"Risk" another arms race? We won the last one. And just who would we be competing with that we aren't already?

 

Only 200?  Bah, such a lack of imagination.  I wish we had 20,000.  There, now I have much more imagination than anyone else.

-the seemingly permanent contrails

-the sudden increase in rainfall

-the rapid increase of garbage in orbit?

 

Herald

 

Well, at the same time I'm imagining a force of 20,000 B-52s I'm also imagining that all of America's eco-fanatics have all boarded the same ocean liner cruise to the Galapogos Islands for a Darwinian Convention, only to encounter a freakishly-unexpected typhoon that strands them all on an otherwise deserted, yet barely habitable island, whereupon they live out their lives with only each other to hector about the "dangers" of global warming, ozone depletion, petrochemical consumption, etc., and we are free to get on with the continued progress of human history in peace.