Blogger keeps telling me I have more followers that I really do...

The B-52 has some life left in her after all.

The Air Force has decided to allow Boeing to continue to perform maintenance and upgrades to its fleet of Stratofortress H-model heavy bombers. By continuing to support the BUFF fleet, the Air Force is guaranteeing that they will remain in a front-line role for at least another decade, if not two. The other message being sent is that the acquisition of a new front-line heavy bomber has taken a back seat for the time being.

There are a couple of points to be made here. First is that proper initial design and simplicity will last for the long haul. I think we so often become enamored of new technology and whiz-bang features that we forget to keep things simple. The fact that the B-52 has been in active service for over 50 years really speaks to the skill and competence of the designers at Boeing. Any attempt at a replacement should heed the same general principles.

Second, in a post-Cold War world, it's okay to be "good enough" when it comes to our military. We aren't going head to head with the best that the talented Soviet designers could muster. We are, however, often called to fight irregular and guerrilla conflicts against adversaries armed with Kalashnikovs and Semtex. A gazillion-dollar B-2 is not the right tool for this conflict. On the other hand, it's relatively simple to "bomb back to the stone age" with an unbroken stream of B-52s dropping a hundred 500 pound iron bombs at a time. In the B-52, we have a bomber that's good enough to handle the tasks that we need to handle right now. We can utilize the money that would have been spent trying to get a new whiz-bang out the door on research and development. When the time comes, we'll be able to make a better weapons system, because the research will be there and the major problems will have been overcome.

Now, China is the wild card. What comes out of Beijing will serve to drive our weapons development for the next fifty years. ABM, anyone?

Cheers,

-- Zach