{"id":22232,"date":"2013-09-23T10:24:14","date_gmt":"2013-09-23T15:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=22232"},"modified":"2013-09-23T10:24:14","modified_gmt":"2013-09-23T15:24:14","slug":"the-venerable-b-52-sturdy-cheap-and-good-enough-for-government-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/09\/23\/the-venerable-b-52-sturdy-cheap-and-good-enough-for-government-work\/","title":{"rendered":"The venerable B-52 &#8211; &#8220;sturdy, cheap, and good enough for government work&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/reason.com\/archives\/2013\/09\/23\/how-the-b-52-became-immortal\" target=\"_blank\">Steve Chapman<\/a> talks about the BUFF:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This bomber is the combat aircraft that will not die. In 1977, when Congress was debating whether to build a replacement called the B-1, the complaint was that the B-52 was older than the pilots flying it. This fact was supposed to capture its obsolete character and sagging decrepitude.<\/p>\n<p>The pilots of the 1970s may no longer be fit for duty, and other planes of that era can be found only in museums. But the B-52, which began production in 1952 and stopped in 1962, has defied the actuarial tables. Air Force Capt. Daniel Welch is piloting a plane that his father flew during the Cold War and his grandfather flew in Vietnam, <em>The Los Angeles Times<\/em> recently reported.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t be surprised if another generation of the family is in the cockpit before it goes into retirement. The Air Force plans improvements that will keep the plane around till 2040.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>One of its virtues is relatively low cost, which presumably makes the Pentagon more willing to use it. The high price tags on the B-1 and the B-2 Stealth bomber mean the Air Force can&#8217;t buy as many of them and has to exercise more caution about putting them in harm&#8217;s way.<\/p>\n<p>Another factor is that while more advanced aircraft possess capabilities that are rarely needed, the B-52 is perfectly adequate for most real-world contingencies. MIT defense scholar Owen Cote told me that since the 1990s, &#8220;we&#8217;ve been essentially continuously at war against smaller powers with weak or nonexistent air defenses, against whom the range, persistence and versatile payloads of the B-52 can be invaluable.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steve Chapman talks about the BUFF: This bomber is the combat aircraft that will not die. In 1977, when Congress was debating whether to build a replacement called the B-1, the complaint was that the B-52 was older than the pilots flying it. This fact was supposed to capture its obsolete character and sagging decrepitude. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13],"tags":[123,145,631],"class_list":["post-22232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military","category-usa","tag-aircraft","tag-airforce","tag-b-52"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5MA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22233,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22232\/revisions\/22233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}