Angry Planet - Why in the world is the 60-year-old B-52 bomber still flying?

Episode Date: January 12, 2016

North Korea sets off a nuclear bomb and how does the U.S. respond? The Pentagon sends a 65-year-old airplane to buzz Korean airspace. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense if the warplane wasn’t the B-52 bomber. Designed in the aftermath of World War Two, obsolete nearly before the last one rolled off the line in 1961 – the Stratofortress may remain in the air for another 25 years.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters' News. This plane was designed in around 1948. So it'll be almost 100 years old by the time they retire it from active duty, is totally unprecedented.

North Korea sets off a nuclear bomb, and how does the U.S. respond? The Pentagon sends a 65-year-old airplane to buzz Korean airspace. It wouldn't make a lot of sense if the war plane wasn't the B-52 bomber. Designed in the aftermath of World War II, obsolete, nearly before the last one rolled off the line in 1961, the Strato Fortress may remain in the air for another 25 years. In this episode of War College, we look at why the B-52 is still flying, and what makes it so hard to replace. You're listening to War College, a weekly discussion of a world in conflict focusing on the

stories behind the front lines. Here's your host, Jason Fields. Hello, and welcome to War College. I'm Reuters' opinion editor, Jason Fields. And I'm Matthew Golt, contributing editor at War is B-B-B-50. So today we're talking with Dave Phillips in the New York Times about the B-52. Dave is behind a fantastic, multi- media piece on the bomber that shows up on the paper site. We encourage you to Google it. Or just look at NY Times. And is it in a specific section? Google is the best way to find it. Google. Google's it. Yeah, that's very true. All right, so thanks for joining us. Oh, no problem. Thanks for having me on.

All right. So, Dave, can we just start off? Can you tell us a bit of the history of the plane? God, where do you even start? This plane is so old. Okay, so the B-52 has now been in active service for 60 years. It was basically designed in the late 1940s. And then during the 50s, when the Red Scare was on and we were sure that the Soviets were going to take over North America, the United States built about 700 B-52s. And the idea was that, you know, we would be ready for nuclear Armageddon. And they were going to be the plane that ensured our safety. The Air Force's secretary at the sign, when he saw the first one roll off the line, looked at the planes and said, that's the thing that's going to keep the Red Fellow in his place.

So, and then pretty much as soon as they built all these things, they decided they were obsolete and they were going to get rid of them. They were going to be replaced by missiles or a faster bomber or a bigger bomber or a better bomber. And it never happened. Every replacement that came along was somehow deficient. And so even though these things were supposed to be retired in the 1960s and then in the 1970s or certainly by the 1980s, they're now still with us. And they continue, the plan is that they're going to be flying until at least 2040. So, Matt, you had a question?

What was it built for? What is it supposed to do? Is it just drop bombs? Yeah. So it's had more second acts than. than pretty much anyone out there. It was originally built as sort of this long-distance, high-flying conventional bomber, sort of a World War II type bomber that could drop an atomic bomb on the Soviet Union.

That was what it was for. And then, because it is long-range and big, you can strap pretty much anything you want onto it, and they pretty much have. So in the 60s, they suddenly changed it into like a conventional bomber and used it to bomb Vietnam with millions of tons of dumb bombs. And then in the 70s, they attached nuclear cruise missiles to it. The idea being that even though it's slow and relatively easy to shoot down, it could still get close enough to launch a bunch of cruise missiles to add an enemy and would be a good deterrent. And then it is basically bombed every enemy we've had since Vietnam. So it bombed Kosovo and it bombed Iraq twice and it's bombed Afghanistan.

And the latest thing that they've done is they've turned it into what they call a precision weapon. So they've added laser-guided laser-targeting capabilities. In a sense, they've kind of strapped the brains of. a drone to the wing, you know, fancy cameras and laser targeting. And so that they can carry a bunch of laser guided bombs and drop them one at a time as close air support for troops in Afghanistan or Iraq. Well, so can we just talk a little bit about just the bomber itself and, I mean, do you

have any idea of what it might and what it cost to build originally? So I got to fly on one of these things recently. And I was expecting to encounter a quote-unquote 50-year-old plane that was, in fact, had been rebuilt piece by piece at great expense. Okay. Originally these things cost $8 million, which at the time was seen as a lot of money. The current stealth bombers cost about $2 billion each. So comparatively, it's kind of a bargain.

So I was expecting, well, yeah, that was $8 million at the beginning, but they probably spent hundreds of millions since. placing it part by part. And then I got on one of these planes. And almost nothing has been replaced in decades. Like the whole cockpit is old chipped metal. It's leaking. It's rusting. It's got old analog gauges everywhere, many of which no longer work because the equipment's been taken out that they were connected to. Everything is still connected by cables and pulleys. How was your flight? Did that inspire confidence? Well, when we were on the ground, it took quite a while to get it started.

First, one of the engines wouldn't start, and then the navigational system, which is probably from the 80s, I'm guessing, crashed and then crashed again. And the pilot looked over at me and said, boy, you're really getting the full B-52 experience right here. And then he's like, don't worry, once we get it airborne, it's usually pretty good. Are they still building them or all of these old retrofits that they've been updating? So I was flying in the newest most up-to-date B-52 in existence, which was built in 1961. Since then, so that one came with 600 of the most high-tech IBM vacuum tubes that were made at the time. Since then, those have been stripped out, and there is, you know, kind of. of modern electronics in it, but kind of modern.

Here's the extent of how kind of modern they are. They're very excited about telling me about the new modern ones that are going to be installed in the next few years. And that system, that navigation system, is based on Windows XP, which is about 15 years old right now. So, you know, what is in there now is probably from the 80s or early 90s, and it's super, super primitive. I imagine you walking, it's like, like walking onto the set of Alien, right?

Or aliens, you know, with the kind of the weird 70s retro computer feel to it. It's old green screens that are maybe about like four by five inches, and then tons and tons of toggle switches. And there's literally a desk where they can chart out airspeed by essentially a slide rule, this like dial that they can use to do calculations. And I saw them do it. It's not that that's something they don't use anymore. I saw them calculating speed with a slide rule.

How do the pilots like them? Did they give you an opinion? So I I gather that there's a little bit of pride in flying one of those big heavies, you know, one of these big old bombers, but that it is something that you go and do

if you don't get into one of the newer planes. And, you know, the military isn't too interested in giving you what you want. They're interested in giving you what they say, right? So, you know, people do it, And they make the best of it. And I certainly met some great people there who are fantastic pilots. But I think that they sort of question the relevancy of their program.

So, yeah, I mean, when you talk about relevancy, I mean, is the mission that it was designed for and the bombing that it's done more recently? I mean, is it still effective? Is it still useful? That's a really hard question. So everybody who, you know, the leading minds in the military have been. calling it obsolete literally since way, way before I was born. And yet, since then it has probably dropped more explosives than any other planes.

Certainly fancier, more technologically advanced planes. It's very reliable. It runs. It runs in any weather. It doesn't need a whole lot of maintenance, even at its age. It can carry a lot. Now, if we were in some sort of conflict where the enemy actually had an effective Air Force or air defense, forget it. Like, it's a very big slow-moving target.

They wouldn't be able to use it. But really, that hasn't happened since 1975, you know. And so they can deploy this essentially almost World War II technology aircraft again and again. And compared to the Taliban's technology, it's. generations ahead, right? Now, if they can use it with precision laser guiding, is that totally relevant and as effective as like an F-15 or something? Yeah, I mean, really, it doesn't matter what's dropping that laser-guided bomb as long as it hits the target. And they can carry a lot of those bombs. Right. So whereas they can carry dozens and dozens. So they can literally just keep

circling up there waiting for a call, whereas a smaller fighter might have to go refuel. Here's the issue, though. The B-52 is so infamous. Its silhouette is so evocative of indiscriminate killing that oftentimes they'll want to deploy up places, and they can't, because it sends the wrong message. It sends a message of, hey, remember in 1975 when we bombed Hanoi and killed hundreds of civilians. Here's that plane again.

So they have to be very, very careful where they use it. And there's a lot of countries that will not host it. They won't host the B-52, even though they'll host other American aircraft. Wow. Just a very simple question, in fact. So when you walk up to this thing, how big is it? I mean, is it larger than a 747? Is it, I mean, are you just sort of amazed by the size of it?

I mean, it's not as big as 747, but it's different. I mean, it is absolutely imposing. It's got eight engines stretched out against wings that are sort of sloping down under their weight so that they almost touch the ground. And you crawl in through a hatch in the belly. And then you crawl into the first floor of a two-story compartment. And on the first floor is all of the navigation stuff.

and then you take a ladder up to the cockpit. And it's big. If you go in to the Bombay, it could probably fit a school bus in there. I mean, it's really, really large. Yeah. And do they carry any defenses for themselves at all, or are they totally reliant on escort? Some of the older models had a tail gunner.

Oh, wow. So really like a B-29. Yeah, some of the old, yeah. I mean, like, it was built by the people that built World War II aircraft and very much had that same thinking around it. So some of the old ones had a tail gunner. They still have radar jamming and flares, things that if a missile does come after them,

they can try to avoid it. But that's pretty much it. I think that they kind of... The thinking is that the Air Force uses a suite of different airplanes, and they can use stealth bombers and fighters to knock out early air defenses and sort of clear the way for this dump truck carrying a ton of... explosives that can then come in and hit things on the ground.

Gotcha. I wanted to weigh in with a historical anecdote that I am aware of that I think speaks to why these things are so feared and why some countries don't let them fly above them. There was a period right after World War II where America, especially the Air Force, was very pro-bomb and pro- deterrence, right? So we built a ton of these B-52s, like you said. And at any one time, kind of throughout the 50s, there was a B-52 in the air ready to go to Moscow and drop a nuke in a very short notice. And because there were so many planes in the air, there were a lot of accidents where it's a miracle that nobody got nuked by accident.

The one that I'm really thinking about is 1966 over Spain. There was a B-52 broke apart and dropped nukes on Spain. They didn't detonate, but, you know, this happened a couple times before we developed missile technology. And that specific crash in Spain is actually what led to Spain saying, we're not letting you fly over our airspace with these things anymore. And I actually think that that is still something that Spain adheres to. I think that the B-52 is still not allowed to fly over their airspace. Wow.

So, and actually it sounds like we, if we did deploy it, unless we got... expressed Russian permission in Syria, essentially permission, they could just take them out of the sky. I mean, they have brought in some very serious anti-aircraft technology, the S-300, S-400, right? So, I mean, this is, it's interesting, because you're saying basically we almost have to have permission to go bomb people or fight against.

So, but here's what makes it interesting. So you think that having this big, old, infamous plane would be a liability? And we've got newer planes, stealthy planes, faster planes. What is the use of this old albatross? Right. But in fact, there's an advantage to having something really obvious like that. It's the anti-stealth bomber. They fly this thing when they want to be seen,

when they want to send a message saying, remember what we did, remember what we can do. By the way, I can launch this plane from California, and it can bomb you in China. Just a reminder. And so they do that. They call it assurance and deterrence. currents missions. So they'll fly along the airspace of China after China does some provocation

in the South China Sea. They'll fly along the airspace of North Korea. They'll fly along the airspace of Russia. And the funny thing is, is that Russia has its own ancient propeller-driven version of this plane called the Bayer, and they do the exact same thing to us all the time. They fly right along our airspace, and it's just this sort of ancient, it's this Cold War kabuki that we're still doing, you know, generations hence. And actually, yeah, I mean, they just, I know exactly what you're talking about. They just deployed the bear in Syria. And it's fantastic because the propellers are even on the wrong side of the wings, right?

It looks like they're, I mean, they're on the back of the wings. I sort of wondered about that. I wondered how and why they were flying, but you just really explained it perfectly. Yeah, maybe so. I mean, I don't know. I mean, they could decide to deploy it there for a reason that isn't just showing that they've got it, right? They still have the power to bomb the heck out of things. But it does explain why it is that they haven't just replaced them completely.

And you wrote about in your article that we just can't seem to replace ours either, right? I mean, you talked about, can you tell us a little bit about the B1 and B2 and why they never actually replaced the B52 like they were thought that they would? Yeah, so the Air Force has tried to replace the B-52 so many times. that it's become kind of a joke. They tried several times in the 60s, and finally in the 70s, sorry, the early 80s, they went into production with the B1.

The B1B is the version that actually came on. And it was faster, it was technologically advanced, it was supposed to be everything that the B-52 was not. And very quickly, when it rolled off the production line, the Air Force realized that it's high-tech, radar jamming technology jammed its own radars and its engines were prone to fire. And its reliability was percentage was so low that when the Gulf One War came around, it didn't fly.

The B-52 did, and the B-1 sat it out. The B-2 is another one where the Air Force was trying to use a high-tech solution to come up with a better bomber. And of course, we all know the B-2 as the B-2. the stealth bomber, the black batwing bomber. And it turns out that that black stealth coating is so delicate that if you don't store it in an air-conditioned heated hanger and go over it with a fine-tooth comb every time you fly it, it doesn't work.

And so it's essentially like so expensive that you can almost never use it unless you really need to. So once again, when they needed to bomb things, the Air Force went to. back to the B-52. I believe that for the first few years of Afghanistan, it was the only heavy bomber over the airspace. I could be wrong. So when was the B-52 originally scheduled for retirement? Oh, boy. Okay. Probably about 1965. You know, that's an informal date because people will talk about it and come up with plans, but then when they don't do it, they're like, well, that was never formalized. But people called for it in 1965, 1970, 1975, certainly by 1985,

1995, 2005, and around 2005, they realized that they were just going to keep it for a really long time. And so sort of a standing date has been around 2040 for the final retirement, which, to put it in perspective, This plane was designed in around 1948. So it'll be almost 100 years old by the time they retire it from active duty, which is totally unprecedented. So do you have any idea how they deal with issues like with civilian airlines? They talk about metal fatigue, right? I mean, so is there a single piece of original metal on any of these planes? Or, I mean, how do they deal with something like that?

Most of these planes is original. I was thinking that I would go see these planes and they were actually new planes that were called old because they'd been replaced piece by piece, but that's just not the case. Most of these planes are original. The superstructure is all original. When they need replacement parts,

nobody even makes the replacement parts again anymore. So they have to pull them out of what the Air Force calls the Boneyard, which is like the pile of old B-52s that they, of sitting down in Arizona. And, I mean, you said that there were some 700 made originally, right? Yes. And how many are flying now? I believe about 70.

So I guess you have plenty of parts to choose from or not? Yeah, less than that original 700, because they're now relying on the most recent model, which is called the, I believe, the B-52H. I could be wrong about the letter. But the newest model, the 1961. So they have a limited number of B-52 Hs that they can pull parts off of. But most of them, they retired because of the START treaty with the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. And part of the treaty, to cut down on nuclear proliferation, was to bring some of these planes out into the desert

where they could clearly be seen by Soviet observers and literally cut the wings off. And so that happened to hundreds of planes. They also recently pulled, they have been pulling them out of the bone yard to refurbish them to keep the number at 76. Yeah, there was at least one because apparently there was a cockpit fire. Yeah. And then they replaced one with another one. I did not see that one, but it's a great story. It kind of just switch tracks a little bit.

Is bombing, are bombing campaigns still effective in modern war? You know, we're doing a lot of it. right right so um this is something that people talk about yeah i mean we talk about uh when was the last time that bombing was effective now that you you know you could have a three-day seminar on this and have everybody come along with away with different conclusions but we bombed the hell out of southeast asia i mean to to the point where they are still removing lots and lots of buried from Laos, Cambodia, parts of Vietnam. And wasn't the idea we actually specifically said bomb them back to the Stone Age?

I don't know who that's actually attributed to. I think that's a Goldwater thing, but it could be an urban legend. But I mean, certainly like... That's Curtis LeMay. Okay, thank you. That is absolutely Curtis LeMay, who's a fascinating figure that we could do a whole podcast over by itself. We didn't have much traction in Southeast Asia. Obviously, we tried a newer, more effective type of precision bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We didn't have much traction in Iraq and Afghanistan. We're now trying an even more precise type of bombing with both the drone program and what we're doing in Syria. You know, it's certainly a tool, and obviously it's one that people who have an extensive military training, they like to use it. We'll see if any bomber actually ever comes away along to replace the B-52. It could be that this plan that they're talking about for bombers to replace the B-52, another big, long-range bomber that can do what it does, will never happen because maybe they'll see other ways to address what a bomber does.

And they actually, we should mention that that program, just passed some hurdle recently, right? They awarded a contractor this fall. And that's supposed to also have a very short time horizon as far as these things go. They say they're going to have them up and flying in a decade, and I guess we'll just see. We'll see, yeah. I've heard that before. Right.

I mean, what the B-52 really is is not the story of a bomber, but the story of the problem of a weapons program, that it takes so long and it's so expensive to procure things and make changes that it's hard to find something satisfactory. Yeah, it actually is fascinating. I wonder how much this applies to other planes. I know they've been trying to get the Osprey fully approved forever and a number of other weapons programs that every once in a while one gets killed, but very rarely, right? Right, right. But it's the simpler planes that they try to face. out that they can't. You know, another perfect example is the A-10, which is this slow and

very heavily armored close air support plane that every time the military tries to get rid of it, Congress won't let them because there's such strong support for the plane from ground troops who benefited greatly from its air cover. But it's, again, it's, I believe, a 40-45-year-old plane. It's Vietnam era. So another example of it. of something low tech that's just very expensive or very effective and relatively cheap. Yeah, simple kind of design for one or two things and does those one or two things very well. Right. You know, when we start getting more complicated is when we seem to have trouble with these weapons programs.

Yeah, yeah. I also just wanted to mention that its official title is the Boeing V-52 Strata Fortress, which I just think is a wonderful name. I like Stratafortress. It's evocative. I enjoy it. So, yeah, I guess fortress in the sky, that's the idea, right? Sky fortress.

And if you look at them, that's what they look like. You know, they look like fortresses in the sky. They are very imposing. Well, they have this ominous exhaust plume from these old inefficient engines that they have that really makes them look like you wouldn't want to mess with them. Like more than anything, when I look at one of these, I don't think like that looks fast

That looks cool. I think you don't want to screw with that thing. All right. Well, Dave Phillips, thank you so much for joining us today. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. We really appreciate everything you know about this plane. It's very impressive. Next time on War College. Certainly, as there's a rise and a formation of a global gas market, as there are more gas sources coming from different countries like the United States, It's the influence that gas-producing countries like Russia have will weigh.