A B-52 is being escorted by some F-14 Tomcats. One Tomcat pilot is a hot rod and continuously annoys the B-52 by performing barrel rolls and all sorts of aerobatic maneuvers in front of the bomber crew: “Anything you can do, I can do better!”
The B-52 captain eventually has enough and says, “Okay then, I dare you to do better than THIS.”
Seemingly nothing happens for the next few seconds.
“What did you do?” asks the Tomcat pilot, confused.
Bob Stevens cartoon: A check pilot is testing the flight engineer in a four-engine airplane. The check pilot shuts down an engine. The flight engineer looks at him and shuts down a second engine. The flight engineer says, ‘Your move, sir.’
I like the way you think. Although, didn’t the first X-1 have four rocket chambers that were controlled separately? I don’t know if that counts as a single engine.
Nevertheless, B-52s carried a lot of different aircraft aloft for flight tests. If any of them had a single, air-breathing, jet engine, that might be the closest thing to a nine-engined airplane that I’m likely to find.
That, my good Doper, is a decision for the Generals, Senators, and Representatives, based on evolving threats, and anticipated future technology to counter those threats. Yes, you can design a low-tech bomb truck, but it will require some technology to integrate with data systems for ATC/navigation/targeting purposes and survivability. There is a floor to how “low tech” you can go before you make it an easily-unflyable machine of that nature.
Tripler
Either it can’t get off the ground, or it gets shot down in flight.
Dumb question of mine, but for specifically bomb-truck missions - never to be used against a peer adversary, only Islamic terrorists who have no air defenses, or for launching standoff cruise missiles from hundreds of miles away - how hard would be it be to just buy an existing commercial airframe (say, Boeing 777,) modify it so it has a big rotating internal bomb bay or two, and then have that be the B-52’s replacement?
Wouldn’t have to develop a new airframe from scratch - thus saving lots of money - and the USAF might need only a dozen of these.
Well, the oldest B-52 currently in service is just shy of 60 years old and the Air Force still has a lot in service and find them worthwhile to the point nothing else is replacing them so I’d say the case for a plane like it is not bad.
They were doing that, sort of, on a smaller scale with the OA-X Light Attack Aircraft. It’s an old link, and I haven’t kept up with things since '15 or '16.
There were studies and concepts about doing just that with a 747, but at the time they opted to keep it on the B-52 for whatever reason. Could have been the cost to retrofit a commercial aircraft to handle, program, arm, and launch cruise missiles was cost prohibitive to just upgrading an existing military aircraft that already had the internal hardware/software to do that.
Yes, it is. But the B-52 has a lot of hardware and software to keep it survivable in a contested environment, not to mention the necessary systems to carry, target, and launch ordnance. I assumed you meant a new design with even less technology than that. . .
Tripler
“Survivability” is one of those Critical Performance Parameters that get written into every design contract.
I mean low tech when compared to a supersonic heavy bomber or stealth bomber which cost a fortune.
I certainly do not mean they should build a WWII era bomber. It should still have all the modern avionics and communications, engines, targeting systems, nuclear hardening and what-not that it needs but mostly off-the-shelf stuff. Things they are using in B-52s today kinda thing (I realize they would have to be tweaked).
It should have a bigger payload, longer range and better fuel efficiency than a B-52.
As to converting a civil aircraft to be a bomber. …
The USAF recently ordered the KC-46, essentially a 767-200 with a refueling boom. Supposed to be a low threat simple tweak to an existing design and all built new from scratch, so no legacy surprises, unexpected wear and tear, etc.
Wrong. totally wrong. Vast amounts of stuff Boeing assumed USAF would accept as civilian practice that USAF assumed Boeing would change to military practice cropped up. And is still cropping up.
Nothing in aviation, or military procurement is cheap or easy. It’s real easy to spend 80% as much money getting 75% as much capability while trying to save costs with off-the-shelf.
It is not like Boeing is new to building planes for the military. Far, far, far, far from it.
How can Boeing, these days, claim surprise at any of it?
And in the end how different is the KC-46 from a 767-200? Did Boeing have to build whole new production lines? Did GE have to specially make new engines and build new production lines for those?
747 CMCA. Likely did make sense, for that particular mission. I’m not sure at that time (late 70s) that employment of conventionally armed cruise missiles would be as large a means of ordnance delivery as it is now. And the focus then was much more on penetrating a near-peer integrated air defense system than we’ve been doing the last 20 years. I wonder how a CMCA would do during low-level ingress, for example.
As for the OP, I had thought re-engineing the design to 4 engines was difficult due to a lack of ground clearance for the outboard pods? There just isn’t the room to stick something like a modern ultrahigh bypass turbofan out towards the wing tips.
Yeah, that’s kinda what I thought: they can’t do rockets or military aircraft anymore, just versions of their passenger planes. And the 737 Max calls into question their ability to do control software or project management.
Until the MD acquisition, Boeing was pretty highly respected as an aircraft builder It was only when the MD C suite took over that the real problems began…
Back on track: The last thing I read was that they were planning on running the Buffs until 2030.
One thing that hasn’t really been talked about is that early jet age aircraft were seriously overengineered; a T-33 has an essentially un-lifed airframe, which means as long as you carry out regular maintenance the plane can fly indefinitely. Contrast that with something like an F/A-18 that may only fly 6000 hrs before they have too many stress cracks to be considered unsafe to fly.
The B-52 also has a lot of room to add “stuff”, which makes it versatile. A B-52 carrying out EW is a mighty, mighty impressive thing.
Also, when it comes to something like a whopping big bomb truck would there be anyone else (in the US) better than Boeing to build one?
Boeing has loads of experience in building great big airplanes not to mention factories in place that can do that. Maybe in a COVID depressed commercial airplane market building some big bombers might make sense for them.
