B52gator

B-52J has a nice ring to it... https://www.airforcemag.com/b-52-will-get-at-least-one-new-designation-with-radar-engine-upgrades/ The B-52H will be redesignated the B-52J or possibly B-52K when it gets a new radar and new engines, but the Air Force hasn’t yet decided what will constitute the new B-52 variant, according to Col. Louis Ruscetta, senior materiel leader for the program. The program has also developed a new estimate of what the re-engining will cost and is about to submit it to Congress, as directed under last year’s defense bill, but Ruscetta said reports of a 50 percent overrun are far overstated. In fact, he said he sees no overruns on the horizon. The radar and engine program represent “the largest modification in the history” of the B-52, Ruscetta told reporters at Air Force Materiel Command’s Life Cycle Industry Days conference in Dayton, Ohio. The change from B-52G to B-52H in 1961 was mainly the switch to the TF33 engine, but the new package includes radar, engines, communications, pylons, cockpit displays, and the deletion of one crew member station, meaning “it makes sense” to have a new designation, Ruscetta said. The question is whether there will be two designations, because some of the new APG-79B4 radars will be installed on the bombers before the new Rolls-Royce F130 engines, Ruscetta said. The B-52 pilot operating manual and maintenance manuals will be re-written for the version with the new radar; and will be re-written again when the engines are changed, Ruscetta said. “What the Air Force, along with Global Strike Command, needs to look at, is how do we define” the new variant, he said. The decision will be made sometime within the next two years, before installations begin, Ruscetta added. Ruscetta described the new active, electronically scanned array radar as a “game changer” for the B-52, especially as the Air Force migrates toward the two-bomber fleet of B-21s and B-52s. The APG-79 is effectively the same radar as on the export version of the Navy F/A-18 fighter, with the array turned “upside down” so it looks more down at the ground than up at the sky, Ruscetta said. “We will have fighter-quality radar … to support air-to-ground operations,” he said, and be better able to operate “with other coalition partners” because the bomber will be able to use the same sensor format. It will be able to scan farther, “guide weapons in flight,” and improve the bomber’s situational awareness, he said. The B-52 today is still flying with its 1960s mechanical-scan radar. The radar mod just passed critical design review “a few months ago, so we are now in the next stage of this program,” he said. That entails “building up the systems integration lab” (SIL) that will vet the radar as it affects the other parts of the B-52, to ensure no harmful or unintended side effects of the new equipment ahead of flight testing. The SIL will be a full representation of the system, minus its cooling equipment. The new radar will be “segregated” from the B-52’s electronic warfare suite, Ruscetta said, but the new gear takes up less volume than the old and “gives us some growth space” for additional EW functions. The program office is working on how the installations of the radars, engines, and other gear will be staged. Some bombers will get new radars before they get new engines, but later, when both are available, the preference will be to do the mods together, organically, during regular depot visits, when the aircraft are already “opened up,” Ruscetta said. “We have an integration team looking at … the dependencies” of all the new equipment from the perspectives of size, weight, and power, Ruscetta said, to fashion the most logical sequence of installations. Minimal downtime is necessary to make sure Air Force Global Strike Command doesn’t dip below the operationally required minimum numbers of bombers. “We are looking for those friction areas” that could spell logjams in the process, Ruscetta said. “We’re looking to minimize and reduce what could go wrong,” he said, “and if things do go wrong, how can I still operate?” At some point, there will be an aircraft that will have all the new mods on it, and “we may do some regression testing” at that point, but the goal is to have shaken out any problems before that milestone. Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex at Tinker Air Force Base pushes out about 17 B-52s per year, Ruscetta said. “It does not make sense to have multiple [installation] lines, with multiple aircraft down at once,” Ruscetta said, so the plan is to do as much of the mod as possible at once, during depot. Flight testing with the new radar will start in late 2025, and the first production versions should be built around the same time. They’ll be installed in early 2027, Ruscetta said, and initial operational capability (IOC) with the radar will consist of 12 aircraft as the required assets available for the declaration. The first aircraft will be operational with the new engines circa 2030. A major acquisition program doesn’t usually have to submit a Selected Acquisition Report until after Milestone B—and the B-52 Commercial Engine Replacement Program (CERP) isn’t there yet—but the program has developed a cost estimate and submitted it to Headquarters, Air Force, and it will go to Congress “in the very near future,” Ruscetta said. Reports of a 50 percent increase in CERP costs were “taken out of context,” Ruscetta said. The business case analysis done in 2017 wasn’t comprehensive and didn’t anticipate all the ramifications of the upgrade, and cost-estimating models have been updated. The Air Force used the KC-135 re-engining as its model but is now using the more recent C-5 re-engining as a guide to costs. “I don’t have one program related to the engine replacement … that is in overrun,” Ruscetta said, “and I don’t foresee an overrun … in the future.” In a later email, Ruscetta said the program “has seen minor cost growth … of about 12 percent” since the first Air Force independent cost estimate in 2019. “The FY22 NDAA established a cost baseline for the CERP program using the FY’20 cost estimate. Currently, we have seen estimated growth of 3% from the congressionally mandated baseline.” The report will “give Congress a full update on the status of the CERP,” Ruscetta said. There has been cost growth discovered due to the complexity of integrating the new engines, controls, and displays needed on the B-52. “It is more than just new engines,” he said. It’s “new pylons … generators … fuel lines … cockpit displays.” It is “a much bigger effort than just Rolls-Royce.” Boeing is the integrator of the all the B-52 upgrades. “We just held our engine subsystem preliminary design review at Rolls-Royce … it was a very successful event,” he said, and showed a strong partnership with Boeing. The full system-level PDR will be held later this year. “The design is fairly stable,” Ruscetta said. The engine and radar upgrades were intended to have almost no new development. The major challenge to program schedule now is not design, but the supply chain, Ruscetta added, “just like any program managing in a … COVID environment.” Editor’s note: This story was updated at 9:20 p.m. Eastern time to include the Air Force’s estimates of cost growth on the B-52 CERP as well as the required assets available necessary to declare initial operational capability with the new radar in 2027.

Not a fair comparison my dude. Mav is not dumb, he could quickly see what Charlie was becoming, a tired old hag who spent more time on her career and let her looks quickly fade. Sure she had the smarts, maybe Mav was intimated by that...maybe she could have even showed how smart she was by appearing on various aviation shows (ala Dr Rebecca Grant). She is probably somewhere high up in the pentagon right now and people who don't know Charlie probably say "that dude is squared away." Charlie chose her career over Mav. Enter Patty Benjamin, sure she was underage and an admiral's daughter when her and Mav first meet...but she kept her looks and she owns a fighter bar...so she's the winner in my book.

TG: Mav obviously wasn’t made for the seasoned military aviator, but damn I thought it was really well done and enjoyed it beginning to end, even the stuff that was not “true to life” for military aviation and tactics. 8/10 from this guy Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Final Top Gun trailer. Riding in a Tomcat and a Felon cameo at 2:03. My guess: Mav and baby Goose hijack a Tomcat and fly it out of Iran. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

calling out someone because you got downvoted?

That is one broke ass engine...nice landing kid

fighter mafia 2.0

Frontier justice

RR won the contract over GE and PW. With the engine and some other upgrades, sounds like the old gal will get a new designation to B-52J and fly well into 2050s. Would be cool if it made it to 2061 to make it 100 years on some of those models. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42517/rolls-royce-will-provide-long-awaited-new-jet-engines-for-the-b-52-bomber-fleet

Highly recommend this guy's channel. Former Tomcat RIO. Good videos about flying, Tomcat stuff, Naval Ops, etc. Seems like a good dude and has great video content. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiUteckG37fXz0g5h8iZ_0g/videos

Remember when human trafficking and sexual assault were supposedly rampant in the military and SARC CBTs trumped Ops? Good times. Alt-right Extremism” in the ranks is just another example of blowing these things out of proportion. Is it present like sexual assault and human trafficking are/were? Yes, and perpetrators should be dealt with accordingly, but the military isn’t full of Nazi human trafficking rapists. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

In my very limited time, I never did either. A few friends I work with now who were in the Navy said that ships definitely have gangs from all ends of the color spectrum. A Marine I work with said racism is pretty rampant but to me the topic de jour of extremism in the military screams witch hunt and overreaction.

Bring me men cadets that need safe spaces

Yeah that was pretty cool, well done

Navs be like... This will be an interesting discussion...good luck to all those young bomber WSOs out there https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/10/20/air-force-plans-retrain-weapons-system-officers-be-b-21-bomber-pilots.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EBB 10.21.20&utm_term=Editorial - Early Bird Brief As the U.S. Air Force prepares to bring the next-generation stealth bomber into its inventory over the next two decades, it plans to slash the number of weapons system officers by as much as half to make room for more pilots, according to a top general. Though the service has not announced exactly how many B-21 Raiders it expects to purchase, it will no longer need as many WSOs -- commonly referred to as "wizzos" -- the aircrew who manage the delivery of bombs as well as intelligence-gathering sensors. It plans to retrain them to become pilots in the years ahead, according to Maj. Gen. Mark E. Weatherington, 8th Air Force commander. "I see us in the very early stages of the biggest transformation that we're going to have over the next 15 to 20 years," Weatherington, also head of the Joint Global Strike Operations Center at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, said in a recent interview. "That transformation is going from our current force of 96 combat-coded bombers, 157 total bombers, across three different weapons systems into ... a dramatically different force," he said, referencing the B-52 Stratofortress, B-1B Lancer and B-2 Spirit bombers. The service has roughly 260 WSOs in its operational units today, Weatherington said. "I'd say we're looking at a reduction [of] one-third to a half," he added. "Particularly as the B 21 stands up, we know we want a mix of folks from the B-1, B-2 and B 52 communities that are involved. That's so we get a range of perspectives and ... actually get a better perspective on how to operate that airframe more effectively." The service's future bomber inventory is expected to consist of the new B-21, also known as the Long Range Strike Bomber (LRSB), and the B-52. Despite its age, the venerable, Cold War-era Stratofortress is expected to fly into the 2050s. The B-1B and B-2 long-range bombers will be retired in the mid-2030s. Like its B-2 cousin, the B-21 is expected to be crewed by two pilots, Weatherington said. By comparison, the B-1 heavy-payload bomber has four crew: two pilots up front and two WSOs -- one operating offense, the other defense -- in the back. It's anticipated the service will poach WSOs from the B-1 community, and a few from the B-52 pool, to punch up its B-21 pilot end strength, Weatherington said. Together with Air Education and Training Command (AETC), Air Force Global Strike Command is studying how it will take "some of these highly trained, capable, combat-experienced weapon systems officers ... that have skill sets that will be readily transferable to the B-21 in terms of employing that weapon system in a combat scenario," he said. "How do we give them the skills they would need for takeoff, landing, air refueling, some maneuvering types of skills, and piloting skills to help close that gap?" Retraining WSOs will also help with the Air Force's overall pilot shortage, he added. However, the B-21 is still years away. Once WSOs are seasoned in their existing craft, the intention is to leverage "that existing talent [to fill] that pilot need that we're going to see ... without putting an additional huge demand or big requirement on AETC [to produce more bomber pilots]," Weatherington explained. "We'll look at the capacity and what is the appropriate trade-off in terms of experience versus retainability, and certainly we'll have to make some of those decisions," he said. But small steps are already underway. Last year, two B-1 WSOs took part in AETC's Pilot Training Next Initiative, which the service began in 2018 to test students' abilities within an augmented space mimicking in-flight experience. "We'll look at any lessons that Pilot Training Next comes up with, and we'll partner closely with AETC," said Weatherington, who will visit Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas, in November to observe some of this training. "We're just in the initial phases of talking about it." The Air Force has said deliveries of the B-21, manufactured by Northrop Grumman, should begin in the mid-2020s, but have been careful not to broadcast details in order to protect its technology. The service has said it plans to procure at least 100 Raiders, rounding out its bomber inventory to 175, including its B-52 fleet. Yet Gen. Tim Ray, head of Air Force Global Strike Command, has often proposed a bomber force of more than 200 aircraft. "We've said publicly that we think we need 220 bombers overall -- 75 B-52s and the rest B-21s, long term," Ray told Air Force Magazine earlier this year. Other independent studies "also suggest a range of between 225 and about 270 on the high end," Weatherington said. A bigger bomber fleet would affect the maintenance and logistics communities as well. "I think we'll continue to look at [these needs] as they become a reality," Weatherington said. "But this transition is really purely about pilots and WSOs and the right balance and the ability to sustain that force."

I miss that dude too...good times

Go for it...if you don't you might regret it later. Do your commitment and if you don't like it you're still young enough to go to med school.

I’d call that more than swapping paint lol...but damn nice job by that Herc crew and glad all are safe, that could have been real ugly. I can’t even picture how the hell that might have happened.

Another win for ACES II. Glad to hear the pilot is safe, always awesome when that happens. Went down an ejection seat rabbit hole, didn't know there was a new system out there (ACES 5), pretty fascinating tech. Conversely to the tech of today, the seats in the BUFF are OG so not only does a lot have to happen just to get those things out, specifically for the RN/N the jet itself needs at least 250' to get one good swing in the chute.

Whoops!

John Prine for the past few days...dude was amazing

This dude won’t make it through the day. Calling the commander of the TR “naieve and stupid” to his former crew...what an assclown. https://www.foxnews.com/us/acting-navy-secretary-ousted-uss-theodore-roosevelt-captain-stupid-naive-coronavirus and here’s the audio he broadcasted to the ship’s crew https://youtu.be/G7mwlwO0mdM

This dude won’t make it through the day. Calling the commander of the TR “naieve and stupid” to his former crew...what an assclown. https://www.foxnews.com/us/acting-navy-secretary-ousted-uss-theodore-roosevelt-captain-stupid-naive-coronavirus and here’s the audio he broadcasted to the ship’s crew https://youtu.be/G7mwlwO0mdM

47 years ago today. B-52 Linebacker II raid on Hanoi. Good stuff. If anybody is interested (especially bomber guys), I highly recommend the book "The 11 Days of Christmas" about the LB2 operation.