Back to the bomber - Jane's Air Forces

Back to the bomber - Jane's Air Forces:

Plans for a new US Air Force (USAF) bomber are slowly gathering speed. By the late 1990s, the service seemed dedicated to paying lip-service to such a concept: the USAF bomber roadmap, published in March 1999, called for no serious investment in a new bomber before 2025-30. Due to the small numbers of B-2s and supportability issues with B-1Bs, the bomber force in the 2030s would be increasingly dominated by septuagenarian B-52Hs. It was hard to argue with a dissenting report, commissioned by Congress and published in 1998, which concluded that 'under current plans the bomber has no future'.

That was before the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Denied access to bases nearest to the theaters of operations, through political pressure and terrorist threats, the USAF is realizing that the weapon in which it has invested more than 90% of its aircraft procurement funds, the single-seat tactical fighter, can be rendered much less effective by closing a few bases, which can be achieved as effectively by politics and diplomacy as by military force. Fighters in the Afghan and Iraqi campaign flew long missions with the aid of in-flight refueling, but the process was complex, extremely demanding for pilots and inefficient.

Bombers, however, proved well able to handle great distances and long missions. Two examples stood out: the use of B-52s, armed with Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guided bombs and bombing on Global Positioning System (GPS) cues provided by ground observers to attack Taliban positions; and the mission in which an orbiting B-1B received instructions to hit a building in Baghdad and did so, with four JDAMs, within 12 minutes of receiving co-ordinates.

It is always interesting to me that some of our most used weapons systems (also the most reliable) are the oldest systems we have. The ones we have in bulk also by the way. The new systems are complicated (usually needlessly) and so expensive because of this that we have very few to deploy. We won't have the B-52s around for ever.