A June 18 report from the Authorities Accountability Workplace U.S. congressional watchdog has confirmed that modernisation of the Vietnam Conflict period B-52H strategic bomber fleet to the B-52J commonplace won’t present plane with even a restricted preliminary operational functionality till the 12 months 2033. “This system famous that there have been program delays partially resulting from funding shortfalls to finish the detailed design, however that it has labored with the contractors and submitted finances requests to help vital design overview in August 2025 and preliminary operational functionality in mid-fiscal 12 months 2033,” the report noticed, highlighting that delays “are a results of underestimating the extent of funding wanted to finish the detailed design actions. Particularly, because the B-52 prototyping effort was prolonged from preliminary design to vital design, program officers acquired a proposal for the detailed design work.” On the core of the brand new improve stays the substitute of the plane’s ageing Pratt & Whitney TF33 with Rolls-Royce F130s, offering decrease upkeep necessities and an extended vary. Important adjustments to avionics and different components of the plane’s construction are additionally required.
The U.S. Air Drive has allotted $48.6 billion to modernise its fleet of 72 B-52H bombers, which characterize greater than half the nation’s fleet of intercontinental vary strategic plane. The plane would require 576 new engines between them, excluding spares. This system is meant to increase their use till 2060. Audits have beforehand highlighted that the B-52 fleet has suffered from an excessive reliance on cannibalising different planes for spare components, due largely to business’s incapability to supply new components in a well timed method, severely reducing its availability charges. As a part of a rising development in direction of a contraction within the American defence industrial base, a rising variety of corporations have ended manufacturing of components for the B-52, that means that new provides have usually not been obtainable in any respect. This has the potential to noticeably jeopardise plans to maintain the plane in service for 36 extra years.
Stress on the bomber fleet has continued to develop, because the fighter fleet has not solely contracted to round a 3rd of its dimension on the finish of the Chilly Conflict, however has additionally seen availability charges drop considerably as fourth era fighters age whereas the newer fifth era F-22 and F-35 fighters have confirmed extremely problematic and troublesome to keep up. The end result has been a rising reliance on strategic bombers, and the B-52 particularly, for roles akin to missile strikes and at instances even for shut air help. Though fielded in a lot smaller numbers than fighters, a bomber can carry firepower similar to that of a whole fighter squadron, and might function over for much longer ranges with out reliance on aerial refuelling. Value overruns have however been used to argue for making cuts to the B-52J program, with value projections having grown by 12.6 p.c since 2021, and anticipated to extend considerably additional.
A notable instance of value overruns was the B-52 Radar Modernisation Program, which declared a value breach in September 2023 resulting from points with lab testing. That facet of the B-52J program is meant to exchange the ageing AN/APQ-166 mechanically scanned array radar, thought-about underpowered and extremely susceptible to jamming at this time, with a by-product of the F-18 fighter’s AN/APG-79 radar. Officers have cited points from “delays with the show and sensor processor are the first trigger,” and that “the processor’s fibre optic converter – which offers communication between processors – didn’t work in testing.”
