Not The Air Force of the 1980s

Chapter 1

OK, I have been lost from the Land, Fly, or Die world for too long. It’s mostly because of my regular work, where we launched a couple of new, work-intensive products over the last few months. Then, as I didn’t post, some inertial set in. My bad on that factor. My plan is to get back to posting at least once a week.

I do keep a casual eye on Air Force aviation news—and I mean the aviation part. I'm not interested in Space Command or cyber security, which seem to be where the Air Force is focused. But I digress.

It has been almost 40 years since my flying days. Our missions were focused on winning the Cold War, which we did. As part of the Cold War preparations, the Air Force worked to acquire modern aircraft and keep older models up to date. 

I have seen news items that make me wonder what the Air Force is doing and if leadership has a plan or just plans to keep funding money to the military-industrial complex. Although most of what I read leads to a touch of incredulousness, I will be hitting on a few news items and a personal story over the next few weeks, starting with this post. 

I recently read about the program to upgrade current B-52 bombers with modern engines, cockpits, and radars. The current B-52H designation would be updated to B-52-J. The upgrades will cost about $50 billion. 

Here is the fun part. With the upgrades, the B-52-J upgrade will keep 76 bombers flying until 2060. There are B-52Hs flying today, and they were built in 1962. That means these bombers will be almost 100 years old and still flying for the Air Force. It boggles the mind. 

I flew less than 10-year-old F-16-As, and F-16-Cs were rapidly replacing them.

B-52 Bomber

I have one personal B-52 story. 

While flying at Nellis AFB, near Las Vegas, we regularly participated in the Red Flag air-combat exercises. Red Flags were two-week long exercises with combat aircraft and aircrews from all over the world flying massive (80 to 100) aircraft, combined force missions.

Our missions were typically low-level approaches from the east to attack targets in the western part of the Nellis ranges. At times, numerous fighter flights would rip across the desert. We ran low levels at 480 kt. ground speed, which gave easy math of 8 miles a minute. 

During one of these missions, my flight came up behind a B-52. I was surprised! The interesting point was that it was flying low level at 360 kt, so we came up on it fast. The BUFF (B-52 nickname) was also flying very low, somewhere between 100 and 200 feet above the ground. 

I flew right up to the aft end of the BUFF and watched the tail gunner track me with his gun. We quickly passed by, going 120 knots faster, but it was a vision I will never forget. 

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