A-10C Thunderbolt II makes a comeback

[brewster]

Frankly, the B-52 can easily be replaced by a commercial airliner airframe in the age of PGM's, you could put some bomb bays and racks onto a 767 airframe and it could do the job of the B-52.

I hear there's a glut of 747's & A380's, the airlines business model has changed to smaller planes. Maybe firesale planes refit to drop PGM's would be cost effective? I know, I know, that won't line the proper people's pockets.

[Smitty-48]

Frankly, the B-52 can easily be replaced by a commercial airliner airframe in the age of PGM's, you could put some bomb bays and racks onto a 767 airframe and it could do the job of the B-52.

I hear there's a glut of 747's & A380's, the airlines business model has changed to smaller planes. Maybe firesale planes refit to drop PGM's would be cost effective? I know, I know, that won't line the proper people's pockets.

Nothing comes for cheap with military hardware, you'd have to modify all those airframes to military standard, that sort of thing can go awry cost wise, sounds cheap in principle, but actually there's a lot of pitfalls with that sort of gig, it's usually better, in terms of costs, to just build from the ground up, keep it simple stupid, modification adds complexity, unforeseen hiccups, and then the cheap option starts to get real expensive as a result.

[Speaker to Animals]

Commercial carriers run those aircraft into the ground. Poor maintenance cycles. They flythose things nonstop. Not worth it.

You'd have to completely strip out the avionics and wiring system too.

Fuck that.

Just get the old B-52 specs from 1960, update them a little, and build new ones.

[Smitty-48]

It's the kind of thing you might do under wartime conditions, shotgun mods on available airframes just to get warheads on foreheads as soon as possible, but if you have the time, yeah, better to just build new.

[Smitty-48]

Thing is tho, the B-21, that doesn't really replace B-1 and B-52, B-1 and B-52 have their own specifically useful characteristics, B-21 is just a souped up B-2, B-2 is a good first day of war counterforce penetrator, but the B-1 and B-52 do things which it really isn't good for, so I would add a second bomber program, hi-lo mix, B-21 at the hi end, and then a B-1/B-52 replacement at the lo end.

[Smitty-48]

Thing about the B-52, they're not just loitering bomb trucks, they do that well, but they're actually quite peppy, they're not B-1 peppy by any means, but they're way peppier than a 747, if you need to, you can firewall the throttles and get down in the weeds with the B-52 in hunter-killer mode.

[Speaker to Animals]

It's the kind of thing you might do under wartime conditions, shotgun mods on available airframes just to get warheads on foreheads as soon as possible, but if you have the time, yeah, better to just build new.

Yeah, but the US doesn't even have to do that. We'd just go to the boneyard and revive some number of the countless B-52 bombers we already mothballed.

[Speaker to Animals]

Thing about the B-52, they're not just loitering bomb trucks, they do that well, but they're actually quite peppy, they're not B-1 peppy by any means, but they're way peppier than a 747, if you need to, you can firewall the throttles and get down in the weeds with the B-52 in hunter-killer mode.

If we are going to repurpose aircraft into bombers, we might as well just repurpose something like an aging C-5.

[Smitty-48]

I would go with a clean sheet design, compromise between the B-52 and the B-1, blended wing body style, like the Russian PAK-DA, no stealth, use the B-21 for that, but I would have a B-22, which was dual role bomb truck/hunter killer as necessary.

[Smitty-48]

Something along these lines here;

https://theaviationist.com/wp-content/u ... PAK-DA.jpg

Like, rugged, big and fast, with payload, no need for finicky stealth, comes in behind the B-21, or goes in where the B-21 is not needed.