B-52 finally gets new engines

[mack7.62]

We got our money out of those air frames, finally they are getting new engines.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/rolls-royce-offers-peek-at-the-b-52s-new-engines-undergoing-testing

Now that testing has begun, Rolls-Royce has provided first looks at the F130 turbofan engines in their dual-pod configuration that will replace the outdated TF33 engines currently equipping the U.S. Air Force’s B-52H Stratofortress fleet. Rolls-Royce has offered this imagery as part of an update on the years-long effort to re-engine and modernize the service’s bombers. In fact, the fight to get the B-52 new engines is a saga that dates back decades.

[Diamondback]

Long overdue, shoulda been done decades ago. Back in college a retired fighter-jock prof and I did a design study on a rewinged, re-engined BUFF powered by four big GE90s with enough power to deadlift itself straight up at gross weight... granted, we wanted to do a total teardown and overhaul to make Dale Brown's "Old Dog" hotrod look like the 1940s prototypes by comparison.

[mack7.62]

I don't quite understand why they are sticking with 8 engines but maybe it makes sense from a plumbing/wiring standpoint.

[Diamondback]

Redundancy, it's harder to knock out eight small engines than four big ones.

[Pacific5th]

I don't quite understand why they are sticking with 8 engines but maybe it makes sense from a plumbing/wiring standpoint.

I’ve read somewhere that going to 4 would be an issue cause everything is wired and built for 8 and it would be an electrical nightmare to make everything work.

[454308]

I’ve read somewhere that going to 4 would be an issue cause everything is wired and built for 8 and it would be an electrical nightmare to make everything work.Exactly, wiring, structure is all designed for eight. Then they added the heavy storage beam adapters(underwing pylons) to carry smart bombs and even more electrical.

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[Ruark]

Redundancy, it's harder to knock out eight small engines than four big ones.

Just wondering, if anybody knows: how many engines - or what combination of engines - can keep one of these in the air?

[Averageman]

Just wondering, if anybody knows: how many engines - or what combination of engines - can keep one of these in the air?

I've heard once you're at altitude one alone will do.

[mack7.62]

Just wondering, if anybody knows: how many engines - or what combination of engines - can keep one of these in the air?

I think that will depend on before or after weapons drop and fuel burn off plus while they did a lot of high altitude work during the GWOT as part of the nuclear triad they will do low level penetrations.

[Grand58742]

The Buff has already outlived it's designers and very likely a lot or most of the original A model crews.

It'll probably outlive all the D model crews that served over Vietnam.

The H model will probably outlive the crews that sat with them on SAC alert during the Cold War.

Sometimes you get a design right from the start and don't screw with it except to upgrade engines, electronics, etc. Kinda like the A-10 and F-15...

[rero360]

I still want to see one loaded to the hilt with SDBs, all preprogrammed with separate targets.

[Diamondback]

I still want to see one loaded to the hilt with SDBs, all preprogrammed with separate targets.

What a strange coincidence, THAT was part of our pitch 20 years ago too... a variation of the Arsenal Plane concept, B-52s packed full of SDB's with datalinks so the FAC's on the ground can just call in their own drops much like how an F-35 can remotely call-in launches from Aegis cruisers with no additional personnel effort involved. Main problem with SDB's is the need for new racks to load 'em, since the old high-density Big Belly clips were cut up with the D's and weren't particularly "spacing optimized" for anything but Mk 82 500-pounders.

But yeah, a BUFF doing a Jackpot Bay Dump raining swarms upon swarms of precision-guided SDB's with modern penetrator-warhead technology on an 80-mile-wide "circle of death" all at once would be a thing of terrible beauty to behold. Better yet, let's up the ante and figure out how to put a pod of the new 70mm guided mini-missiles into an SDB package/guidance kit so each can hit four targets instead of just one in soft-target situations like technicals... dude, I tell ya DARPA should give me an expense account and some toys to play with. :)

[rero360]

What a strange coincidence, THAT was part of our pitch 20 years ago too... a variation of the Arsenal Plane concept, B-52s packed full of SDB's with datalinks so the FAC's on the ground can just call in their own drops much like how an F-35 can remotely call-in launches from Aegis cruisers with no additional personnel effort involved. Main problem with SDB's is the need for new racks to load 'em, since the old high-density Big Belly clips were cut up with the D's and weren't particularly "spacing optimized" for anything but Mk 82 500-pounders.

But yeah, a BUFF doing a Jackpot Bay Dump raining swarms upon swarms of precision-guided SDB's with modern penetrator-warhead technology on an 80-mile-wide "circle of death" all at once would be a thing of terrible beauty to behold. Better yet, let's up the ante and figure out how to put a pod of the new 70mm guided mini-missiles into an SDB package/guidance kit so each can hit four targets instead of just one in soft-target situations like technicals... dude, I tell ya DARPA should give me an expense account and some toys to play with. :)

I have been imagining this concept ever since I learned about the SDBs. I imagine it shouldn’t be to difficult to switch out the racks, but I’m just a retired JFO/grunt and I’ve only ever seen a B52 in person once. There’s one on display at my new job, I need to go check it out along with the rest of the aircraft, SR-71, F-117, A-12, D-21, U-2 and some others.

[Diamondback]

The birds on display all have empty bays, the D's "high density" racks were six clips each with a 3-4-4-3 shackle pattern while the factory setup was a 3x3x3 "regardless of size" pattern. For SDB and other general modernization, what I'd do would be create a whole new modular rack system with single-deep (one clip-pair per rack; out of six on the plane) modules for 500/1000lb bombs loaded at full clip length or 2x SDB clipped nose-to-tail, then a triple-deep module holding paired nose-to-tail Mk 84/BLU-109/2000lb-class weapons. Ideally also a "conveyor belt" rack where the shackles are on an escalator/peoplemover-style track for things like rocket pods and Hellfire/Sidewinder/Stinger/similar small missiles where as one payload's exhausted or deselected just "scroll" around to the next one, or a different more appropriate payload choice for the next target.

What really holds these birds back isn't so much the tonnage, it's the number of physical mounts to hang things from inside the bay and under the wings. There's also a midwing station usually only used for training-telemetry pods like ACMI that has also been used for trials with inert CATM-9 Sidewinder "training rounds" and could probably deliver live Sidewinder or AMRAAM too. On top of that, a guy named Lee Harrell (probably the guy who inspired Brown's Old Dog) had proposed replacing the vestigial tiptanks (which are there more as bobweights to help hold the wingtips down than anything) with ECM jammer pods, and Norm (my old prof) and I had proposed to build on that with "modular" tip pods that could either be the fuel of today, the ECM Harrell proposed or revert to the old tall-tail-style giant 3000-gallon tanks but converted into a combination of ECM and small-stores weapons bays (Sidewinder, AMRAAM, Hellfire, SDB - no big 2000-pounders here). Give me one airframe to tinker with, a Rolodex of industry contacts to call and a patron at the Pentagon to namedrop for getting them to listen to me, and oh about $75mil on a USAF prepaid Visa/Mastercard, and I will show you some serious Next Level Shit, man... oh one more thing, after the text program, the plane's mine free-and-clear, no federal or state taxes on it ever and I'm given an annual fuel allowance (call it enough for a roundtrip flight across the continent or to/from Europe every month or two) to do with as I see fit. Nothing TOO unreasonable... just I need to be able to evaluate the effects of my work for myself before I'm comfortable asking others to risk their own lives on it.

[chuckman]

The Buff has already outlived it's designers and very likely a lot or most of the original A model crews.

It'll probably outlive all the D model crews that served over Vietnam.

The H model will probably outlive the crews that sat with them on SAC alert during the Cold War.

Sometimes you get a design right from the start and don't screw with it except to upgrade engines, electronics, etc. Kinda like the A-10 and F-15...

Yep, with the C-130 just behind it (I believe the B-52 predates it by a year or two).

I grew up with them locally, but they were moved to a different base in the late-80s. I loved watching them. There was an incident in the 60s where one, in the process of breaking up mid-air, jettisoned their two nukes, and they only found one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash

Anyhoo, enough traipsing down memory lane. Great aircraft, I would love to see them fly for decades more.

[mack7.62]

So the B-52 is getting Gulfstream engines and projected to be in service for another 30 years. Definitely needs the upgrade cause with the old engines hourly operating cost is $70,000, ouch.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bA_6a7hdVE

[Diamondback]

So the B-52 is getting Gulfstream engines and projected to be in service for another 30 years. Definitely needs the upgrade cause with the old engines hourly operating cost is $70,000, ouch.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bA_6a7hdVE

Bear in mind, those old TF33's are the reason for retiring the C-141 fleet--for each BUFF to live two Starlifters had to die so their engines could be cannibalized.