After 60 Years, B-52s Still Dominate U.S. Fleet
The New York Times tries to play up the issues of the (indeed, terrible) American military procurement system, but I think there&#x27;s something else going on. The B-52&#x27;s Soviet equivalent, the Tu-95 (turboprop-powered, even!) is also still flying!<p>Part of the cause is that big bombers with enormous payload capacity and long range can always be adapted to new missions and tactics - there&#x27;s always something you can do with an extra few tens of tons of ordnance.<p>Where the US military-industrial complex <i>has</i> fallen down on the job is that the physical airframes are still from the original production run. While the USAF always thought its new and different (first supersonic, then stealth) bomber designs would allow it to retire the B-52, the Soviets kept building new variants and retiring old airframes. So while American B-52s have been heroically kept operating since the 50s and 60s, Russian Air Force Tu-95s were all built in the 80s and early 90s with assorted design improvements and new avionics.