The Air Force is Considering a ‘New’ B-52 Bomber 63 Years After it Entered Service

In August 2018, Aviation Week reported that Col. Lance Reynolds gave a briefing at Tinker Air Base, Oklahoma in which he unveiled a proposal for an upgraded B-52J model of eight-engine bomber—no less than sixty-three years after the Cold War icon entered service with the Air Force.

The B-52 may have a flaming cocktail and a rock band named after it, but its age was criticized in the 2016 presidential debates. There’s no denying that the huge strategic bombers measuring half the length of a football field would have little hopes of penetrating the airspace of a near-peer opponent mustering advanced jet fighters and long-range surface-to-air-missiles.

But while that was the game plan in the Doctor Strangelove era of B-52 operations, the U.S. Air Force’s has found many new uses for its seventy-six remaining B-52Hs, which are nicknamed Big Ugly Fat Fellows.