B-52H TO BE UPGRADED AGAIN

Boeing’s B-52 Stratofortress is the world’s oldest, in-service, military aircraft. Affectionately referred to as BUFF by the crews who fly it, the B-52 has existed in five iterations, designated A through H. Boeing built a total of 744 B-52s between 1952 and 1962, of which 76 remain in active service with the United States Air Force. With the possible exception of the 707-derivative KC-135, no aircraft in the USAF fleet has been so continuously and extensively modified, upgraded and modernised as the B-52.

The Stratofortress's flying today are not the same machines came lumbering out of Boeing's plants seventy years ago. Almost every bulkhead, spar, rib, stringer and bodypanel has been replaced, repeatedly. Systems, too, engines, hydraulics, pneumatics, environmental, electrics, avionics and armament have been changed out more often than Liberace's wardrobe.

Now comes the next incarnation of the venerable Stratofortress, which depending on how pedantic Air Force brass inclines to wax, will be known as either the B-52J or B-52K. Col. Louis Ruscetta, senior materiel leader for the B-52 renovation programme, asserts the new engines, engine pylons, avionics, and slick, fighter-style radar into which the USAF is fixing to slip the old girl represent the most ambitious and costly modification in the B-52's long and glorious history.