B-52 re-engining

[Stuart Galbraith]

Its not a real strategic bomber till it gets Rolls Royce engines.

 

[DougRichards]

1 hour ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Its not a real strategic bomber till it gets Rolls Royce engines.

 

Well the Olympus is sort of still in production......  

Or were you considering sixteen Merlins?

[Stuart Galbraith]

Oh, at least 20. All facing rearward for that B36 chic.

 

[Mike1158]

Speak of the devil etc, just had a B-52 overhead, heading aprox SE.  Heck of a noise.  Brilliant.

Edited October 21, 2022 by Mike1158

[Stuart Galbraith]

I remember seeing at least 16 aircraft taking off from RAF Fairford in the late 1980's. We lived under the flightpath, and it took a week to wash the clag off.

[Mike1158]

I bet it was quite something to see though.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Yeah, it was awesome. To see Fairford at the peak of the cold war and see 20 or 30 B52's parked out there, it was incredible. It gave you an idea of what Guam must have looked like in the old days.

 Ill never forget that. Anymore than Ill forget the KC135's that used to scramble whenever there was a nuclear alert. You used to hear them go off in the middle of the night and figure something was up.

 

[Ivanhoe]

[shep854]

On 10/22/2022 at 9:01 AM, Ivanhoe said:

And there's a C-130 waiting to transport the crew home...

[rmgill]

On 9/25/2021 at 11:34 AM, Stuart Galbraith said:

They had problems with the rivets, any Vulcan left outside for long without attention has a problem with the rivets, I think they were magnesium, rusting out.

Build hangars? Change the metallurgy? 

[Stuart Galbraith]

Dont think it was a problem for the projected service life, the problem arose when its 20 plus years after they were delivered, when they were arguably life expired. Its been a continual problem with preservation groups trying to keep them together.

[Stuart Galbraith]

 

[urbanoid]

 

[Josh]

I have a sneaking suspicion that the engine upgrade incorporates better high altitude performance. The TF-33 struggled above 40k based on a guy who claims x-51 launch experience with some credible evidence. Getting Balls 8 to launch X-51 was apparently difficult and involved riot with a light fuel load.

 

But biz jet engines probably lose a lot less efficiently at those altitude ranges, and that might enable HACM carriage.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Balls 8 was a B52B though. The G and H model had some considerable lightening of the structure if memory serves.

[DB]

The Gulfstream and Global Express jets that use these engines (or similar ones from the family) are capable of flying in excess of 51,000ft and also push pretty high Mach numbers for subsonics.

It will be interesting to see what the declared range of the -J will be. These engines should be *significantly* more fuel efficient, but there will be mass creep in other areas I suspect.

[Josh]

I suspect there won’t be a published range. The USAF is really stingy with details in this day and age. Most online estimates are in the range of a 20-30% increase.

Edited September 10, 2023 by Josh

[Markus Becker]

How a Rusty B-52 Carcass Is Key to the Bomber’s Big Upgrades

 

Within a brand-new, gleaming-white facility called the “high bay” at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex, a battered and rusty-looking fuselage and left wing of a B-52H has become a laboratory for the government-industry team that will revamp the aged Stratofortress fleet for the next 30 years.

Still bearing its nose art—nicknamed “Damage, Inc. II”—the B-52H, which sat in the “Boneyard” at Davis-Monthan Air Force, Ariz., for more than two decades, will serve as a testbed for engineers looking to align new digital models of the bomber with the hands-on real world.

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/rusty-b-52-carcass-upgrades/

 

[Stuart Galbraith]