Cost and scheduling challenges person pushed the US Air Force's B-52 Stratofortress modernization programme billions complete budget, according to a caller report.
The aging B-52 has agelong been a workhorse of the Air Force, which is replacing the bomber's decades-old engines to support the craft flying into the 2050s. But the upgrades person tally into delays and rising costs.
Last week, the Government Accountability Office, a authorities watchdog agency, released a study connected the existent position of the B-52 modernization and sustainment efforts. Of the 13 upgrades that the bombers are getting, 10 are experiencing cost, schedule, aliases capacity challenges.
The astir costly B-52 upgrade, the Commercial Engine Replacement Program, has seen a astir $3 cardinal summation successful costs since 2023, pinch the first operational day pushed backmost much than 15 months. The GAO study said that the programme "will apt proceed to look important challenges arsenic the Air Force plans to statesman accumulation pinch small to nary developmental formation testing."
The different components being upgraded see caller radars, communications systems, training devices, and precocious target pod displays. The B-52s are besides being modified to transportation the AGM-181 Long-Range Standoff weapon, a caller nuclear-armed cruise rocket nether development.
According to the GAO, location are challenges successful the Air Force's approach, which involves moving connected galore of these upgrades astatine the aforesaid time. "Work connected 1 programme whitethorn impact moving hardware connected the aircraft that relates to activity to beryllium completed by different modernization programs," the study said.
Previous GAO reports person highlighted challenges successful the modernization program. In its astir caller report, the GAO made six recommendations for the Air Force, including delaying the motor accumulation determination until the programme agency analyzes caller costs maturation and schedule delays to understand risks and benefits.
Despite reported issues pinch the modernization program, officials person touted the value of the B-52 modernization program. Last year, Vice. Admiral. Richard Correll, past the Trump administration's information to caput US Strategic Command, told Congress the upgrades were "essential" to ensuring the bombers tin fulfill their intended domiciled successful strategical deterrence. The motor replacements, which will put Rolls-Royce engines wrong the B-52s, would, alongside the radar technologies, fundamentally make the B-52 bomber "a caller airplane."
Earlier this year, the B-52 demonstrated its continued expertise to support combat operations by flying overland bombing missions complete Iran.
"Over the past 30 days, we've struck much than 11,000 targets," Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, the president of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said successful March, 1 period into the Iran war. "Given the summation successful aerial superiority, we've successfully started to behaviour the first overland B-52 missions, which let america to proceed to get connected apical of the enemy."
Conversations surrounding the modernization of the B-52s travel arsenic defense experts and lawmakers sound the siren astir broader problems facing America's fleet of aerial assets, which is shrinking and aging at an accelerating pace.
English (US) · 
Indonesian (ID) ·