Old war horse of air, the B-52 still bears load

Posted on: Jan. 26th, 2006 || Source: cleveland.com | E-mail Article | Print Article

Old war horse of air, the B-52 still bears load

Washington -- The creaky B-52 bomber, first deployed in 1954 when stamps cost 3 cents and George W. Bush was 6 years old, will be the mainstay of the United States' long-range bomber fleet for another decade, the Pentagon has decided.

Today's newer bombers -- sleek, high-tech and terrifyingly expensive -- will be largely sidelined as costly trophies, just as they are now.

The distinctive droop-winged, eight-engine B-52s cost around $61 million each in inflation-adjusted dollars. The Air Force bought 742, flying them in practice attack missions against Nikita Khrushchev's Soviet Union, through the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf War and on into the new century in missions over Iraq and Afghanistan.

The B-2 "stealth" bomber, built in the 1990s, costs $1.3 billion each in today's dollars, 22 times as much as the B-52. The Air Force could afford only 20 of them. The aircraft seem too precious to risk in routine combat; none are flying over Iraq or Afghanistan, Air Force officers acknowledged.

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