huh?

yeap...tho I hear some are fighting to keep it around a few more years.

it must really be expensive. i know you have to have a lot of other support from ecm and such. doesn't really surprise me. it's not a fighter and the super high flyers with smarties may be safer. can't a bomb out of a 52 go a lot of miles?

The F-22 is much more capable and effective, I think. And yes, B-52's can drop all of the new munitions, including guided missiles, etc. The F-117 was a great plane for its time, but the F-22 is both stealthy and bobust, a fighter and bomber. Last I heard the B-52 will be around another 30 years... maybe even make a hundred.

the air force is saying at least until 2030 on the 52.

High altitude bombing has about a foot for foot range. So if you are at

45,000 feet, the bomb will fly 45,000 forward from releaase. Now, let's say you drop JSOWs. That can dramatically increase the range the bomb can fly. The JSOW was/is basically a glider bomb. Since gliders have a glide ratio of 20 to 1 or higher, that makes these little gems nice stand off weapons.

Whether the BUFF is carrying them is anothe thing. Back in my time as a BUFF Weapons Officer, they were among a long list of things the AF and ACC were looking at.

considering the size of that cave, what couldn't you fit in a 52? i bet it's just a matter of hardware to hold, and software to drop. you want 4 moabs loaded on, yessir, right away.... speaking of them, i wonder how far one could dig with a bunker buster nose on it? i bet you could kill a very large tunnel or bunker complex. or make a skip bomb of it. dam busters, indeed.

It's also a matter of structural and electrical interface requirements and airframe operating CG for whatever you stick in there...

...and I see to recall that you can hang stuff on the outside of a Buff, too.

yeah, the guys leaving thailand with 500 lbers all over the sucker was impressive.

Probably outlive me, then.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

me, too.

What won't fit on the inside might just fit on the outside. The D model could carry 108 500 lb bombs. The H models don't carry that many because the bomb bay doesn't have the same modification as the D had. Still, it will carry 45 or 51 500 lb bombs depending on the pylons attached. It makes a mess no matter how many it carries.

I have heard that a comm>

Well, no.

You'd never get that result, even ignoring air resistance which rather quickly scrubs off most of the bomb's forward velocity.

Recall that the bomb will -never- have more forward velocity than the speed of the aircraft releasing it while the downward velocity will increase at the rate of 32ft/sec/sec.

Thus, velocity = gt

and distance = (1/2)gt^2

where g = 32ft/sec^2.

Of course, in the real world, eventually air resistance takes over as the bomb's downward speed stabilizes at its terminal velocity - but that same air resistance will also have scrubbed off all its forward velocity.

Cheers,

That depends on your airspeed of course.

That depends on the glider of course; I doubt JSOWS fly at anywhere near that good of a sink rate.

Pat

has the air force completely given up glide bombs? it would seem that an efficent glider could take a bomb into some interesting places as well as be launched from several hundred miles away. if you can make a tank glide 16 odd miles, something a little lighter and erodynamic should be effective.

Back in 1978, I took a trip to the USSR while in college. On the way back, I ran into a BBC camera crew that had been let into Vietnam and were on their way back to Britain. One of the things they noted were the fish farm ponds These were thousands of circular ponds, and existed in long lines across the landscape. It took them a few moments to realize how all theses circular ponds for raising fish had been excavated courtesy of the American Government with the aid of Boeing in a surprisingly short period of time, and free of charge. Your tax dollars at work. :-)

Pat

One of the problems would be speed. You could make a really efficient glider weapon with long thin wings like a U-2, but it would be difficult to carry without swing-out wings, and once in gliding flight it would be going fairly slow if it was to have a really good sink rate (ratio of loss of height to forward movement...a 1:10 ratio means that for every ten feet it moves forward it losses one foot in height) Back during WW II, the Germans did try to make a very long range glider bomb with this thing:

sported a really aerodynamic fuselage, and long, thin, U-2 style wings...made of cast concrete! But it approached the target at only 280 mph, and that's something that today's SAMs could easily destroy on approach if it was detected. So to make it work, you'd need to give it really good stealth. On the other hand, you don't have to worry about IR emissions on a unpowered glider weapon, so maybe you could do it. The best approach might be to use a booster rocket that shoots it up as high and fast as possible, and then lets it glide down from there to its target at very high velocity. And that's a very doable idea: Pat

African or European swallow?..

You mean...like this, maybe?

a stealth glider would work. drop it off a fast hauler way up. that german toy could go 100 miles. also, i think it could be good for special ops guys. small one man stealth gliders could go where the parachute boys couldn't