GAO Report: Upgrade Costs for the B-52 Are Over Budget, but Still a Bargain for Taxpayers

There are, as of this writing, more or less 75 B-52 bombers, the mighty BUFFs (Big Ugly Fat Fellows), still in service with the United States Air Force. It's a wondrous old warbird, with a design history going back nearly 80 years. If you need to resolve a problem, or a whole bunch of problems, with the suitable application of high explosives, in time-honored American fashion, the BUFFs will get it done.

A current upgrade effort, including new Rolls-Royce F130 engines and new radar and avionics, intends to keep the BUFFs flying into the 2050s. Those efforts have (as is so often the case in government projects) gone over budget and behind schedule. 

Ten of the 13 programs meant to keep the B-52 flying into the 2050s are over budget, behind schedule or underperforming, a federal watchdog found, including new engines and radar.

The findings, in a new report from the Government Accountability Office, come as the Air Force spends an estimated $21 billion to keep the 76 aging bombers flying decades past their planned lifespan. The two costliest programs, new engines and radar, are running over on all three counts.

The engine program is the biggest. Costs have risen 38% since 2018, to more than $15 billion. Development has slipped 32 months. Flight testing is now four years late. The Air Force plans to start building engines the same quarter it starts testing them.

Here's the thing, though: While being over budget and behind schedule isn't a good thing, the upgrade of the B-52 is still a decent deal for the American taxpayers. The costs of the upgrades are a pittance when set against the overall War Department budget. It's a small fraction of what we're spending on the new B-21 project. These are warbirds worth keeping in service. The Center Square story linked above continued:

For all the risk, the B-52 is a small line in the Pentagon's budget. The Air Force's 2027 request seeks about $480 million for B-52 modernization. It asks for $6.1 billion for the B-21, the stealth bomber meant to eventually replace it, and $1.5 billion for a new nuclear cruise missile the B-52 is being modified to carry.

There's no doubt that the B-52 fleet is aging. The current complement consists only of the B-52H, the last mark of the B-52 to be produced. The most recent airframes rolled off Boeing's assembly line in 1962. For the record, I'm a 1961 model myself, and a quick look at my profile photo will tell you I'm no spring chicken. These airplanes are effectively a bunch of spare parts flying in formation, but that doesn't mean they aren't worth keeping around. There is value in something this time-tested when you have air superiority and a few square kilometers you need to have destroyed right away. The BUFF is a bomb truck, but it's a deucedly effective bomb truck, and these upgrades will make it rather more effective, as well as keeping it in service for right around a century. That's a feat that one associates with the famous Colt-Browning 1911 pistol, not aircraft.

So, yes, some scrutiny has to be applied to these cost and budget overruns. But this doesn't mean it's not worth doing.

Now, can we talk about the wisdom of keeping the A-10s around again?

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