Visitors to Tucson’s Pima Air and Space Museum are awed by aircraft whose nicknames evoke power and speed: Skyhawk, Super Sabre, Avenger, Tomcat, Eagle, Phantom, Raptor, Thunderchief. Yet, two iconic planes – the B-52 and the A-10 – are celebrated for their mocking monikers: BUFF (Big Ugly Flying F***er) and Warthog. While the planes have been aloft since the mid-1950s and mid-1970s respectively, Pentagon brass and industry lobbyists have long urged their replacement by sleeker, faster, stealthier and, of course, more expensive aircraft. Yet both planes remain Air Force workhorses and one lent its name to a 1980s music group, the B-52s.
The A-10, a relatively slow, low-altitude, close-ground-support aircraft that originally cost about $18 million each ($80 million in today’s dollars) defies “sleek.” Its side-mounted engines and distinctive nose-mounted cannon — key to its effectiveness — protrude like sore thumbs. Pilots appreciate the heavy, protective steel canopy surrounding their seats.
People are also reading…
Critics immediately dubbed it a flying anachronism. Rather than cockpit instruments, they joked, pilots relied on vintage pinup calendars for guidance. But ease of maintenance and success in destroying enemy armor and ground forces won the A-10 accolades during combat in the Persian Gulf, Grenada, the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan and, recently, Syria. With around 80 A-10s based at Tucson’s Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, veterans’ groups, civic boosters, and politicians such as senator and former A-10 pilot Martha McSally, praise “their” Warthogs. They question the ability of a proposed replacement, the F-35, to duplicate its mission.
Over a decade in development, the F-35 “Lightning” has experienced huge cost overruns and technical glitches. One of the most expensive warplanes ever designed, its speed, complexity, and fragile stealth coating may impede its ability to provide close ground support. Congress hedged its bets, funding the F-35 along with upgrades for the A-10 designed to extend its operational life another 10 to 15 years. President Trump recently diverted some F-35 funding to border wall construction.
Compared to the B-52, the A-10 is a toddler. Boeing designed the BUFF in the late 1940s. First flown in 1952, the Air Force began its deployment in 1954. The eight-engined bomber dwarfed all previous combat aircraft. Its fuel-filled wings appeared to flap during takeoff, resembling a prehistoric creature. Cruising at a subsonic 600 mph, the BUFF could fly over 8,000 miles (more with midair refueling) and release a 70,000-pound payload of hydrogen bombs against Soviet targets. By 1962, Boeing produced 744 B-52s for $8 million each, about $75 million in today’s dollars. Seventy-five are still deployed.
At the height of the Cold War, a dozen or so B-52s remained airborne at all times to avoid destruction from a Soviet surprise strike. Others could fly within 15 minutes of an order. Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 classic film satire, “Dr. Strangelove,” vividly depicted pilot Slim Pickens mounting an H-bomb like a bronco in the plane’s belly and riding it toward a target.
Though never used in nuclear warfare, the B-52 saw action in virtually all military engagements since Korea. It dropped conventional bombs, napalm, laser-guided ordnance, cruise missiles and even propaganda leaflets . The BUFF can attack from an altitude of 50,000 feet where, a general explained, “it cannot be seen or heard until the bombs start falling, and then it’s like rolling thunder.” Alternatively, it can fly just above tree level, with the roar of its engines striking terror below. During the Vietnam War, B–52s flew 100,000 bombing missions.
In the 1990s it saw action in the Balkans and Kuwait. Since 2001 it dropped laser-guided bombs against Taliban hiding in Afghan caves, devastated the Iraqi army, and later attacked Islamic State positions in Syria. Able to remain aloft for many hours, the B-52 can linger outside combat zones, serving as a launch platform for laser- and satellite-guided weapons, drones and cruise missiles — none of which existed when the plane first flew.
The cockpit of a B-52, much like the A-10, resembles a 1960s Radio Shack showroom, with racks of dials, vacuum tubes, and hand-operated cables connecting pilots to the engines. Originally lacking toilets, crews (then all male), urinated through rubber hoses. Air crews often encounter graffiti in nooks and crannies left decades earlier. One pilot found an inscription etched by his pilot grandfather. By installing upgrades and using parts cannibalized from decommissioned aircraft, some B-52s will remain operational until 2050, nearly a century after its first flight.
In 1982, on the 30th anniversary of its debut, President Ronald Reagan implored Congress to fund a replacement. Many B-52s, he quipped, “are older than the pilots that fly them.” But as with the Warthog, “new and improved” meant less versatile, rugged and reliable.
Among proposed replacements, a nuclear-powered prototype able to fly for weeks proved too radioactive for crew safety. The sleek B-58 crashed repeatedly during testing. The supersonic B-70 spewed toxic waste along its flight path. Debuting in 1988 at $300 million per plane, the B–1B was plagued by engine fires and a radar jamming system that sometimes jammed itself. Rolled out with fanfare in the 1990s, the $2-billion-per plane B-2 “Stealth” bomber carried a small payload and, if flown in bad weather, risked damaging its fragile radar-masking coating.
As Germany and Japan discovered in WWII, the drive for more complex, specialized, and expensive weapons can pay diminishing returns. Nazi strategists spared no expense developing V-2 rockets, technological marvels with modest military impact. Resources diverted from aircraft production left Germany fatally vulnerable to Allied air attacks. Similarly, Japanese admirals obsessed with surpassing anything floated by the U.S. Navy poured vast resources into building two gargantuan Yamato-class battleships, rather than desperately needed aircraft carriers. The fuel-guzzling behemoths seldom left port and when they did were promptly sunk by U.S. naval aircraft.
The drive to achieve technical supremacy can blind strategists to mundane realities. Sometimes it pays to stick with older but versatile technology, even if it has a funny name.
Michael Schaller