Sometimes Old Technology Is Appropriate

[propellix]

Sometimes Old Technology Is Appropriate
...As for USAF, the obvious example is the B-52. As we reported earlier, the BUFF will fly until at least 2050 and probably beyond. It seems likely there will be 100-year-old examples in service although the current retirement date would technically see the type out of service at a fresh-faced 88.
The first B-52s were equipped with a tail gunner position. The current B-52Hs are technology hubs with plenty of flexibility for improvement. The new engines that 76 of them will receive will give them better performance, cut maintenance and boost reliability (although anything less than four engine failures is not much of an issue).
At the bargain price of about $3 billion, including weapons and electronics upgrades, the USAF will get a modern fleet of subsonic, lunch bucket bombers that can obliterate life as we know it on Earth. Developing a new platform that could deliver that level of utter destruction would cost at least 100 times more and since the result would be the same, why bother?
There have been a couple of other examples of the aerial forces reaching back in time for modern-day support, notably the Navy’s resurrection of some legacy F/A-18 Hornets from desert storage while it waited for the F-35C.
Then there’s the continuously delayed retirement of the A-10, which can really only do one thing but does it better than anything else and comes in really handy when the circumstances dictate.
None, however, is more intriguing than the continued use of the F-117 Nighthawk.
As we recently reported, the original stealth fighter has allegedly gone back to the front lines in the Middle East and created some fresh mayhem over Syria. That unsubstantiated report is buttressed by well-documented sightings of Nighthawks tooling around the desert ranges of California, often in tandem with F-16s and F-35s.
Although it was officially retired 10 years ago, there are 52 flight-ready F-117s in storage in the desert and apparently four of them may have been dropping bombs in Syria in 2017.
It makes sense, if you think about it. Direct involvement by U.S. F-22s, which replaced the F-117, would be a major provocation in the delicate balance of military power in the region. But there are circumstances in which the off-the-books Nighthawk might be a viable option. After all, it was designed to evade the very Russian-supplied antiaircraft radars and fighters that Syria operates. And since all of the Nighthawk’s once top-secret capabilities have been thoroughly and publicly explored and revealed, losing an airframe in Syria would not be much of an intelligence blow compared to the loss of an F-22 or F-35.
We’ll likely never know officially if the F-117 was or is operational but I have to applaud the abstract thinking that created the plausible scenario of putting a 38-year-old uniquely capable machine back to work.
Makes me want to charge up the batteries and go for a ride in that 36-year-old Cruiser. You never know …

[theoderich]

Dazu gab es letztes Jahr einen Bericht:

New Video Of F-117s Flying Out Of Tonopah Emerges Despite Their Fates Being Sealed (29. Juli 2018)

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/2 ... ing-sealed