B-52 Stratofortress

by Bill Yenne

  In turn, the B-1A became a contentious issue in the 1976 presidential election campaign. President Gerald Ford favored the B-1A for its performance and its flexibility, while his challenger, Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, told the Democratic Platform Committee that the bomber was “an example of a proposed system which should not be funded and would be wasteful of taxpayers’ dollars” and promised to kill the program if he was elected.

  As Time magazine reported, “Both sides in the debate agree that the B-l is the hottest bomber ever flown. But is it worth its $102 million price tag? Can it reach targets deep within the Soviet Union if there is a nuclear war? These questions are especially important because, according to present strategy, close to 60 percent of the U.S. nuclear megatonnage will be carried by manned bombers, the rest by missiles based on land and aboard submarines. Concedes Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, a B-1 backer: ‘Considerable logic can be mustered for either side of the argument.’”

  The B-52D Stratofortress named Diamond Lil, covered in snow at the USAF Academy in Colorado Springs. This display aircraft welcomes visitors to the academy. USAF photo, Mike Kaplan

  A B-52D is scrapped in accordance with the SALT II. The nose sections of the other two B-52 carcasses are lying on the ground below. USAF photo, Sgt. Daniel Perez

  AGM-69 SRAMs and Mk 28 thermonuclear bombs (background) in the bomb bay of a B-52H at Ellsworth AFB during Exercise Global Shield in April 1984. USAF photo, Sgt. Boyd Belcher

  Crews from the 92nd Bombardment Wing load AGM-86B ALCMs aboard a B-52G during the November 1985 SAC Combat Weapons Loading Competition at Ellsworth AFB. USAF photo, Sgt. Rose Reynolds

  Airmen load an ATM-84A, the training variant of the AGM-84A Harpoon missile, onto the wing of a B-52G in November 1988. USAF photo, Chief Master Sgt. Don Sutherland

  The missile crew from the 416th Bombardment Wing positions AGM-86B ALCMs for mounting to the pylon of a B-52G at Griffiss AFB in September 1981. USAF photo, Sgt. Pablo Marmolejo

  When Carter was elected, he appointed as his Secretary of Defense the same man who had helped kill the XB-70 and initiate AMSA—Harold Brown. In January 1977, Brown told reporters that “the big advantage [of a manned bomber such as the B-52 or the B-1A] is that it complicates the other side’s problems. The question is how much can you afford to pay for that as compared to the other ways you could spend the funds.”

  When reminded of his earlier role in AMSA, and that he had been called the “Father of the B-1,” Brown went on to say: “Yes, I started the so-called Advanced Manned Strategic Aircraft Program. But it’s a long way from studies to hardware, and I won’t take credit or blame for the full gestation and early childhood of that particular offspring.”

  Finally, on June 30, 1977, Carter and Brown let the axe fall, announcing that the B-1A program, beyond flight testing the first four aircraft, would be terminated. The announcement came just forty-eight hours after the House of Representatives had rejected an amendment to delete the program from the defense budget. Robert Lindsey, writing in the New York Times business section, said that the news hit the forty thousand executives, technicians and assembly-line workers assigned to the B-1A program “like a shell burst.”

  Congressman Robert Dornan of California, where the B-1A would have been built, commented that “they’re breaking out the vodka and caviar in Moscow.”

  They may well have been toasting the B-1A cancellation, but they certainly would not be toasting the system that was to come next.

  Even as a manned bomber to replace the B-52 was no longer in the works, the Defense Department was about to move forward with another plan. This was to arm the B-52G and B-52H with a new weapon that was being called the cruise missile.

  A B-52G carrying AGM-86B air-launched cruise missiles flies overhead near the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards AFB in April 1981. USAF

  Of this weapon, the Soviet news agency Tass complained, “The implementation of these militaristic plans has seriously complicated efforts for the limitation of the strategic arms race.”

  Stand-Off Missiles, the Second Generation

  The term cruise missile, which was mentioned so widely in the media during the late 1970s as the “next big thing” in strategic offense, was actually applicable to several weapons, but for SAC, it meant the Boeing AGM-86 Air-Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM). Though the ALCM earned the headlines, it was one of two air-launched strategic missiles developed and deployed primarily to enhance the B-52 in the late Cold War period.

  The first was the Boeing AGM-69 Short-Range Attack Missile (SRAM). It was originally conceived in 1964 as a successor to the AGM-28 Hound Dog. With a length of 15 feet 10 inches, and a weight of 2,230 pounds, the SRAM was one-third the size of a Hound Dog, but a Stratofortress could carry many more of them. Operationally, B-52s could mount eight AGM-69As internally on a rotary launcher, as well as a dozen externally—compared with just two Hound Dogs on the underwing pylons. The FB-111, meanwhile, could carry six. An AGM-69B (SRAM B) was developed for the B-1A, but this weapon was cancelled when the B-1A program was terminated.

  As the name implies, the range was short—only about 100 miles compared with 700 for the Hound Dog. Both missiles used inertial guidance, but the Hound Dog was powered by a Pratt & Whitney J52 turbojet while the SRAM had a Lockheed SR75 two-stage solid-fuel rocket. The SRAM was armed with a W69 thermonuclear warhead, derived from the B61 bomb, and had a yield of up to 200 kilotons.

  The first AGM-69A test flight came in July 1969, and the AGM-69A SRAM entered service aboard SAC B-52s in 1972. Boeing built around 1,500 through 1975. Having reached a peak number of 1,451 in 1975, there were still more than a thousand in the Strategic Air Command inventory in 1990 when they were withdrawn from service.

  The ALCM, meanwhile, was clearly a generation ahead of the SRAM. It had a range of 1,500 miles, twice that of the Hound Dog, therefore making it a significant improvement in terms of stand-off capability. Being 20 feet 9 inches long and weighing 3,200 pounds, the operational ALCM is only slightly larger than the SRAM, and much smaller than a Hound Dog.

  Boeing designed the AGM-86 so that its air intake, wings, elevons, and vertical tail surfaces are all folded into the fuselage until they are deployed. The compact profile of the folded ALCM made possible the development of an eight-missile rotary launcher that was installed in the bomb bays of 82 B-52Hs. Meanwhile, all ninety-six existing B-52Hs and ninety-eight B-52Gs were equipped to carry six ALCMs on each of two underwing pylons.

  Under the terms of the SALT II agreement of 1979, the ALCM-armed B-52Gs were modified with a distinctive wing root fairing called a “strakelet” so that they could be identified and monitored by Soviet reconnaissance satellites. The B-52Hs were not marked with strakelets as it was common knowledge that all of them were modified to carry ALCMs.

  Those B-52Gs not armed with ALCMs were retrofitted with Heavy Stores Adapter Beams (HSAB) in place of the older underwing pylons. Like the upgrades to the B-52D that had been carried out two decades earlier, the HSAB provided the capability of carrying a much greater conventional weapons load, including Mk 55 bottom mines or Mk 56 moored mines.

  A pair of F-4E Phantom IIs fly in formation with a 2nd Bombardment Wing B-52G during the 15th Air Force’s first “shootout” bombing competition in May 1989. USAF photo, Sgt. Michael Haggerty

  Whereas the Hound Dog utilized turbojet power, and the SRAM was rocket-propelled, the ALCM was equipped with a Williams F107-WR-100 turbofan engine. The operational AGM-86Bs were armed with W80 thermonuclear warheads with a yield up to 170 kilotons. Developed from the B61 thermonuclear bomb, the W80 was also used in the General Dynamics BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile.

  The principal feature that made the ALCM a revolutionary weapons system was its low-level flight characteristics. One of the major technological breakthroughs of the 1970s was Terrain Contour Matching (TERCOM), which was combined with early Global Positioning System (GPS) capability in a guidance system that would allow a cruise missile to navigate au
tonomously in three dimensions at low level.

  The AGM-86B entered production in 1980 and became operational in December 1982 with SAC’s 416th Bombardment Wing at Griffiss AFB in New York. The production of a total of 1,715 missiles was completed in October 1986.

  In the meantime, the U.S. Air Force decided on a conventional future for part of its ALCM inventory. In June 1986 a small number of AGM-86B missiles were converted to conventional weapons. Their nuclear warheads were replaced by a high-explosive blast fragmentation warhead, and they were redesignated as the AGM-86C Conventional Air-Launched Cruise Missile (CALCM).

  This modification also replaced the AGM-86B’s TERCOM guidance system with an internal GPS capability within the existing inertial navigation computer system. Beginning in 1996, additional ALCMs were converted as AGM-86C CALCMs as well as to AGM-86D Block II CALCMs, which were like the AGM-86C but armed with a hardened target penetrating warhead. Both CALCMs were designed to be air-launched by B-52Hs, either from the rotary launcher or underwing pylon.

  While the AGM-86 family has been the signature strategic stand-off armament of the Stratofortress since the 1980s, the B-52G’s HSAB permitted it to carry six McDonnell Douglas (Boeing after 1997) AGM-84 Harpoon antiship missiles. The Harpoon is the air-launched variant of a widely deployed family of antiship missiles that includes the ship-launched RGM-84 and submarine-launched UGM-84 first deployed with the U.S. Navy in 1977.

  An air-to-air front view of a 416th Bombardment Wing B-52G armed with AGM-86B Air-Launched Cruise Missiles (ALCMs). USAF

  An air-to-air view of a KC-10A Extender refueling a B-52G Stratofortress in February 1981. USAF

  A cutaway illustration showing areas singled out for B-52G electronics systems upgrades. USAF

  Around thirty B-52Gs were tasked with maritime patrols, armed with Harpoons, and fitted with a Harpoon Aircraft Command Launch Control Set (HACLCS). Beginning in 1984, they were assigned to Loring AFB in Maine and Andersen AFB on Guam.

  The Cold War, the Final Decade

  Throughout the 1970s, as SAC was drawing down its B-52 force and various entities throughout the United States government were debating a potential replacement, there was an ongoing diplomatic effort aimed at a draw-down of global nuclear weapons capability. The United States and the Soviet Union had reached the point where, to paraphrase Robert McNamara’s MAD doctrine, the mutual destruction of the two powers was assured.

  Earlier efforts to cool the growth and proliferation of nuclear stockpiles had resulted in the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It also led to the beginning of an ongoing dialogue, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT).

  The first fruit of these bilateral talks was the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, as well as an agreement to freeze the number of strategic ballistic missile launchers at existing levels. This meant that new SLBM and ICBM launchers were acceptable so long as an equal number of older launchers were taken off-line. For SAC, the Minuteman III deployment was already at its intended level, and reducing the number of B-52s beyond the number retired by the McNamara draw-down opened the door to the deployment of another strategic bomber such as the B-1A, which was in development during the 1970s.

  An air-to-air left rear view of a B-52G as it flies over the Egyptian pyramids at Giza, 12 miles southwest of central Cairo, during exercise Bright Star ’83. USAF

  A trailer loaded with B61 thermonuclear bombs under a B-52 Stratofortress, during the November 1985 SAC Combat Weapons Loading Competition. USAF photo, Sgt. Bob Simons

  A second round of SALT talks aimed at ending the manufacture of nuclear weapons and reducing the number of launchers led to the SALT II agreement, which was signed by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and President Jimmy Carter in Vienna on June 18, 1979.

  However, as the United States was reducing its fleet, the Soviets were not. At the same time that SAC was decommissioning B-52s and Carter was canceling the B-1A, the Soviet Union had gone forward with its equivalent of the B-1A, the supersonic Tupolev Tu-22, code-named Backfire by NATO. The Soviets were also building a new class of ICBMs, the SS-17 through SS-19, which had Multiple Independently targetable Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) capability of ten or more warheads each, while the Minuteman III had just three.

  President Ronald Reagan took office in January 1981 as the Soviet Union was rapidly expanding its global offensive capacity and pushing new weapons through every loophole in the SALT II treaty.

  In the foreword to the 1981 Defense Department publication Soviet Military Power, Reagan’s defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, wrote that “we have witnessed the continuing growth of Soviet military power at a pace that shows no signs of slackening in the future.” He went on to say that “There is nothing hypothetical about the Soviet military machine. Its expansion, modernization, and contribution to projection of power beyond Soviet boundaries are obvious.”

  A B-52 Stratofortress from the 416th Bombardment Wing prepares to land at Elmendorf AFB in Alaska during Amalgam Warrior 1988. USAF photo, Master Sgt. Ed Boyce

  Reagan’s approach to the Soviet build up was different than that of his predecessors. Though he sought the same goal of a world free of the nuclear threat, he realized that it could only be achieved from a position of strength rather than a position of weakness. His perspective on weapons development was vigorously expansive, with emphasis on both defensive and offensive hardware. Announced in March 1983, his view of nuclear defense was the Strategic Defense Initiative, a wide range of research programs aimed at studying the feasibility of defending against ICBMs.

  At the same time, he undertook the largest upgrade and modernization of the American armed forces in nearly three decades. This included a broad program of cruise missile development, which included not only the ALCM for the U.S. Air Force, but the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) for the U.S. Navy and the similar Ground-Launched Cruise Missile (GLCM) for the U.S. Air Force. For the Strategic Air Command, it also meant moving forward on the ten-warhead LGM-118 Peacekeeper ICBM, as well as a revival of the B-1 program, the super-secret program that led to the B-2, and modernization of the B-52 fleet.

  The B-1 was revived under a Reagan administration initiative known as the Long-Range Combat Aircraft (LRCA), which sought a strategic bomber that could augment the Stratofortresses in SAC inventory. The obvious answer was an updated variation on the B-1A. Rockwell got the green light, and Reagan announced in October 1981 that one hundred of such aircraft would be acquired under the designation B-1B. Using two existing B-1As as testbeds, the aircraft was redesigned with a reduced radar cross section and other adaptations for both nuclear and conventional bombing missions that took into account the Soviet air defenses of the 1980s. Flight testing of the modified B-1As began in March 1983, and the first production B-1B made its first flight in October 1984. The one hundredth and last B-1B was delivered in May 1988.

  Trading reflective white undersides for camouflage gray: a July 1984 view of a newly repainted 92nd Bombardment Wing B-52G at Fairchild AFB. USAF photo, Sgt. Bob Simons

  B-52s in the U.S. Air Force Inventory

  Reagan Era Through the End of the Cold War

  Note: The 1982–1983 period marked the retirement of the B-52D fleet. (The average age goes down as the oldest aircraft are retired.) Source: Air Force Almanac

  The B-2 originated in 1979 under the innocuous-sounding Advanced Technology Bomber (ATB) program. The “advanced technology” was, of course “stealth technology,” which was actually a basket of technologies with the goal of reducing the radar cross section of an aircraft to almost nil. In October 1981, even as the contract was let for the B-1A, Northrop Grumman received the contract to build the ATB under the designation B-2A. The huge flying wing, incorporating a myriad of innovations, made its debut flight in July 1989. Originally, the U.S. Air Force intended to acquire 132 B-1Bs, but the aircraft was still on the assembly line when the Cold War ended, and the number was cut to a mere 21.

  These two ne
w strategic bomber programs were understood to complement, rather than to replace, the B-52, though there was clearly an interest in an eventual replacement for a combat aircraft that had already been in front line service longer than any other.

  The Stratofortress had survived in service to see the end of nearly half a century of Cold War. If it had been Winston Churchill’s 1946 Iron Curtain speech that articulated the fact of the conditions that began the Cold War, it was a speech by Ronald Reagan on June 12, 1987, that marked the beginning of the end. Standing in Berlin, the city blockaded by Josef Stalin in 1948 and divided by the Berlin Wall in 1961, Reagan looked at the Wall, pregnant with symbolism, and issued an invitation to his Soviet counterpart, remarking “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall!”

  A little more than two years after Ronald Reagan had called for Gorbachev to tear it down, the Berlin Wall did come down. It was torn down, however, not by Gorbachev, nor by force of arms, but by the people whom it had imprisoned for more than a generation.