[size=4]Our Big Ol’ Bomber[/size=4]
[b]A heavy duty airship is going the distance.[/b]
[i]By Charles E. Miller, a retired Air Force colonel. November 2, 2001 9:00 a.m.[/i]
"The B-52H models now being used to bomb Taliban and al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan entered the Air Force inventory in 1961 and 1962. The 94 B-52s left in the Air Force are the remains of a fleet of 744 aircraft, originally conceived and designed to deliver nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union. The current U.S. Air Force plans to keep these B-52s in the inventory until 2037. That would be 76 years of service — a substantial return on investment.
"The B-52H can deliver a wide variety of U.S. conventional and nuclear munitions. They carry 45 to 51 five-hundred-pound "dumb bombs" and varying numbers of Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), Joint Stand Off Weapons (JSOWs), Cluster Bomb Units (CBUs), and naval mines. Because the airplane is pretty smart, the dumb bombs can be dropped fairly close to friendly troops — within a few hundred yards. The B-52s also carry and fire Air Launched Cruise Missiles.
"These planes fly 7,000 to 8,000 miles un-refueled, at five-hundred to six-hundred miles an hour. Their five person crew is trained to operate the aircraft from about 50,000 feet down to very low altitudes (at night, in tough terrain).
"The media reports that B-52s have been conducting carpet-bombing raids in the vicinity of Mazar-e-Sharif and Bagrum airfield near Kabul. "Carpet bombing" is one of those terms of military art that make even uniformed planners a bit nervous. The term likely originated in World War II, when precision bombing wasn't very precise (you could often tell where the aim point was by identifying the one church steeple still standing after a raid) and when de-housing campaigns were sometimes accepted procedure. Today, many associate carpet bombing with B-52 raids against square miles of seemingly empty jungle in Vietnam. In reality, the B-52 Arc Light bombing missions in Vietnam were often very effective.
"So far in Afghanistan, it appears that B-52 area bombing has been aimed at training facilities and some other garrison-like sites, perhaps with a mixture of high explosives and cluster bomb units. The attacks we have seen on the network news shows this week looked to be fairly precise, well-targeted bombing runs. In one case, I counted 14 or 15 mini-mushrooms in a row, implying that a string of emplacements, trenches, and bunkers were under attack. The Joint Chief's briefer mentioned that such capabilities could also be used against convoys. If you match up two or three B-52s in a V formation and have them drop all their bombs together in a tight box, then you have real carpet bombing. (Earlier models of the B-52 did just that, dropping 84 five-hundred-pound bombs each.)
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