the Air Force believes it can get a 30% gain in fuel efficiency and (given less weight) a 40% gain in range.
@rangerrebew YIKES! That's HUGE in terms of both cost and flexibility. Being able to fly to distant targets without having to refuel is a big bonus.
Ever seen and heard/felt a flight of these things take off?
I was screwing around at Kadena AFB on Okinawa one day doing something something forgotten around 1967,and happened to see a flight of them taking off heavily laden with bombs for a bombing mission in VN.
We are talking about sound so loud you can FEEL it beating against you as you stand along the runway fence. CRAZY sound. Never seen or heard anything like that before or since.
Then the damn things start slowly rolling off the line to gain speed for take-off,and damned if the wings didn't "flap" almost like a bird's wings as they rolled down the strip. Completely freaked me out that something that long and heavy,with THAT much torque applied to them could move that far up and down and not just break off. In my "minds-eye" I could see rivets popping off like machine gun bullets. You have to see something like that for yourself in order to believe it,and even then you are in awe of the forces being applied and controlled. The engineers that designed and oversaw the construction of those things were some damn smart critters!
Especially when you consider that some of the B-52's flying today are older than the pilots flying them.
