A B-52 Stratofortress takes off from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., Aug. 21. The bomber from the 5th Bomb Wing conducted a training mission in the skies over North Dakota.
Photo Courtesy of the US Air Force
Minot is an interesting base, in that it is the last true Strategic Air Command facility, a fully functioning relic of the Cold War. Minot is the only remaining base to house both a bomber wing and a strategic missile (ICBM) wing. I *believe* that Minot’s B-52s are still tasked with the nuclear delivery mission, although much of the Stratofortress mission has shifted to conventional support of the Global War on Terror.
Hey.
Watch who you callin’ a relic, whippersnapper.
Good to see you post the B.
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Talk about an aluminum overcast! This is an aluminum frontal-system!
Yes, they are still tasked with that mission. Although it is not the focus these days.
Amusingly, the older navigators make fun of the younger ones as “GPS jockeys.” You see, a going in assumption of a nuke mission is that everything outside your own aircraft will not be available. Radar, inertial and a few who still remember how to use a sextant.
I read you loud and clear, Brent.
Awhile back was at Damn Neck naval base as a tech rep for one of the companies I now do development work for, wanted to check things in the real against the computer screens on the bridge, so I used my sextant.
Those youngsters stood behind me and marveled at how I was “divining” our position from the stars.
Being African American, which in my SAC days was simply called, “Negro” — a term that does not bother me at all and one I kind of wish we still used (and COULD use, damn PC nonsense… ) I turned around when done and smiled at ‘em and told ‘em it was “old witchdoctor voodoo”. Then I realized that these youngsters couldn’t even dig the humor in that remark.
What in God’s name has this society created?
And Brent, you are spot on about everything with a silicon junction in it going south in the face of nuclear pulse. Been involved in the testing of that stuff. They used to sell “Rad Hardened” transistors for more money. They were a joke, came from the same barrels.
Of course, that old tube driven Collins radio would just come right back to life after the pulse was done throwing half of the magnetosphere in one direction violently. “There was some static or somethin’ here a minute ago, daddy, let’s go!”
The B-2 has some tricks up its sleeve about that issue, though.
And don’t forget those MX missiles. Read back at the beginning of this year that they cut back 50 of them to have more money to go elswhere.
That would leave about 450 multiple-head possibilities still in service.
Did you ever read what Kruschev’s closest advisor told him when he asked the man if he thought Kennedy “had the stuff to do it?”
Heh.
Not that I was in love with JFK. But he might have gotten drunk enough to engage.
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single warhead these days Geezer, START compliance and all that…
John is right, single warhead, but they kept three wings worth of missiles. It gives flexibility in targeting when we have fewer warheads.
Geezer, most of what I saw that was called “hardened” was the stuff that would start back up again after the pulse, even the ones that had those transistors you mentioned. Nothing was going to be able to receive or transmit, etc, during a pulse. The next best solution is twofold. Make sure it doesn’t get damaged by the pulse and then make sure it can start back up in a “known state.”
I didn’t get to experience SAC, but had the privelage of working in a B-52 test unit. They had a pile of the “greybeards.”
Muscle Spasms Caused By Valium