Boeing B-52J / B-52 Re-Engining

[mkellytx]

Will the new engines make the weight capacity for the B52 increase or will it be the same

The main advantage of the new engines is better efficiency and engines that are currently in production and supported. Apparently, all of the spares from the -141's are gone and the TF-33's aren't easily supportable these days. The more efficient engines definitely reduce the need for tankers. Stand-off is still the game for peer advocacies, but permissive environments will still allow for direct weapons such as GBU-12's, 38's and the like.

 

[apparition13]

Contract for New B-52 Engines 'Imminent' | Air & Space Forces Magazine

The Air Force expects to award a contract on the B-52 re-engining program within the next nine days, service acquisition officials said Sep. 21.

www.airandspaceforces.com

So that's not an actual range, but you can probably deduce it from published figures for the B-52H. And of course, that was a target from before the final selection, so it could change specific to the F130. But any way you slice it, if they get even close to a 40% range increase, that's a huge relief to the tanker force.

The main advantage of the new engines is better efficiency and engines that are currently in production and supported. Apparently, all of the spares from the -141's are gone and the TF-33's aren't easily supportable these days. The more efficient engines definitely reduce the need for tankers. Stand-off is still the game for peer advocacies, but permissive environments will still allow for direct weapons such as GBU-12's, 38's and the like.

Looking at the B-52H standard aircraft characteristics, with a bomb load of around 35 thousand pounds (internal I presume, which is enough to cover eight 4000 pound class weapons), the plane has a combat radius of around 3500 nautical miles, which looks to be without inflight refueling. A 40% range improvement would add 1400nm to that, for pretty close to 5000 miles. Add a 1500-2000nm cruise missile, and targets potentially up to 7000nm away could be attacked without refueling while returning to the base of origin.

External carriage would reduce that. Potentially by quite a bit, as the G with 8 SRAMs and 12 ALCMs had a radius of just over 1000nm, but that was for a low altitude mission, not high. Low with external stores looks to have around 60% of the radius of low with only internal carriage. Assuming that relationship holds for high altitudes, for the new engines that would translate to a 3000nm radius for a 20 cruise missile loadout. Add in the range of the missile to get the distance from the target without refueling while returning to land where the bomber took off.