A KC-135 Stratotanker from the 465th Air Refueling Squadron assigned to Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma, refuels a B-52 Stratofortress from the 96th Bomb Squadron assigned to Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, during a cross country mission 13 Sept 2021. (U.S. Air Force photo by 2nd Lt. Mary Begy)
DAYTON, Ohio — The Air Force is weighing whether to pull scrapped B-52 Stratofortresses out of the boneyard, according to an Air Force official, prompted in part by the demands of operations in the Middle East.
“We can and have looked at bringing B-52s out of Arizona,” Col. Timothy Spaulding, the Air Force’s portfolio acquisition executive for bombers, said Monday in a media roundtable here at the Life Cycle Industry Days conference. Arizona is home to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base where divested aircraft, including the B-52, are sent for retirement.
“That’s not a necessarily easy thing to do, and there’s some limitation to how far you might go on that number,” Spaulding continued, adding that it was more of a “maybe” consideration for planners.
The Air Force’s bomber fleet, consisting of the Eisenhower-era B-52, B-1 Lancer and B-2 Spirit, has been in high demand in recent years, and now in particular amid war with Iran. Spaulding said ongoing operations in the Middle East have been a factor in whether to revive scrapped B-52s, whose current operational inventory consists of 76 aircraft, but stressed whether to do so has been a continuous consideration.
