Last edited Sun Jun 14, 2026, 11:52 PM - Edit history (1)
But Trump and Hegseth decided to put that on parade for all to see. The latest estimates say we are burning up about a trillion dollars with this "excursion". They now can see that, while we can pick off fishing boats at sea, and we can blow up schools and hospitals at a distance, we really are in no position to conduct a big ground operation, especially when we don't have allies lined up.
Does anybody else find it almost unbelievable that, after spending so much on the B1 and B2 programs, we are mostly afraid to use them. So much so that we are embarking on a program to retrofit modern engines on the remaining fleet of 78 B-52s. The idea is to keep them flying until 2050. At that time, every one of those aircraft will be at least 88 years old, and some will be flying at 100 years.
Meanwhile Ukraine and Iran are dealing huge blows to Russia and the US respectively using $20,000 drones against our weapons that cost from $1,000,000 to $35,000,000 each.
Not only has Trump made the US considerably less powerful, he has also screwed much of the US defense industry that made much of their profit selling to NATO allies. The NATO countries are running away from the US makers in droves now.
And back to the B-52 thing, the Pentagon has convinced themselves that the B-52 is the best bombing option because of the range and enormous payload (and the time aloft without refueling will be extended about 30% with the modern engines.) But the newest B-52s were built 40-50 years before the stealth airframes were invented. The B-52 only works when you can keep them at high altitude, a hundred miles away from the action. OK, that can work, but it means that the ordnance has to be expensive guided missiles. These are all about $2,000,000 per shot, and we just burned up about 5 years' production, with no real impact on Iran.
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