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There are so many questions to be answered about what led to yesterday’s fatal mishap involving a B-52H bomber at Edwards Air Force Base. The crash was tragic on a level the base, which sits at the center of America’s flight testing ecosystem, has not experienced, at least to our knowledge, for 75 years. The human impact here is just hard to quantify at this time. At the same time, there will be a major developmental impact, too, especially when it comes to work that is being done to modernize the B-52. This is a constellation of programs that are seen as vital to U.S. national security, and are also already running far behind schedule and over budget. At this time, we do know that the aircraft in question was being used to support the Radar Modernization Program (RMP), and its loss will have ramifications for that effort. The RMP has already suffered years of delays and major cost growth, the latter of which triggered a deep, legally mandated review. However, in the past year, the U.S. Air Force has been talking more positively about progress on this critical upgrade, as well as other parts of a larger B-52 modernization effort that have faced their own hurdles. “It was a B-52 that was on initial takeoff, supporting the Radar Modernization Program,” Air Force Col. James Hayes, Deputy Commander of the 412th Test Wing at Edwards, said at a brief press conference yesterday. “It was a local test sortie. It took off, and immediately after takeoff, crashed and burst into flames.”

“After reviewing the footage of the crash, it was deemed that this was an unrecoverable crash and unsurvivable,” Col. Hayes added. The B-52 had “a mixed crew of military, government civilians, and government contractors supporting this test mission.” ... When reached by TWZ for comment today, Boeing reiterated a brief statement it made yesterday that confirmed two of its employees died in the crash. ... Boeing, the original manufacturer of the B-52, is serving as the prime integrator for the RMP. Raytheon is supplying the new AN/APQ-188 active electronically-scanned array (AESA) radar, which is derived primarily from the AN/APG-79. In the United States, versions of the AN/APG-79 are in service today on U.S. Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and all EA-18G Growlers, as well as U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18A-D Hornets. The AN/APG-82 used on Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles and F-15EX Eagle IIs also builds on the AN/APG-79. The AN/APQ-188 will replace the mechanically-scanned AN/APQ-166 found on B-52s today.

The RMP is one of many major upgrades planned for the Air Force’s entire fleet of 76 B-52s in the coming years. The bombers are also set to get all-new engines, improved communication suites, and more. The changes will be so substantial inside and out that the designation of the bombers will switch from B-52H to B-52J in the process. “It is too early to tell,” a U.S. Air Force official told TWZ today when asked about potential impacts to the RMP. ... The publicly stated plan for the RMP has called for the integration of the AN/APQ-188 radar onto two B-52s to support initial testing. Modification of those bombers began in Fiscal Year 2023, and the first example with the new radar touched down at Edwards in December 2025. Air Force budget documents say the second radar test B-52 is expected to be ready some time in Fiscal Year 2026, which began on October 1, 2025. Whether that milestone has already been reached is unclear. It is also not known how many AN/APQ-188s may be available at all at present. “The remaining test-phase radars are expected to be delivered through the summer of 2024,” Raytheon said in a press release back in 2023.

As noted, the RMP has already suffered significant delays. Under the original program schedule, flight testing was expected to start in 2024. The initial goal was for AN/APQ-188-equipped B-52s to begin flying operational sorties in 2027. As it stands now, the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase of the program is expected to run into the middle of 2029, with initial operational capability then coming in 2030. These delays have also come along with substantial cost growth. In 2021, the estimated price tag for development of the AN/APQ-188 and integration of those radars onto the Air Force’s full fleet of 76 B-52s was pegged at nearly $2.4 billion, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). By 2023, the RMP’s costs had risen by 12.6 percent, per GAO. The program was eventually subjected to an extensive legally required review of its requirements and cost targets, which led to a scaling back of planned capabilities, at least initially.

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The AN/APQ-188 is still set to provide essential new capabilities, in part just by being a more modern AESA design. As TWZ has written in the past:

“In general, AESA radars offer greater range, fidelity, and resistance to countermeasures, as well as the ability to provide better overall general situational awareness, compared to mechanically scanned types. Increasingly advanced AESAs bring additional capabilities, including electronic warfare and communications support.” “For the B-52, any new multi-mode AESA will improve the bomber’s target acquisition and identification capabilities, including when used together with targeting pods available for the bombers now. New radars for the bombers will also be helpful when it comes to guiding networked weapons over long distances to their targets and could provide a secondary ground moving target indicator (GMTI) and synthetic aperture radar surveillance capabilities. The radar upgrade could help defend B-52s from air-to-air threats, including through improved detection of incoming hostile aircraft.”

“Boeing has already looked at some schedule improvement that we’ve seen,” Air Force Gen. Dale White, the service’s Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Critical Major Weapon Systems, also told TWZ and others more recently at a roundtable at the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) annual Warfare Symposium in February. White was speaking at the time collectively about progress on the RMP and the Commercial Engine Replacement Program (CERP) for the B-52 fleet. At that time, Gen. White also highlighted how the relatively small size of the B-52 fleet, combined with the operational demands placed on it, had created additional challenges for modernizing the bombers. The B-52s are in high demand to support conventional combat operations, as underscored by their heavy use in the recent conflict with Iran. A portion of the fleet is also a key element of the air leg of America’s nuclear deterrent triad, which imposes additional hard operational requirements for available aircraft. “The challenge with B-52 that I think everybody forgets, it’s such a small fleet that has such a tremendous requirement in terms of readiness,” White said. “You’ve got to have a certain number on the ramp. That’s a requirement.”

With the B-52 fleet expected to fly into the 2050s, it is extremely likely that the Air Force will move to regenerate a bomber from storage to replace the one lost yesterday, just to meet general operational demands. That is typically a weeks-long process, at best, for an aircraft of this type and size. Since 2015, the Air Force has returned two other B-52s to service to make up for losses. One of these aircraft replaced a B-52 that crashed and burned at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam in 2016. The other one took the place of a bomber that was totaled on the ground when an electrical fire broke out during routine maintenance at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana in 2015. Thankfully, there were no fatalities in either of those mishaps. With CERP and the other modernization efforts underway, there is high demand for resources to support B-52 test and evaluation work overall. This is reflected in a nearly tenfold year-over-year increase in the planned budgeting for B-52 test aircraft asset support at Edwards. The Air Force received just over $1.5 million to help pay for “the test aircraft, manpower, Bomber Modular Data Acquisition System (BMDAS), and facilities at the Air Force Test Center” in Fiscal Year 2026, according to official budget documents. The service is now seeking nearly $11 million in this same line item for the next fiscal cycle.

In the meantime, as mentioned, the Air Force has rightfully made clear that its immediate priorities following yesterday’s B-52 crash are engaging with the families of those who perished and working on the investigation, which could take months to complete. Edwards has also at least shut down flight operations today, primarily due to the state of the runway following the mishap. The full scale and scope of the impacts to the RMP from yesterday’s loss remain to be seen.

The UK’s most senior uniformed official gave a warning to lawmakers today that future military operations will be reduced if extra funding is not approved by Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Treasury to support the Ministry of Defence. Richard Knighton, chief of the UK defense staff, told a House of Lords committee that he is “most concerned” about day-to-day operations budgeting, which falls under a Resource Departmental Expenditure Limit (RDEL) account. “Without changes to the settlement that, as [former Defense Secretary] John Healey set out” then operations, training and exercising “will come under pressure,” Knighton said. Healey resigned from his post last week, amid a row over a defense funding plan, which he viewed as insufficient, and said “could make the country less safe.” When asked by George Robertson, chair of the Lords International Relations and Defence Committee, if the UK will have to reduce its capabilities as funding uncertainty persists, Knighton said, “We will have to dial back our activities and our exercise and operational activity if the level of resource funding that is available to us does not increase.” He further noted that the matter “is still to be debated and decided.”

It remains to be seen if Starmer and the Treasury will offer new UK Defense Secretary Dan Jarvis funding above £13.5 billion ($18.1 billion), a figure reportedly offered to Healey in a bid to stem a £18 billion gap to support big ticket acquisitions. The alleged budget is reportedly set to be partly funded by cutting other departments’ capital budgets by 1 percent. The new funding is set to be included in the UK’s forthcoming Defence Investment Plan (DIP), billed to outline major equipment investments and cuts over the next decade. After months of delay, the document is expected to be published before the NATO Summit in Ankara next month. “What we need is a clear path” to meet NATO’s core defense spending target of 3.5 percent GDP, Knighton said today. “We will need to settle what that trajectory is, because it’s that which gives us the ability to plan, and industry the ability to know what to expect.” The UK committed at the NATO Summit in the Hague last year to hit the new alliance target by 2035. Starmer is proposing spending of 2.68 percent GDP by 2030, up from 2.3 percent spent in 2025.

Knighton revealed, however, that cuts are on the way near term. “In the [2025] Strategic Defence Review … the plan was for some capabilities to be removed from service, because they could be modernized, they could be delivered in more effective ways,” as the UK took heed of lessons from wars in Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh and the Middle East, he outlined. He pushed back on any sense that the UK’s credibility in the eyes of NATO allies has been adversely affected by the DIP delay. Since taking up the post of chief of the defense staff last year, “One of the things that has struck me is just how valued the UK’s leadership is in NATO,” he noted. Knighton pointed to two joint British-French missions, as examples of deployments where “other nations look to us to lead.” The European partners are committed to leading the coalition of the willing in Ukraine, and the maritime multinational mission in the Strait of Hormuz, once peace is restored in Kyiv and the troubled waterway.

"we're committed to going in after all the trouble's over"

The UK “may soon have to put our money where our mouth is” to adequately support those planned international operations, “but where’s the money?” Paul Taylor, senior visiting fellow at the Belgian-based, European Policy Centre think tank, told Breaking Defense today. “There is an enduring mismatch between the UK wanting to exert leadership in NATO on defense” and its available resources, added the analyst.