The U.S. Air Force has lifted the number of B-52 Stratofortress bombers available and ready to fly by nearly 40% under Air Force Global Strike Command’s North Star Readiness Campaign. The effort focuses on the ageing bomber fleet and targets maintenance delays, spare-parts shortages, depot bottlenecks and engineering support issues that have kept B-52s and B-1s on the ground.
The readiness drive has reduced mission-impacting parts shortages, known as MICAPs, from more than 450 to about 160. It has also shortened some lateral parts shipments from more than a week to as little as two or three days. North Star brings together Air Force Global Strike Command, Air Force Materiel Command and the Defence Logistics Agency in an effort to improve fleet availability while the service modernises the B-52 and prepares future long-range strike aircraft.
The Air Force has not published a current mission-capable rate for the B-52 fleet, leaving the improvement framed in relative rather than absolute terms. Even so, a gain of this scale is significant for long-range strike capacity, nuclear and conventional deterrence, and global deployment availability across a force built around ageing airframes.