Green Flash,

IIRC, It has been looked at a couple of times. Got rejected both times. The first time the argument was that it was supposed to pay for itself over the remaining life of the fleet, but no one would fund the money up front. The USAF/DoD also, as this year, wanted to reduce the size of the fleet so were unwilling to accept a program based on maintaining the size of the fleet. They also made the case based on higher reliability and savings on maintenance, but there were arguments about maintenance intervals and costings.

The second time round the additional case was made that the extra endurance/range would relieve the load on the KC-135 force. But, to be honest, the hours they actually fly a year I wouldn´t it would have made a lot of difference.

It´s a nice idea, but there are so many higher priority calls on any available funds, its never going to happen.

They finally saw sense and realised you couldn't replace 8 engines with 4, the dangers of asymetric thrust due to an engine failure were too nasty.

The re-engining idea has been around since the Boeing 757/C-17 engines went into service in 1982. The asymmetric issue can be dealt with. The last look was by the Defense Science Board in 04, I think, and chided the AF for using an economic model based on $1/USG fuel - not the $17/USG that it costs out of the back end of a KC-135.
It makes technical and economic sense but never happened and never will. The fighter generals simply never imagined that the B-52 could be this important for so long.

Found a photo of it....

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c2...al/B1Boner.jpg

The following part-quote from the link given in post #14 alarmed me a bit:

"...would save the Air Force $681 million in procurement, operations and manpower costs, and allow the service to eliminate or reassign nearly 4,000 airmen."

Imagine the scene as airman speaks to boss: "Sir, I'm not terribly keen on being eliminated so can I be considered for reassignment instead?"

I had a couple of extra days on the ground at DG due to this accident.

Unconfirmed rumour is that the 7500' of runway was used as the boys touched down they attempted a go-around (hard to believe that the pre-landing checks had not been done - but that seems to be the case). Luckily no one hurt, but I was not aware as a previous post intimates that the B1 was ever on fire.