The Government Accountability Office reports that 10 of the Air Force's 13 major B-52 modernization efforts face cost, schedule, or performance risks, with the bomber's costliest upgrade — a full engine replacement — now running roughly $3 billion over its 2023 baseline and more than 15 months behind schedule.

Background

The Senate requested the review of how the Air Force is managing the B-52's transition from a Cold War-era bomber into a platform the service intends to fly through 2050. The fleet's newest airframe was delivered in 1962, and the average B-52 is now 65 years old. Report GAO-26-109272, "B-52 Bomber: Air Force Actions Needed to Improve Major Modernization and Sustainment Efforts," was publicly released July 31, 2026.

Sustaining the bomber that long depends on two major programs moving in parallel: the Commercial Engine Replacement Program (CERP), which swaps the B-52's eight aging TF33 engines for Rolls-Royce F130s, and the Radar Modernization Program (RMP), which fits an RTX active electronically scanned array radar in place of the B-52's legacy analog radar. Boeing is the prime contractor on both efforts. GAO found both efforts, along with eight of the eleven other modernization projects it examined, are behind where the Air Force expected them to be. Across all 13 programs, the Air Force's total modernization price tag now stands at roughly $21 billion.

Key Details

CERP has grown roughly $3 billion in cost and slipped more than 15 months since the Air Force's 2023 risk analysis, pushing the program's total estimated cost to about $15.4 billion — a 38% increase since 2018. GAO found that engine developmental flight testing, originally planned to wrap up well before production, is now not expected to begin until early fiscal 2029, four years later than originally scheduled. Initial operational capability has slipped to 2033, five years behind the original plan.

Despite that slip, GAO reports the Air Force still plans to make its CERP production decision with little to no developmental flight testing complete. GAO warns that starting production ahead of test data creates a real risk of costly rework if engine problems surface once flight testing catches up — the classic "fly before you buy" risk auditors have flagged on major defense programs for decades. The report's lead recommendation is that the Air Force delay its CERP production decision until it completes an updated risk analysis; the service partially concurred, meaning it agreed with the substance but has not committed to the delay GAO wants.

RMP has its own cost and schedule problems. Its budget has grown to $2.9 billion, a 30% increase, and the program is now roughly three and a half years behind its original schedule. As with the engine program, radar production is set to begin with minimal flight-test data in hand — GAO found only 2 of 18 planned developmental flight-test months completed at the point production is set to start. GAO also found that RMP's performance requirements have been scaled back to a "minimum viable product," meaning the Air Force will end up fielding less radar capability than originally planned while paying more for it. One RMP test aircraft crashed in June 2026, killing all eight crew members, according to Breaking Defense's reporting on the GAO findings — a loss that underscores the stakes of compressed test schedules on a program already running behind.

GAO also found a management gap that cuts across nearly the entire modernization portfolio: 12 of the 13 programs it reviewed lack consistent use of digital-engineering tools, such as digital twins, that Defense Department guidance recommends for programs of this scale and complexity. GAO also found that current Air Force maintenance plans assume CERP will finish on time and do not account for the risk of further schedule delays to the engine program.

The underlying risk is the same in both cases: a program that moves into production while flight testing is still incomplete gets locked into a design and manufacturing configuration before all the data needed to validate that configuration exists — the scenario GAO describes for CERP and, separately, for RMP.

The stakes for readiness are already visible in the fleet's performance. The B-52's mission-capable rate fell below 54% in 2024, and the bomber met its annual readiness goals in only 4 of the 11 years between 2011 and 2021. GAO issued six recommendations in total; the Air Force fully concurred with five of them and partially concurred with the CERP production-delay recommendation, according to comments from Col. Timothy Spaulding cited in National Defense Magazine's coverage of the report.

What It Means for Contractors

For Rolls-Royce, RTX, and the subcontractors feeding both the CERP and RMP supply chains, the report is a signal that near-term production quantities and award timing are less certain than program schedules currently suggest. A GAO recommendation to delay the CERP production decision — even one the Air Force has only partially accepted — increases the odds of a stretched-out procurement profile rather than a steady ramp, which affects how suppliers plan tooling, staffing, and long-lead material buys tied to F130 deliveries.

The digital-engineering gap GAO identified across 12 of 13 programs points to near-term opportunity for firms offering digital-twin, model-based systems engineering, and integrated test-data platforms. As congressional attention on the B-52 portfolio increases following this report, the Air Force will likely face pressure to demonstrate it has closed that gap, and program offices often respond to GAO findings like this one by adding digital-engineering line items or task orders to existing contract vehicles rather than waiting for a new competition.

Sustainment and depot-support contractors should also take note of GAO's finding that current maintenance plans do not account for further CERP delays. A bomber fleet averaging 65 years old, with a sub-54% mission-capable rate and a program of record that keeps slipping to the right, points toward continued demand for interim sustainment, parts obsolescence management, and legacy-system support work well beyond whatever date CERP and RMP eventually reach full fielding. Firms positioned in that space should expect sustainment funding to remain a priority even as modernization dollars come under sharper scrutiny from Congress.

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