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A B-52 bomber crashed shortly after takeoff from a U.S. Air Force base in the Mojave Desert in Southern California and caught fire Monday, killing all eight people on board, including two Boeing employees.
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The B-52, which was making its first flight as part of the radar modernization program, was conducting a local test flight. It took off at 11:20 a.m. local time, then crashed and caught fire immediately afterwards. The deputy commander of Edwards Air Force Base said that after reviewing the footage of the accident, it did not offer ” no chance of survival ».
“Edwards Air Force Base was the scene of a terrible tragedy, and we lost eight great Americans”declared Colonel James Hayes during a press briefing Monday evening.
No indication was immediately provided on the causes of the disaster. An investigation has been opened, the US army said.
“For now, we will establish an interim security commission to carry out initial fact-gathering, which will then lead to the creation of a security inquiry commission to examine the root causes. Once this stage is completed, which will take approximately 30 days, the matter will be handed over to a commission of inquiry into the accident.”said Col. James Hayes, deputy commander of Edwards Air Force Base.
He added that the entire investigation process and the search for root causes could take up to six months.
A new program linked to Boeing
In 2025, Boeing sent a B-52 to Edwards equipped with a new, modernized radar system. A test team planned to conduct ground and flight tests on the aircraft throughout 2026 to inform a production decision, the Air Force said in a 2025 press release.
The modern active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar system replaced the aircraft’s obsolete radar for efficiency reasons. It is unknown if it was the same device as that involved in Monday’s accident.
Edwards Air Force Base, located approximately 60 miles north of Los Angeles, is home to much of the United States Air Force’s aircraft testing and development activities. The 412th Test Wing, which manages the base, also conducts developmental testing on all Air Force aircraft, weapons systems, software and components prior to their acquisition by the Army, as well as throughout their life cycle.
A historic US Army bomber
The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress is a long-range bomber that entered service in 1955. It is nicknamed “the Buff”, partly short for “Big Ugly Fat”.
Designed to carry both conventional and nuclear weapons, it has been used in conflicts involving the US military, from Vietnam to air raids during the US-Israeli War in Iran.
In recent years, among the fatal accidents occurring during US Air Force training, we can cite the death of an instructor pilot in 2024, killed when the ejection seat was triggered while the plane was still on the ground in Texas, along with that of an Air Force ROTC cadet in a 2022 Humvee accident during a training exercise in Idaho. Two Air Force pilots were killed when a training plane crashed near an airport in Alabama in 2021.
