Over its sixty-year lifetime, the B-52’s avionics, flight hardware, and weapons systems have been upgraded. In 2006, the fleet received a “mid-life” upgrade to its avionics, adding modern processors and navigation systems. In 2014, the Air Force gave the BUFFS their first new communications system since the 1960s, including full-color LCDs to replace the old cathode ray tube screens. <span>On the weapons front, the airplanes are due to receive weapons-bay upgrades, enabling them to hold more smart bombs, and radar enhancements, potentially including the Active Electronically Scanned Array Systems technology. Used by fighter jets like the F-22 Raptor, the digital radar system is vastly more precise and offers higher resolution than conventional radar dishes. </span>
<span> "Ambush," O’Brien describes killing a man while serving in war. He had no intention of killing him—he reacted without thinking. O’Brien feels guilty about having killed another human being, even though his fellow soldier tries to soothe him with the logic that the man would have been killed eventually anyway. However, trying to justify having killed someone, O’Brien explains that his training as a soldier prompted him to act involuntarily when he lobbed the grenade upon spotting an enemy soldier. Twenty years later, long after the war has ended, O’Brien is unable to admit to his daughter, Kathleen, that he has killed another person. He feels guilt and denial about having killed a man, and experiences recurrent flashbacks and visions. Through his story, O’Brien conveys that a soldier is a changed person after he has witnessed such a war, and those who have not been in a war cannot begin to understand the emotional turmoil that soldiers go through.</span>