Saying theat the B-52 is cheaper in the stand-off role is very short sighted. How cheap will this 50 year old bomber continue to be as the years roll by? Besides having a radar cross-signature of a veritable flying barn, the years of stress on this aging super-structure will eventually cause catostropic failure. Everytime I hear of a B-52 going down I wonder if that might be the cause.
The REASON the old BUFF is still around, is that it's MODULAR. Pull out old modules, put in new ones. It does the job, takes a licking, and keeps flying. If you need extra parts, there are the numerous B-52 corpses in the "Graveyard" at Davis-Monathan in Arizona. As for stress, aircraft are designed for infinite service, given proper maintenance. The B-52's you see these days, about the only thing original left on them, are the control yokes and wires, and the ejection seats. MOST of the B-52s have been almost completely rebuilt not once, but several times. It carries a bigger load than a B-1, carries it farther, and is quicker to re-load and send back off to war than a B-1.
Yes, the B-1 is a sweet jet. But it was designed for one kind of war, a kind we don't fight anymore. . .