For a country with a $600 billion dollar defense budget, the United States still uses a sizable amount of old gear. Some of the antiquated stuff is around because it works really, really well, and there's not come along anything better to replace it with. In other cases attempts to replace the equipment have floundered, usually for reasons having to do with complexity or cost.
We dug up three examples that rank among the oldest still in action: the M2 heavy machine gun, KC-135 Stratotanker, and B-52H bomber. Even though one of these weapons dates back to World War I, the Pentagon does not have plans to retire any of them any time soon.
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