The B-52 is designed to fly high-altitude at high subsonic speed. And they're not very maneuverable. They're meant to fly straight to a target, drop a payload, and GTFO.
Gunships fly low and slow, banking in a circle to keep their guns on target. For a B-52 to do the same maneuver, it'd have to be higher and much further away.
This is like saying we should make a Chinook bomber because it could carry a lot of bombs. Like yeah, it could, but there's better options.
It depends on what kind of gunship you want, lots of guns can fit on a b52 that can't on an ac130. A series of 155s or bofors 40mk4s, mk38 bushmasters or stripped down 5" guns all of which fire rapidly, automatically and at ranges the ac130 could not touch with significant increases of time on target.
It doesn't need to be maneuverable, gunboats don't go in without air superiority anyway. That said they're way more maneuverable and controllable then you'd imagine. It wouldn't need to be one or the other, you could have both running counter pylon turns covering up for the gaps in each other's capabilities.
Notably many people said the ac130 was not a useful idea.
Anyone else yearn to live in a fantasy setting where they could get a plane like this and go from airfield to airfield living as a traveling trader?
😂 I think that's a cool idea; but I reckon the running cost in fuel alone, without maintenance, would make this implausible.
You could easily make enough money to do it. So long as the things you're trading aren't legal! Haha
There's a Mr. Fusion on board to power the retrofitted pulse engines. Which is a good thing, since all the nanobots that nonstop repair the airframe take about half the energy produced (the engines taking the other half, of course).
Just remember to chuck a couple Cyberdyne Model-101 skeletons in the fuel chamber and you're good for another year or so.
Is this like a high fantasy setting or a more sci-fi one. I’ve had this for the former. Though with a number of different vehicles.