With the heightened tensions in Europe put on by the Ukraine crisis two B-2 Spirit Bombers with radio callsigns "Death 11" and "Death 12" have arrived at RAF Fairford UK from the Whiteman Air Force Base in USA. The deployment is said to be for a short time.
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B-2 Strategic Stealth Bomber landing at RAF Faiford UK |
The U.S Air Force have selected three bases outisde the U.S for the B-2 Strategic Bombers operations. The RAF Fairford base in the UK, Diego Garcia and Andersen AFB at Guam. With these deployments of the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bombers overseas being quite unusual the motives are very clear.
B-2 Stealth bombers don’t move from the Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri too often, as they are trained to conduct very long round-trip missions from their homebase in CONUS (short for Continental U.S.).
Recent training missions have been extended nuclear deterrence sorties in the Korean Peninsula, as well as during real conflicts in the Libya Air War in 2011. Going all the way back to the Allied Force in Serbia in 1999.
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Close up footage of the B-2 Spirit Stealth Strategic Bombers landing |
With so few instances of deployment overseas for the B-2 bombers this deployment of two B-2 Spirit Strategic Stealth bombers with the 509th Bomb Wing to the UK is, at least, noteworthy.
Obviously there have not been much attention given by the media of this deployment and the media certainly have not mentioned the rarity of this “short-term deployment,” as the press only mentions
“multi-role heavy bombers will conduct training flights in the USEUCOM area of operations, providing opportunities for aircrews to sharpen skills in several key operational sets and become familiar with airbases and operations in the region.”
Little is known about this deployment, unlike the other one which involves the three
B-52 Stratofortress Bombers that have arrived at RAF Fairford last week and whose detachment had been exposed by aircrew patches produced ahead of the participation of the Stratofortresses to the Saber Strike and Baltops exercises.
“The training and integration of strategic forces demonstrates to our nation’s leaders and our allies that we have the right mix of aircraft and expertise to respond to a variety of potential threats and situations,” said Adm. Cecil Haney, commander, U.S. Strategic Command in the release.
It is clear that the Russian threat in Europe is being taken seriously by the USSTRACOM. And have now decided to deploy some strategic assets closer to Ukraine, more to show the local allies that Washington is capable to support them if needed rather than put some pressure on Moscow.
This is a good thing if your country belongs to NATO, however as Barack Obama stated earlier. Any country not part of NATO won't be given any military help if things get ugly.. Moscows response to Finland and Sweden becoming part of NATO have been met with a harsh response "Do Finland want to start World War III? It's something to think about if Finland wants to join NATO, warns Russian President Vladimir Putin's personal envoy Sergei Markov."
Yes things are certainly heating up it Europe. And the 509th Bomb Wing meaning takes us back to WW2 with
The 509th Composite Group. It was the United States Army Air Forces unit created during World War II and tasked with the operational deployment of nuclear weapons. It conducted the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945.
The Russian media is not to worried about the B-2 Bomber situation because they are sure that the B-2s cannot successfully penetrate Russian air defenses. And I would think that is a given due to the fact that the B-2 Stealth Bombers have been around for a long time already and countermeasures have been taken to make sure that any such Nuclear threat is dealt with.
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