“Spirit World Tour, Coming to a Theater Near You”: this is the slogan of used by Air Force Magazine to report about the “regular worlwide training training deployments to each of the US combatant command’s areas of responsibility” of the stealthy B-2 Spirit bombers.
According to what 8th Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Stephen Wilson told the Daily Report in a recent interview, the huge bombers will pay regular visit to forward operating bases all over the world in small numbers and for a few weeks.
Whereas the B-52s and B-1s are regularly deployed either in theatre (Afghanistan) or to several bases in Europe, Asia and Australia (where the U.S. Air Force announced a series of “future rotational deployments” earlier this year), the B-2s were pulled out ot the rotations to Anderson Air Force Base, in Guam, in 2010, after a serious engine fire earlier that year and the loss of another example in a 2008 crash there.
However, beginning in 2013, along with flying “Global Strike” missions, no-stop round trip sorties from Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, the Spirit stealth bombers will begin deploying abroad.
First of all in the Asia-Pacific region, and then in Central and South America, Southwest Asia, and Europe where there are no permanently assiged bombers.
Officially, the B-2 is the only platform capable to deliver the Massive Ordnance Penetrator 30,000lb bomb. Capable to destroy bunkers in Syria, Iran or North Korea.
Image credit: U.S. Air Force
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