Three B-52 Stratofortress bombers, capable of carrying 70,000 lbs of munitions, landed in the UK on Monday amid the Pentagon’s plans to expand military strikes in Iran.
The war with Iran kicked off its second week on Saturday after US and Israeli forces launched attacks that took out Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of senior Iranian officials.
Now the US is expanding air operations.
Video recorded at Royal Air Force Station Fairford shows the B-52s landing in Gloucestershire, UK.
WATCH:
During a press conference last Wednesday, War Secretary Pete Hegseth said the B-52s would be among the airpower used “controlling the skies, picking targets,” and bringing “death and destruction from the sky all day long.”
“As President Trump said, more and larger waves are coming. We are just getting started. We are accelerating, not decelerating,” he added.
“Now with complete control of the skies, we will be using 500-pound, 1,000-pound, and 2,000-pound GPS and laser-guided precision gravity bombs, of which we have a nearly unlimited stockpile.”
General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, further told reporters that US forces will now “expand inland, striking progressively deeper into Iranian territory and creating additional freedom of maneuver for US forces.”
WATCH:
Caine: As of this morning, US Central Command is making steady progress. Iran’s theater ballistic missile shots fired are down 86% from the first day of fighting, with a 23% decrease just in the last 24 hours. And their one-way attack drone shots are down 73% from the opening days. This progress has allowed CENTCOM to establish localized air superiority across the southern flank of the Iranian coast and penetrate their defenses with overwhelming precision and firepower. We will now begin to expand inland, striking progressively deeper into Iranian territory, and creating additional freedom of maneuver for US forces. Let me explain a little bit about how we’re thinking about staying ahead of the enemy.
First, over the past several weeks, Admiral Cooper and the CENTCOM team have refined their operational approach to the region. Their planners identified key centers of gravity that would allow Iran to project power outside of its borders. They thought about how to isolate critical vulnerabilities and determine where, with precision, the greatest strategic effect could be achieved. As a result of this, CENTCOM is now shifting in day four, already, from large deliberate strike packages using standoff munitions at range outside an enemy’s ability to shoot at us, now into stand-in precision strikes overhead Iran.
As the Secretary said, this is a point of munitions transition from standoff munitions to stand-in munitions like joint direct attack munitions, which are GPS-aided free-fall weapons and other things like Hellfires, etc. This will allow the joint force to deliver significantly increased precision effects on the target. The throttle is coming up, as the Secretary said, as opposed to ramping down. This will allow us to maintain consistent pressure on the adversary over the coming days, disrupt their launch timelines, and impose cost every day around the clock.
Per the New York Post:
Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who initially refused to grant the US permission to use the UK’s airbases to attack Iran, said the build up at Fairford was necessary to defend the West from Iran’s alleged “scorched-earth strategy.”
Following the start of Operation Epic Fury, the Islamic Republic began a mass retaliation attack across the Middle East, threatening US and European allies.
The US has now deployed B-52s for the first time during the conflict, with the Cold-War era bombers capable of launching nuclear warheads, cruise missiles and other heavy bombs more than 1,500 miles away.
They were first introduced in 1952 and are one of the oldest aircraft designs still operating in the US military.
This is a developing story.
The post JUST IN: B-52 Bombers Deployed to UK as US Operations Expand Inland and Deeper into Iranian Territory, Hegseth Vows “Death and Destruction from the Sky All Day Long”(VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.