Latest news with #B2Bomber
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Pentagon releases details of ‘Midnight Hammer' strikes against Iran
B-2 Spirit bombers dropped a total of 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, or MOPs, on two of the Iranian nuclear facility sites struck this weekend as part of 'Operation Midnight Hammer,' Air Force Gen. Dan 'Razin' Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on Sunday. President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that the U.S. military had attacked three facilities involved with Iran's nuclear program at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. The mission marked the first operational use of the 30,000-pound MOP, the largest B-2 bomber strike in history, and the second-longest B-2 mission ever flown, Caine said during a Pentagon news conference. In order to deceive the Iranians, a number of B-2s flew west as decoys prior to the strike, he said. Caine also said the U.S. military has taken measures to protect troops deployed to Iraq and elsewhere from potential Iranian reprisals, but he did not specify what those measures are. 'Our forces remain on high alert and are fully postured to respond to any Iranian retaliation or proxy attacks, which would be an incredibly poor choice,' Caine said. 'We will defend ourselves.' Defense officials showed reporters a graphic during Sunday's news conference that indicated that seven B-2 bombers took part in the strikes. A total of 125 aircraft were involved in the mission, including fighters and aerial refuelers, Caine said. The bombers and fighters dropped about 75 precision-guided munitions on two of the sites, and a Navy submarine fired Tomahawk missiles at a third. There are no indications that any of the U.S. aircraft were fired upon during the mission, Caine said. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the U.S. military is not trying to topple Iran's regime, and the scope of the strikes was 'intentionally limited.' 'As the president has directed and made clear, this is most certainly not open-ended,' Hegseth said.'It doesn't mean it limits our ability to respond. We will respond if necessary. The most powerful military in the world is postured and prepared to defend our people. But what the president gave us, as I said, was a focused, powerful, and clear mission on the destruction of Iranian nuclear capabilities. Those were the targets. That's what was struck. That's what was overwhelming.' Sailors who can't deploy will be moved to empty jobs under Navy program Air Force relieves commander of pilot training squadron US military's highest-ranking transgender officer says separation process is broken Army bringing in big tech executives as lieutenant colonels Trump reverts 7 Army bases to former names with new honorees, including Delta Force soldier
RNZ News
4 days ago
- General
- RNZ News
After Operation Midnight Hammer, pilots reveal realities of marathon B-2 bomber missions
By Kamin Gock , ABC News A B-2 Stealth Bomber. Photo: AFP / JEROD HARRIS There are very few Americans who know what it's like to fly a B-2 stealth bomber and even fewer that have piloted one for more than 30 hours straight. One of those people is retired Air Force Lieutenant General Steven Basham, who said he was stunned by the "flawless execution" of last weekend's operation , when American pilots conducted a 37-hour non-stop mission targeting Iran's nuclear facilities. Before retiring last year, General Basham flew B-2s in 1999 over Serbia, the bomber's first use in combat, and again in 2003 over Iraq. He gave the ABC an insight into what it takes to prepare and complete such a marathon operation. Retired Air Force Lieutenant General Steven Basham. Photo: AFP / ANDREAS ARNOLD To qualify for his own missions, General Basham needed to complete a 24-hour flight simulation as well as a 24-hour "sortie" mission. The training regime included rehearsing mid-air refuelling, safely landing after being awake for an entire day and managing simulated defences and bomb runs. After years of training, he received the call-up. "I remember the surreal feeling when they said, 'We're actually going to go,' and, of course, my wife doesn't know," he said. "For her, this is like any other night in the last month. I've been going in the evening and coming back home the next morning. It's not lost on me that on this particular occasion, I didn't come back on the next morning." A 31-hour mission awaited him, and it would not be the only one. "I remember not being able to sleep," he said. "Even though we had adjusted our body clocks for many, many weeks prior to the mission, I remember still waking up early and I remember packing my larger than normal lunch." But even with eight sandwiches and some trail mix in hand, General Basham recalls he wasn't very hungry. "You will eat just because it gives you something to do," he said. "My appetite really wasn't there. "Too many butterflies filling up your stomach - no room for any food." He intentionally brought "bland" food to not upset the stomach on such a long journey. Coffee was his main fuel to stay alert along with the occasional catnap, but the adrenaline made it hard to sleep. "You do not want to let down your nation and so you're going to do everything you can to not fail," he said. "That's not going to allow you to sleep." In the air, he and the other pilot ran through each step they would undertake in the hours ahead, while ensuring the weapons were in check and the bomber was continuing to perform as needed. They would also maintain communication with other aircraft, like fuel tankers. Retired Air Force Colonel Melvin Deaile has also piloted the US$2.2 billion (NZ$3.6 billion) aircraft. He took part in the longest ever B-2 bomber mission, flying 44 hours from the US into Afghanistan in 2001. "All my kids were told is: 'Dad's going to work, I don't know when I'll be back,'" he said. "After 9/11 there was a hint that the president may want a response. "We didn't plan on 44 hours. I think the original sortie was 38 to 40 hours." To help him stay awake, Colonel Deaile had been prescribed amphetamines cleared for crew use, known as "pep pills". He said his mission initially involved four bomb runs over different target complexes. But after flying out of Afghanistan, he was directed to go back in and complete another run, which extended his total mission time. "When we went back into the country I dropped some more pep pills," he said. "Because you think the mission's over, you can kind of let down, but then we had to get another tanker, I had to program new bombs and the other guy had to hit the gas." The extreme length of time in the small cockpit also takes a toll on the bladder. The high altitudes and pressurised cockpit mean pilots need to drink a lot of water to stay hydrated. "We calculated we drank a bottle of water an hour which meant we had to go pee once an hour," he said. "We didn't want to fill up the chemical toilet too much. It's not designed to hold 44 hours' worth of pee. "So we made an agreement that we would only use the toilet for number twos and we would use the 'piddle packs' for number ones." He described a piddle pack as like "a zip-lock bag with kitty litter in it ... and the kitty litter combines with it to make it more gel-like so it doesn't leak". During 44 hours locked in the cockpit with very little room to move, Colonel Deaile estimates he and the other pilot produced 80 piddle packs. Both pilots said flying back to base was when the adrenaline started to run thin and the lack of sleep kicked in. Colonel Deaile said, from his experience, the most challenging part of being a bomber pilot was mid-air refuelling. "You have to be within 12 feet (3.7 metres) of another aircraft, and you've got to hold the jet in position I would say probably for roughly 20 to 30 minutes ... because that's how long the boom is," he said. On General Basham's first flight in 1999 there was nowhere to sleep, so he and the other pilot sent a note back as soon as possible and small cots were installed inside all the bombers. "The hardest part of a marathon is not typically the physical part, it's the mental part, and a long duration sortie is like that marathon," he said. After debriefing back at base in Missouri, he returned home from the 31-hour mission, and remembers cracking a beer at 9am, sitting in a recliner and watching TV. That afternoon it was his turn to mow the lawn, and before the sun had set he had returned to normal life. General Basham flew B-2 bombers for about nine years and took part in multiple missions that spanned more than 30 hours. Colonel Deaile flew B-2s from 1998 to 2002 but Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan would be the only long-distance mission he would take part in. "I've never said I want to crawl in the cockpit and be there again for two days," he said. "Once was enough." Last week's mission into Iran involved seven of America's 19 B-2 bombers . Operation Midnight Hammer was shrouded in deception and secrecy. A separate package of decoy bombers was sent west over the Pacific, and were picked up by keen flight trackers and reported by news outlets. But the main strike team headed east undetected, catching even the most experienced aviators off guard. "I almost felt nauseous on Saturday night because I missed this as well," General Basham said. "I should have realised that, no, there was something else going on. "That's how well this was executed." The aircraft unloaded more than a dozen Massive Ordnance Penetrators, also known as bunker busters, on the Iranian nuclear facilities. The weapons, weighing 30,000 pounds (13.6 tonnes), had never been used before in combat. General Basham said he remembers the "clunk" he felt when releasing weapons from the aircraft, but he had never carried a bomb that came even close to that weight. "I look forward to hearing from the pilots one day [about] dropping a 30,000-pound bomb, because that's a significant amount of weight to lose in a short amount of time," he said. There have been questions over the impact the 14 bunker buster bombs had on their targets. CNN and other outlets reported on a leaked early US intelligence assessment that suggested the strikes only set back Iran's nuclear program by a few months. President Donald Trump and his administration have attacked the outlets and journalists who reported on the early assessment, accusing them of insulting the aviators. "I think CNN ought to apologise to the pilots of the B-2s, I think MSNBC ought to apologise. Cable networks are real losers, you're gutless losers," the president said. He has repeatedly said the strikes "obliterated" the desired targets and his defence secretary held a press conference to rebut the reports. Retired now at 59, General Basham said he didn't think the pilots would be bothered by the political drama unfolding. "They're not gonna worry about those things," he said. "There's the political world and the policy world - that's not the world we live in. "We live in the world where we're asked to do a mission, we did our mission successfully, we'll let others determine the efficacy of that. "But in the end I couldn't be more proud of the pilots, the maintainers, the planners, the intelligence community, everyone, and what they did to make this happen." - ABC News
ABC News
4 days ago
- General
- ABC News
After Operation Midnight Hammer, pilots reveal realities of marathon B-2 bomber missions
There are very few Americans who know what it's like to fly a B-2 stealth bomber and even fewer that have piloted one for more than 30 hours straight. One of those people is retired Air Force Lieutenant General Steven Basham, who said he was stunned by the "flawless execution" of last weekend's operation, when American pilots conducted a 37-hour non-stop mission targeting Iran's nuclear facilities. Before retiring last year, General Basham flew B-2s in 1999 over Serbia, the bomber's first use in combat, and again in 2003 over Iraq. He gave the ABC an insight into what it takes to prepare and complete such a marathon operation. To qualify for his own missions, General Basham needed to complete a 24-hour flight simulation as well as a 24-hour "sortie" mission. The training regime included rehearsing mid-air refuelling, safely landing after being awake for an entire day and managing simulated defences and bomb runs. After years of training, he received the call-up. "I remember the surreal feeling when they said, 'We're actually going to go,' and, of course, my wife doesn't know," he said. "For her, this is like any other night in the last month. I've been going in the evening and coming back home the next morning. It's not lost on me that on this particular occasion, I didn't come back on the next morning." A 31-hour mission awaited him, and it would not be the only one. "Even though we had adjusted our body clocks for many, many weeks prior to the mission, I remember still waking up early and I remember packing my larger than normal lunch." But even with eight sandwiches and some trail mix in hand, General Basham recalls he wasn't very hungry. "You will eat just because it gives you something to do," he said. "My appetite really wasn't there. "Too many butterflies filling up your stomach — no room for any food." He intentionally brought "bland" food to not upset the stomach on such a long journey. Coffee was his main fuel to stay alert along with the occasional catnap, but the adrenaline made it hard to sleep. "You do not want to let down your nation and so you're going to do everything you can to not fail," he said. "That's not going to allow you to sleep." In the air, he and the other pilot ran through each step they would undertake in the hours ahead, while ensuring the weapons were in check and the bomber was continuing to perform as needed. They would also maintain communication with other aircraft, like fuel tankers. Retired Air Force Colonel Melvin Deaile has also piloted the $US2.2 billion ($3.4 billion) aircraft. He took part in the longest ever B-2 bomber mission, flying 44 hours from the US into Afghanistan in 2001. "All my kids were told is: 'Dad's going to work, I don't know when I'll be back,'" he said. "After 9/11 there was a hint that the president may want a response. "We didn't plan on 44 hours. I think the original sortie was 38 to 40 hours." To help him stay awake, Colonel Deaile had been prescribed amphetamines cleared for crew use, known as "pep pills". He said his mission initially involved four bomb runs over different target complexes. But after flying out of Afghanistan, he was directed to go back in and complete another run, which extended his total mission time. "When we went back into the country I dropped some more pep pills," he said. "Because you think the mission's over, you can kind of let down, but then we had to get another tanker, I had to program new bombs and the other guy had to hit the gas." The extreme length of time in the small cockpit also takes a toll on the bladder. The high altitudes and pressurised cockpit mean pilots need to drink a lot of water to stay hydrated. "We calculated we drank a bottle of water an hour which meant we had to go pee once an hour," he said. "We didn't want to fill up the chemical toilet too much. It's not designed to hold 44 hours' worth of pee. "So we made an agreement that we would only use the toilet for number twos and we would use the 'piddle packs' for number ones." He described a piddle pack as like "a zip-lock bag with kitty litter in it … and the kitty litter combines with it to make it more gel-like so it doesn't leak". During 44 hours locked in the cockpit with very little room to move, Colonel Deaile estimates he and the other pilot produced 80 piddle packs. Both pilots said flying back to base was when the adrenaline started to run thin and the lack of sleep kicked in. Colonel Deaile said, from his experience, the most challenging part of being a bomber pilot was mid-air refuelling. "You have to be within 12 feet (3.7 metres) of another aircraft, and you've got to hold the jet in position I would say probably for roughly 20 to 30 minutes … because that's how long the boom is," he said. On General Basham's first flight in 1999 there was nowhere to sleep, so he and the other pilot sent a note back as soon as possible and small cots were installed inside all the bombers. "The hardest part of a marathon is not typically the physical part, it's the mental part, and a long duration sortie is like that marathon," he said. After debriefing back at base in Missouri, he returned home from the 31-hour mission, and remembers cracking a beer at 9am, sitting in a recliner and watching TV. That afternoon it was his turn to mow the lawn, and before the sun had set he had returned to normal life. General Basham flew B-2 bombers for about nine years and took part in multiple missions that spanned more than 30 hours. Colonel Deaile flew B-2s from 1998 to 2002 but Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan would be the only long-distance mission he would take part in. "I've never said I want to crawl in the cockpit and be there again for two days," he said. "Once was enough." Last week's mission into Iran involved seven of America's 19 B-2 bombers. Operation Midnight Hammer was shrouded in deception and secrecy. A separate package of decoy bombers was sent west over the Pacific, and were picked up by keen flight trackers and reported by news outlets. But the main strike team headed east undetected, catching even the most experienced aviators off guard. "I should have realised that, no, there was something else going on. "That's how well this was executed." The aircraft unloaded more than a dozen Massive Ordnance Penetrators, also known as bunker busters, on the Iranian nuclear facilities. The weapons, weighing 30,000 pounds (13.6 tonnes), had never been used before in combat. General Basham said he remembers the "clunk" he felt when releasing weapons from the aircraft, but he had never carried a bomb that came even close to that weight. "I look forward to hearing from the pilots one day [about] dropping a 30,000-pound bomb, because that's a significant amount of weight to lose in a short amount of time," he said. There have been questions over the impact the 14 bunker buster bombs had on their targets. CNN and other outlets reported on a leaked early US intelligence assessment that suggested the strikes only set back Iran's nuclear program by a few months. President Donald Trump and his administration have attacked the outlets and journalists who reported on the early assessment, accusing them of insulting the aviators. "I think CNN ought to apologise to the pilots of the B-2s, I think MSNBC ought to apologise. Cable networks are real losers, you're gutless losers," the president said. He has repeatedly said the strikes "obliterated" the desired targets and his defence secretary held a press conference to rebut the reports. Retired now at 59, General Basham said he didn't think the pilots would be bothered by the political drama unfolding. "They're not gonna worry about those things," he said. "There's the political world and the policy world – that's not the world we live in. "We live in the world where we're asked to do a mission, we did our mission successfully, we'll let others determine the efficacy of that. "But in the end I couldn't be more proud of the pilots, the maintainers, the planners, the intelligence community, everyone, and what they did to make this happen."
Times
6 days ago
- General
- Times
Inside the B-2 raid: Pick-up pills, 18 hours flying, then bombs away
It's a long haul racing the sun from Knob Noster, Missouri, to the mountains of Qom and the nuclear bunker buried deep at Fordow. At 37-hour haul, to be precise, there and back. Even before the pilots charged with flying their $2 billion B-2s to drop the world's largest non-nuclear bombs on Iran were in position, they would have already spent 18 hours in the air. Given the secrecy surrounding the B-2, a projection of military power that paradoxically exists never to be seen, little is known about who the men and women who flew the sorties that effectively forced the regime into a ceasefire with Israel. They were, the Pentagon said, as far from the macho shirt-off volleyball-playing fighter aces portrayed in Top Gun as you could care to imagine. It is, however, possible to piece together how the mission unfolded, beginning long before the planes took off from Whiteman Air Force Base, about an hour east of Kansas City, racing to strike as the Iranians slept. For the aviators and air crews from the US air force and the Missouri air national guard, ranked from captain to colonel, the raid felt like the Super Bowl, military chiefs said this week, with 'thousands of scientists, airmen and maintainers all coming together'. • How badly damaged are Iran's nuclear sites and missiles? In the previous weeks they would have flown to Fordow and back dozens of times in a state-of-the-art simulator at Whiteman base, near Knob Noster, which includes a replica of the B-2 cockpit, complete down to the cot where they can sleep and the toilet that is used by the pilots; only if they really must. In many ways, when President Trump gave the go-ahead, the real mission would have felt similar to the simulations. One former pilot said the big difference would be over Iran, where they would 'feel the clunk' of their weapons bay doors opening, then a lightening of the aircraft as it was relieved of its two massive ordnance penetrator (MOP) bombs, each weighing 30,000 pounds. There would have been a sharp turn as soon as 'bombs away' was called as the stealth bombers headed out of Iranian airspace. Then, one pilot on the mission said, there was the 'brightest explosion I have ever seen, it literally looked like daylight'. By that time, according to pilots, the two in the cockpit may already have felt the need to take two pills that have long been issued to those who fly long missions. The so-called 'pick-up pills' or 'go pills', which are likely to be amphetamine-based to keep aviators awake, have been issued to bomber pilots about to undertake missions through the night. • The Iran-Israel conflict in maps, video and satellite images If Melvin G Deaile, who flew the longest recorded B-2 mission at 44 hours to Afghanistan and back in 2001, knows whether the pilots needed the pills, he was not saying this week. Speaking to The Times, the retired air force colonel said the pilots would have been remarkable for being unremarkable. 'The B-2 is still a technological marvel,' said Deaile, 59, of the bomber that entered service in 1997. There were originally plans to build 132 B-2s, but the cost of each and the end of the Cold War brought an end to that. The 21st and last B-2 entered service in 2000. 'The amazing thing is, whether it's the pilots this past weekend or myself or anybody, they're just average Americans who signed up to do a mission and go out and do it.' The bomber has seen action in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, where Deaile flew in October 2001 after President Bush ordered strikes on the Taliban in response to the 9/11 attacks. Though perhaps not quite as fraught with risk as attacking Iran, which once had a proud air force and strong air defences, the mission to strike the Taliban was complicated by a late change of targets while they were in the air. For military planners at the Pentagon, however, Fordow has always been the main prize in Iran. Alongside Captain Brian Neal, Deaile piloted a B-2 named Spirit of America — poignant, given the raid took place in the months after 9/11. He admitted they had been given pills to keep them alert during the mission, which included multiple refuellings and spending two hours over Afghanistan. The mission was so long because after dropping 12 JDAMs — guided bombs — on Taliban forces, commanders asked them to go back over enemy territory and release four more explosives. Deaile and Neal finally touched down on the Diego Garcia military base after being in the air for 44 hours and 20 minutes. According to some reports, the pilots who completed the Iran mission had a microwave oven on board to provide warmed-up snacks for the trip. That is a luxury Deaile, who grew up on a farm in Fresno, was not afforded. While the army has 'meals, ready-to-eat' (MREs), Deaile said the air force equivalent was kinder to the digestive system and better adapted to long flights. He also brought sandwiches on board and was allowed a flask of coffee. But sometimes the snacks would go uneaten. • The Times view: Iran crisis is putting our special relationship to the test 'Most of the time we didn't really eat that much after a day and a half in the cockpit because we weren't really exercising,' he said. 'You don't really get hungry if you're not doing much.' Even if the work is not too physically demanding, the pilots must still sleep. Deaile used to have a cot behind the two seats so that an airman could sleep when not in 'critical phases of flight' — take-off, landing, mid-air refuelling and bombing. It was not a luxury bed, but good enough. 'It's the military; you learn to sleep wherever you can,' Deaile said. 'And we'll get the job done and if it means staying awake for 40 hours, we stay awake for 40 hours.'
The Sun
7 days ago
- Politics
- The Sun
Where is the Ayatollah? Iran's fanatical leader, 86, not seen in a WEEK – as CIA confirms Trump obliterated nuke sites
President Donald Trump on Wednesday praised the B-2 stealth bomber pilots who carried out strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, saying they flew with a 'great risk' and a 'big chance that they would never come back home and see their husbands or their wives.' Speaking at the NATO summit, Trump said he received a call from Missouri after the mission, where the pilots are based, describing how upset they were by media reports that downplayed the success of the operation. 'I got a call that the pilots and people on the plane were devastated because they were trying to minimise the attack,' Trump said, referring to a leaked preliminary US intelligence assessment that questioned the level of destruction at the sites. 'They all said it was hit, but oh, but we don't think it was really maybe hit that badly. And they were devastated. They put their lives on the line,' he said. Trump added he spoke personally to one of the pilots, who told him: 'Sir, we hit the site. It was perfect. It was dead-on.' A U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bomber lands after returning from Operation Midnight Hammer, the U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri
