Two B-52 aircraft from Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, assigned to 5th Bomb Wing, commenced their Bomber Task Force (BTF) mission in Europe by performing a low approach flyby on Estonia’s Independence Day on February 24.

The BTF aims to strengthen the Trans-Atlantic relationship between the US and European Allies by enhancing Allied cohesion and interoperability through joint missions with various Allied fighters.

The B-52s will operate from Moron, Spain, during their stay in Europe.

“Today we celebrate with our friends from Estonia 105 years of independence. The United States and Estonia are close Allies and share a strong partnership based on a common commitment to democracy, human rights and the rule of law. We remain steadfastly committed to the freedom and sovereignty of Estonia and all our Baltic allies as we deter and defend against any threats to our shared security,” said U.S. Air Force Gen. James Hecker, Commander NATO Allied Air Command and U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa.

These Bomber Task Force missions, say the U.S. Air Force, enable crews to maintain high readiness proficiency.

Tom Dunlop
Tom Dunlop
Tom has spent the last 13 years working in the defence industry, specifically military and commercial shipbuilding. His work has taken him around Europe and the Far East, he is currently based in Scotland.

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87 COMMENTS

    • I don’t think it escalates anything. b52s have been flying around for decades.
      Russia can fly its bombers over its allies.
      What is clear is that trying not to escalate has achieved very little in Europe. It has been seen as weakness

      • What is notable is that all NATO members & probably some non NATO members a keen to be seen to be cooperating in any way. We are all in this together.

      • Minot deployed 4 of their B-52s to Moron. Two of them were sent to Estonia on their way to Spain to participate in Estonia’s Independence Day celebration. All 4 will be participating in exercises in support of NATO while at Moron.

      • It’s Minot and barksdale. Everything else is just temporary they can go wherever the hell they want. And have through the last 50 years.

  2. Unlike their ocean-going counterparts (battleships) the old slogger goes on and on. The question I have to ask is why the UK and others ditched the heavy bomber when the Americans still had faith in the concept. Currently, the B52 offers two functions, one is to put the fear of God into any prospective foe and the other is to flatten entire cities with its bombs. The Vulcan could have proved valuable in a number of recent engagements and a replacement must have been on the cards in some dimly lit drawing office? Talking about battleships, is there still a role for such a vessel, one that could take multiple strikes and still be capable of fighting back? Maybe we should take note of Americans’ belief in old and trusted war-fighting tools.

        • I mean particularly because of our history. And thinking about it, perhaps it’s a luxury we can afford ourselves no longer being the world’s policeman.

        • Well the history of that was that even Churchill did his best to write Harris out of history post war even in the 40s and 50s it became deeply controversial (even late war) and as we know until recent years Bomber Command didn’t even get a memorial to their distasteful but very necessary role and even that was mostly privately financed. So the ethics have long been different.

          • Churchill tried to write Harris out of it because Churchill was always conscious of his own place in history and didn’t want the grim details of the Allied bombing of cities to mar his reputation as he knew it would. It wasn’t out of any ethical consideration or moral regret but to save his reputation. Let’s not pretend it was something else. And let’s not pretend that the absence of any memorial was anything but that.
            The idea of the saturation city bombing was a British initiative and a British priority; and this sanctimonious claptrap that Brits are somehow more ethical than Americans is just that, claptrap.

          • An attempt was made with the Dieppe raid in 1942 to invade mainland Europe – it was a complete failure. The lesson was learnt that only overwhelming force could succeed. It took 2 years to build up that force. In the meantime what were the British to do to take on the Germans – throw bread buns at them? The strategic bombing of German cities was the only answer. Remember what the Germans did to cities. As Bomber Harris said ‘those who sow the wind reap the whirlwind’.

      • Leveling cities is hyperbolic.

        The payloads carried by the B52 were frequently expended in operations over Syria and Iraq while combatting terrorism.

        The B1 Lancer, another heavy bomber in the USAF inventory, regularly went “winchester”, as in, it had expended all of its munitions and had to return to base due to extremely target rich environments.

        Here’s an article on the topic:
        https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2015/08/23/inside-the-b-1-crew-that-pounded-isis-with-1800-bombs/

        But if it allows you feel morally superior to not have relevant military capabilities that your enemies have, so be it.

        • I had hyperbolic once but the cream cleared it up nicely. The fear factor is a big part of the B52 role and it does certainly pack a punch when and if it is used in anger. I still believe a fast big bomber with a considerably bigger payload than Typhoon and F35 would still have a role in air warfare and carrying multiple cruise missile packs, would be a huge addition to operational planning. Sabre rattling and posturing is still a useful military tool and one of the oldest tactics known to history and the B52 / Lancer do it with aplomb.

          • UK budgets wouldn’t allow it, but if the RAF were able to get six B21s alongside the US it would transform its strategic power.

            The Lancer is an amazing aircraft but will soon be retired. It still kinda surprises me the B1 Lancer will be retired while the B52 will stick around. The Lancer carries a larger payload, is obviously a newer design, has a much higher top speed, and is slightly cheaper to operate/maintain. If it were being modernized in the same way the B52 is, it would be a force to be reckoned with for decades to come. The only logical reasoning I can deduce is that the B52 is available in higher numbers — 45 Lancers vs 76 B52s active.

    • Wasn’t there some talk back in the day about the possibility of converting Concorde into a nuclear bomber?

      • That is a whole topic in itself. Some of the topic is just wishful thinking.

        Officially there was no such plan and in reality Concorde was a quite light payload aircraft with a relatively short unrefueled range that would have been super difficult to harden for a nuclear task.

        But I did, personally, hear Tony Benn state that he had cancelled the military version of Concorde and he did, I believe, repeat that in a radio interview late in life. There is, however, zero documentary evidence to back that claim up.

        The other side of the coin is that the Concorde that, as a test bed, was used for EJ200 had a totally different, thinner, skin on it. Was it a project fork? Was it an attempt to produce such a high flying and fast bomber that no fighters could keep up with in the vein of U2? Maybe: probably not.

        There were a lot of contradictory stories, down the pub, from old timers on the project: some might even be true!

        In a way it is quite interesting how little is known about some aspects of the massive technology project that was Concorde. Bits are still classified.

        What was absolutely unique was to have a, quite large, Mach 2.2 platform flying for very extended periods gathering huge amounts of data. That data is still the basis for a lot of supersonic aircraft development today.

        U2 was one thing flying crazy high but it wasn’t big enough to have the massive data logging systems that a stripped out Concorde did routinely carry.

        There was a huge amount of R&D for it that fed into generations of European aircraft: that is for sure.

        • I cant remember where I heard or read that, but thats a lot of good infomation you have there. Interesting read.

          • They stole some of the tech and used it for Concordski: that is well known.

            The issue was how did having a high fling and very fast bomber actually benefit your military strength: not much. If the opposition had reasonably high flying and fast fighters with effective missiles.

            As an exemplar of very expensive brute force it is OK. But it is very vulnerable to missiles never mind A30.

            The West went down the cruise missile route instead as it was realised that it was far cheaper and less vulnerable as well as more accurate to have a large number of weapons that could swarm in from many directions.

            The payloads that Typhoon etc can drop are quite large so the sense of a ‘heavy bomber’ is lost.

            USAF had the B1 / B2 for very narrow very specific reasons.

          • Oh! I thought the Bones were/are gone; the spirits are following.

            And I do take your points about cruise missiles, however, would it be a counter factual to say that relying on missiles allows pollies to cut the budget and also order less missiles? Do the public give a hoot about less missiles being ordered – easy win for Treasury and the pollies.

          • It is much quicker and easier to ramp up missile production that to produce Mach 2.2 bombers!

            I think the penny has dropped that Western values are under extreme threat from slightly unhinged autocrats.

    • The b52 would be useless against a peer enemy in all roles except launching cruise missiles. Or nuclear Armed cruise missiles. Its not carpet bombing any serious enemy.

      That’s why everyone else scrapped heavy bombers. It’s a niche capability that’s expensive.

      Stealthy heavy bombers are hideously expensive for all but the US.

      • “The b52 would be useless against a peer enemy in all roles except launching cruise missiles”

        That’s essentially what it’s used for these days. A bomb truck with significant range and payload capacity. Last time I checked one b52 can carry up to 20 jassm-er and that will sober any adversary up peer or not.

      • I think the jury is still out on this one Marked. As Ukraine has clearly shown old military scenarios don’t really change we just believe too much in push-button warfare and that is far from being assured reasoning.

    • Is it though? Yes sure it might have the ability to flatten entire cities however in reallity would it not be looking to lauch stand-off weapons aiming to destroy specific targets a long way away. Today the mantra is eliminating targets which allow the enemy to wage war. The concept of demorolising the civilian population by destroying cities failed on numerous occasions and is failing for Russia now. Always wise to have that in your back pocket though.

      Would it have not been necessary to rebuild the vulcan from the ground up? A British equivelent to the B2? The Vulcan & B52 were quite good for putting the fear of god into tin-pot dictators but more modern adversaries?

      • The Vulcan due to its hidden engines and delta wing planform was quite stealthy during its time. There were numerous occasion when on exercise it flew through US search radars without being spotted. It was pure cost savings and short sightedness that scrapped the Vulcan just as a weapon was coming in to production to male it relevant again. In 1980 the AGM-86 air launched cruise missile (ALCM) came in to service. Being first deployed on B52s and replacing the SRAM, where it could carry 12 ALCMs.

        To make the Vulcan more stealthy is possible. but will come at a cost. The first thing to do is remove the rear fin. It is at 90 degrees to the main wings, so provides a perfect reflector. Instead fit two angled outward fins on the ends of the wing. These can be made quite small, as we will also use differential engine thrust as per the B2, to control yaw. The next thing to do is address the engine inlets. Although the engines are buried in the wings. The inlets are straight and give a good view of the engine. Therefore these need to be screened to block t

      • The Vulcan due to its hidden engines and delta wing planform was quite stealthy during its time. There were numerous occasions when on exercises it flew through US search radars, without being spotted. Setting up bombing runs over Washington and New York. It was pure cost savings and short sightedness that scrapped the Vulcan, just as a weapons was coming in to production to make it relevant again. In 1980 the AGM-86 air launched cruise missile (ALCM) came in to service. Being first deployed on B52s and replacing the SRAM, where it could carry 12 ALCMs. Imagine what a Vulcan carrying 9 ALCMs could have done on the Black Buck missions, perhaps even targeting Argentine air bases on the mainland?

        To make the Vulcan more stealthy is possible. But it will come at a cost. The first thing to do structurally is to remove the rear fin. It is at 90 degrees to the main wings, so provides a perfect radar reflector. Instead fit two angled outward fins on the ends of the wing. These can be made quite small, as we will also use differential engine thrust, as per the B2, to control yaw. The next thing to do is address the engine inlets. Although the engines are buried in the wings. The inlets are straight and give a good view of the engine. Therefore these need to be screened to block the view.

        The Olympus engines would need replacing with something more fuel efficient, replacing them with multi-cycle turbofans that have a relatively high bypass ratio. This high bypass ratio serves two functions, the first is that at lower altitudes it can deliver more thrust at a more efficient fuel burn rate. Secondly, the bypass air can be used for not only cooling avionics, but also to cool the hot exhaust gases and thereby lowering the IR signature. To further reduce the IR signature, you could use a similar design that the Saab Viggen used. By placing a large diameter tube around the exhaust, it forces the air in towards the exhaust, which then mixes to further cool it down. There may be space in the exhaust pipe to place screens to hide the rear of the engine. By being variable cycle, the bypass air can then be diverted more into the engine, as the plane files higher. Thereby maintaining the ability to fly above 45,000ft. Which helps to maximise the range of the stand-off weapons it would be carrying. Performance wise, the much more efficient turbo fans are likely to add an additional quarter to a third extra range and at least match or better the thrust of the Olympus.

        The outer skin is the next thing to tackle. As its metal skinned that forms parts of the wing’s and fuselage’s strength. It will difficult to replace this with a infused radar absorbent material composite as per the F35. Therefore a “paint” would be the next best option. It wont have the same depth of absorption, but it will be better than bare skin. Today’s RAM paint have a much broader bandwidth than in the past which were generally band or frequency specific.

        One thing that is probably too expensive, is to change the shape of the front fuselage. The circular shape guarantees circular travelling wave radar reflections. Which is where a radar wave travels circumferentially around the metal skinned fuselage, and reflects back to the radar. To stop this the fuselage needs flattening out and changing to a more rhomboidal shape, much like the F22/F35. A cheaper method of mitigating this problem with the existing fuselage, is to put strakes down the sides of the fuselage that blend in to the wing root. There will still be some reflection, but not as significant.

        With a gold infused acrylic cockpit glass plus ensuring panel gaps are minimized, access panels and doors are bonded and perhaps given a saw tooth edge pattern. The Vulcan’s radar cross section (RCS) can be significantly reduced. As a rough guesstimate, the Vulcan has RCS less than F15/Su27, which are around 5m2 in a clean configuration. This is due to the lack of 90 degree corners, but its size and as a untreated conductor puts it close to 4m2. With the above modifications it could be brought down to 0.1m2, perhaps even lower depending on the RAM coating, meaning it could be better than a B1B. Due its large size, it will be less prone to detection from lower frequency radars that relay on resonance effects.

        Avionics wise, using scaled up versions of Radar 2+, Pirate 2 and Praetorian from the Typhoon Tranche 4 and the ESM kit for the proposed Typhoon ECR. This along with a high bandwidth covert data-link would give the aircraft a true multi-mission capability. The above measures would make the Vulcan a strategic stand-off weapons carrier, to maritime surveillance and attack, suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD), along with a traditional bomber role. Pretty much what the B1B can currently do, but in a more pleasing shape.

        I wonder if we could crowd fund and get sponsorship to modify a Vulcan and build a prototype?

    • The mightiest battleships of all time were taken out with WW2 weaponry in the end as a weapon they have little value like the B-52 they were seen as a visual indicator of might. The B-52 is still useful in that regard as here but it’s main asset is it’s carrying capacity for stand off weapons it’s an accident of technology really that makes it still useful when no one is going to design a new aircraft of the sort so they keep it going to serve that purpose of old school capacity combined with new world weapons at scale, Of course when it was truly a front line weapon it was the Vulcans and Victors that had the job of being the first wave going in to suppress the defences so that the B-52s could go in with the hope of survival to do the heavy work. Two years running in the 60s the Vulcans ‘took out’ New York with the loss of just one aircraft each attack due to its then ground breaking radar suppression tech but their job is far better done with smaller strike aircraft if you use aircraft at all which is the way it went after this generation of aircraft. Be it V-Bombers or B-52s their role is niche these days and the US can afford that luxury the rest of us not.

      • There could be some logic in having large manned platforms (Vulcan 2) that could launch various weapons from a considerable distance and do it whilst loitering and awaiting further targeting. A large airframe with long-range fuel and a payload, say twice or three times that of a Typhoon could have extended operational envelopes, especially in and around the SCS. The fleet would not need to be more than 10-15 and stationed strategically and ready to undertake lengthy operations when required. In essence, a squadron of six planes based in Quata would be a considerable deterrent and in operational terms, the equivalent of two Typhoon squadrons. The concept of a loitering bomber platform would pose considerable problems for our potential foe and give the RAF a useful long-range menu of choice.

    • The difference is that it is a bomb truck load of precision weapons with incredible accuracy.

      You cannot compare that to WW2 where you tipped a load of bombs out and some might, if you were lucky, hit the target.

      The whole reason why Black Buck dropped a cross runway string at Stanley was the imprecision. Most of Vulcan’s systems were WW2 in origin including the targeting radar based on H2S.

      There comes a point where flying antiques becomes both very expensive (no parts support as the components to make the parts are no longer made) and pointless.

    • Vulcans worked well against Indonesia when deployed to Singapore and also worked well against Argentina after they hit the FI and they feared attacks on BA they pulled back much if their Airforce.

      A small buy of 7 B21’s for the RAF would be top of my shopping list right now if I was in charge. Strategic bombers can have a effect well outside of their actual capability. A modernised Vulcan would have been very useful just like B1 today.

    • Beautiful aircraft the Vulcan. It had a far lighter payload though than the B52, so not really equivellant, but the heaviest we had. Why risk mega bombers when we can send hordes of cruise missiles with precision strike rather than obliterating innocent civilians, or risk highly trained crews.

    • It was all due to politics between the navy and RAF, with a diminished defence budget. It was decided that the RN being equipped with Polaris was the way ahead, probably aided by America pushing the sale of Polaris, for which they retained the codes.

  3. Nice flyby I guess, although what purpose it serves, well I for one have no idea.
    If the US/NATO/Western Europe are too shit scared to tackle Russia once and for all.

    We know that and so does Russia. So time to save all that aviation fuel, put the ‘big toys’ back in their boxes, and focus on fighting the poxy proxy war!

    Unfortunately that’s all the west is really good for. Hopefully this ‘war’ will finish, before China decides to flex it military might in the Taiwan straight?

    • When shall we attack Russia then?Through Finland or Poland? Take your pick,all the way to Moscow or carry on to Siberia?🙄

      • You don’t seem to have a point to make, unless its ‘hiding behind the sofa’, while the Ukrainians do the dirty work, at a cost of 1000’s of lives.

        • Well as you want NATO to attack Russia I thought you could give us a clue where and when!As to hiding behind the sofa where were you in the 70/80s when I was sitting in Germany waiting for the hordes to come across the IGB with a life expectancy of 24hrs? Still a twinkle in the eye I expect🙄

          • That’s something I would have loved to have tried.

            My Dad came out after, 26years ish, and at Catterick did a ‘Labouring’ resettlement course, working for the Earl Cadogan, in his spare time he was able to perform lots of handyman jobs from brick laying to total house refurbishment; Bodger Barry and Son was created in Chelsea and we worked every free day; but, I loved it.

          • You had a life expectancy of 24hrs? Wow I wish I had been in your shoes. What were you… REME?

            To be honest, I cannot remember what our ‘life expectancy’ was in the Artillery. I served in the late 70’s to mid 80’s, on an OP crew, and I do recall it wasn’t anywhere near 24hours!

            Thanks ever so much.

          • To be quite honest then you should know better than to even call for NATO action as you should know what the score is!

          • REME, front line units and rear area locations, high value depth target for the Russians during the BAOR days. OPs, RA, pretty much the same life expectancy in the first 24hrs as everyone else Tom. Unless you were stay behind OPs, then your initial liefex was longer, but then after the Reds had rolled by, very short. Come on mate, lets get over this “my job was harder/more dangerous/wetter/scarier than yours” etc…..everyone was and still are, on the same team.

          • You can Foxtrot Oscar your last statement.

            I faced PARA off after their session at the Ratpit. I win.

            😉

          • Ah the ratpit, long and thin, hard to extract from if the enemy holds the main entrance!!!!! many a good night in there kicking your boys arses back up hospital hill…..😂👍!

    • NATO is a defensive alliance. The message to Russia is simply confirmation that all the allies including the most powerful ones and those furthest away will defend every inch of NATO soil. Proxy war it is not. Individual nations see an agressor who is bullying his neighbour. Those nations are staying out of the fight but evening up the odds a little so Ukraine is able to defend itself. Whilst I am sure China will excert pressure on Taiwan I hope they will remember that anything they gain from force is likely to be outweighed by the rest of the world eliminating chinese companies from their supplier list.

  4. I doubt B-52s can do anything other than make the Russians yawn. S-300 and S-400 missile systems would down those aircraft instantly after crossing into Russian airspace.
    B-52s only strike fear in goat herders and farmers, like those in Afghanistan.

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