Two American B-52 bombers have conducted an extensive patrol over the Baltic Sea.
The U.S. bombers conducted a routine mission with Finland and Sweden.
Why are they in Europe?
“Bomber Task Force missions reinforce our ability to rapidly project combat power, demonstrating U.S. lethality and readiness in a dynamic security environment,” said Major General Joseph Campo, U.S. Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa Director of Operations, Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration.
“Training alongside our Allies and partners ensures seamless integration, enhancing our collective deterrence and warfighting capability across Europe and Africa” he added.
The bombers will continue to integrate with NATO Allies, conducting joint training missions to enhance interoperability and readiness. Photo courtesy of the Finnish Air Force
According to the U.S. Air Force, “BTF 25-2 will demonstrate Agility in a dynamic security environment and global strike capabilities in support of assurance and deterrence. The bomber aircraft will continue to integrate with NATO Allies and partners, conducting joint training missions designed to enhance interoperability and readiness across the theatre.
This integration highlights the importance of dynamic force employment, which ensures U.S. forces are strategically postured to deter aggression while adapting to the evolving security environment. The missions will also demonstrate the bombers’ ability to operate from multiple forward locations.”
Only the gullible will be reassured. The US are as reassuring as North Korea. In fact North Korea can do less damage to the world.
Unfortunately the US military and state just seems to be operating on autopilot, their political leadership just flipped sides and no one knows what to do yet so they just keep doing what they were doing before.
What’s a sad end to such an amazing orginzation as the US military that kept the peace for so long.
You’re right, it’s like one of those chickens that continues to walk around even after its head’s been chopped off…
I suspect their orders have not changed and probably will not be changed in the foreseeable future.
The US military’s political masters appointed by the people are in the process of chucking everything up in the air and seeing what happens.
It’s great in theory, we shall see what US citizens think to the result in due course.
In the meantime it might be an idea to pretend US forces could exit stage left at any point and decide to get our act together.
What are the priorities. F**k the %age of GDP just get building. Covid messed up Boris’s first term & I suspect a defence crisis will mess up Kier’s. When the s**t hits the fan it is always the person in charge who gets the blame.
I think kier messed up his own first term, the military crisis is saving him 😀
After a financial crisis, Covid and the impact of the Russo-Ukraine war plus brexit, the country is in a state and no matter what the gov does there will be a significant number of people not happy. Difficult decisions need to be made and people, particularly those who can afford it need to be prepared to make some sacrifices. But nobody likes that so it feeds the populists and nationalists that like to find scapegoats, throw in social media and it’s insidious amplification of the most crackpot theories and half truths and who ghe hell would want to be in charge?
Actually a massive rearmament program is probably one of the best industrial stimulus packages you will ever find..there is a reason for the miracle that was the third Reichs economic boom…the problem is it’s not sustainable and you need to in the end do something with it…most massive economic stimulus through rearming generally end in grabbing a load of someone else’s resources..or taking control of something…or getting someone else to have a war and selling then a shite ton of stuff.
Some may say on a human scale, it’s a waste of money and resources. Unless you fight a war it’s just a wasted deterrent. Economically money could be better invested in housing and infrastructure. Military service may not be that good a preparation for civilian life. Just some thoughts.
Trump says one thing. But the US military is carrying on as ops normal with its allies
Yes but that’s because they are following their normal procedures..in the end he is the commander in chief of their armed forces..when he say go home they will all go home.
Sadly, Trump has done an amazing job of undermining Article 5 and European trust in NATO and the US. We have to placate him while we build up our militaries and our military indistrial base.
The only thing that will reassure allies is The Tangerine King recalibrating his mouth to normal diplomacy settings.
Unfortunately that setting doesn’t appear to exist on the Trumpistan II model of the Tangerine King which appears to have been recalibrated to Moscow tangerine tint?
I don’t think it’s his mouth I think simply the US administration feels it now has more common interest with Russia than it does European nations..it sees the world having three powers Russia ( which it wants to normalise relations with) china which it
S competing with and itself as the primary power..it sees Europe as nothing more than a group of small essentially geostrategically pointless nations it wishes to control and extract benefit from.
I hope we Germans cancel the F35s at once. What use are they when Putrump can switch off Himars like he just did in Ukraine, too?
At the .moment, it seems that for the US forces, it is business as usual with NATO allies. I’m just waiting for the Trump, double – think – speak fabrication that will signal the reduction, if not, the end of cooperation, to engineer the end of NATO as an effective alliance which I’ve mentioned before. Russia us now calling the USA, its partner again and broadcasts itself, China and the USA in the same breath this afternoon.
“May we live in interesting times”
Yes, it frightens me to say it out loud, but NATO’s gone. Alliances rely on trust more than anything else, and the spell has been broken. It would be like trying to trust a partner who’s cheated on you. The trust can never come back. We’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’…
Perhaps if he goes even further some officers will remember their oath to defend the constitution from enemies both foreign AND domestic!
One man and his dog have undone 80 years of hard fought co-operation and totally destroyed that loyalty and the deaths of so many who stood up for the common beliefs….. all in a little over a few weeks. America, the land of the free is fast becoming the land of the hated. It’s all happening again isn’t it… one man’s ego and his loyal acolytes.
What a mess he is making.
Not only Nato…. Can you imagine how nervous the South Koreans and others in the region must feel right now.
Absolutely,I expect Taiwan will have zero faith. Once Taiwan and S Korea have established production lines for their critical products in the US they will be superfluous to requirements….
But…. In the fight for domination of the Pacific, can the US afford to let them go?
In really I think we now need accept that the world order has now shifted, this is not just Trump doing a few things to get Europe to pay its own ways..this is a fundamental shift and you have to really get down into geopolitical power balances and views as well as the profound shift in US world view with the MAGA paradigm in control to understand this you can really break the last 80 year modern world into four periods
Cold War 1945-1991
In this period we had a bipolar world communist and western liberal democracies, in this the US viewed the communist world as enemy and although other western liberal democracies were considered potentially as competitors to US hegemony they were also considered intrinsic allies in the U.S. fight against its communism enemies. The end of this period saw the victory of the hegemony of U.S. lead liberal democracies
The end of history 1991-2001
We see a uni polar world in which the US dominants, European nations being to develop as a single potential “economic only superpower “ Russia collapses in on itself and china and India as well as Brazil begin the climb to great powers..Europe begins integration of Eastern Europe states into the EU and NATO.
The war on terror and rise of a multi polar world 2001- 2024
The US is attacked by Islamists and attacks back, creating a need to the US to retain support from its traditional allies from European NATO. Wi hill the west is distracted, Russia reawakens and begins its Near Abroad policy and again becomes one of the great powers, china beings its 9 dash line policy and moves to a superpower state and massively re arms. China and Russia launch massive political warfare campaigns against the west and being preparing to war with democracies close to their areas of influence.
the U.S. begins to feel an economic swing away from itself and begins to see European Union as a threat to its position, blaming its traditional allies for its perceived loss of status. Essentially falling victim to Russian and Chinese political warfare and the rise of MAGA, but it still needs its allies to combat china.
Chinas view…well it’s going for hegemony in the western pacific and it will attack anyone in its way with any and all means..that this point in history that’s political warfare in all forms against the US and Its allies in Europe.
2025…… the collapse of western hegemony and the international order ( what I think may be happening)
Essentially MAGA America views the world as a Multi polar world with three key predatory powers, US, Russia and china. It sees all other powers and nations as essentially subservient to one of these three predatory powers. It develops the same world view as Russia and china in which the nations that make up its near abroad must be controlled, therefore it launches political warfare attacks on Canada and Mexico to ensure their control. MAGA US sees china as its great adversary, but Russia as the third predatory power as potentially useful and not a core threat. It sees the EU as a useful set of essentially puppet states as long as they are not a cohesive whole as that would be a threat.. essentially a core for MAGA US would be to keep European nations divided, still beholden to the U.S. and focused on their immediate security worries..Russia becomes useful for this. Essentially the MAGA world view is very bad for Europeans…. Uncle Sam may throw us a few bones if we are good clients and a good market place.but don’t get in the way of the US and don’t sell stuff back.
China…well china is still out to get hegemony in the western pacific..but its views on Europe will very much depend on if European nations essentially stay linked as allies to the U.S. or are considered an independent power..after all Europe as an independent set of powers is a massive market and trade partner..as long as it has no interest in the western pacific beyond trade. It’s communist..but and for European it’s a big but..China has no interest in the international communist movement.it’s essentially a county run by national communists, who are driven by national interest..they only want communism for china..as far as they are concerned the rest of the world can smoke it’s own political pipe as long as it stays out of chinas way and does not stick its nose in Chinese business.
Russia..we know the Russian world view it’s essentially a fascist expansionist state that will do all it can to rebuild the Russian empire at its high water mark and control all the boarding states..its economy means that it’s probably now fixed in a war economy and needs wars to survive…after the US conspire with Russia to force a peace on Ukraine it will build up and invade either Ukraine again or another nation….it’s essentially the modern equivalent of the third Reich in the 1930.. it has to invade, its economics are now the economics of war….all Europe can really hope for is that it goes for Asian countries such as Georgia..but after Ukraine it’s essentially going to eat all the old USSR Asian countries and then come for Eastern Europe… it’s MAGA America giving Russia eastern Ukrainian will give Russia…many trillions of dollars ( around 7 trillion ) in minerals to extract and power it’s war machine…
Europe is now at a crossroads…it either spilts and accepts US dominance and hopes that the US is willing and even able to keep Russia from going to war with it..while it has to spend massively on its own defence that will never be adequate because it will be split and essentially still under the control of the U.S…while the U.S. Makes America great again at the expense of European nations…or it joins together becomes a cohesive world power…stares Russia in the face and scares the shit out of Putin…tells the US we are now nothing more that friendly trading partners..develops a friendly trade with china, india and Brazil, makes great friendships with the Middle East and chases Russia out of Africa and lets everyone know that supporting Africa to grow is a European Job and everyone else in the nicest way can back off to their own regions and play.
Let’s look at the MAGA views as these are now the US
Looking at the news coming from the European summit, it seems Europe has already decided to unite and go it alone. The entire bloc has proposed a massive increase in both military and defence funding for both Ukraine and Europe, the Germans have announced they will remove the “debt brake” to invest in military infrastructure and France has proposed a defensive nuclear shield across the continent. There is also a recognition that all military equipment must be manufactured in Europe; clearly they have accepted that the US is no longer considered to be a strong ally.
The flight of these B52s is like a chastity belt, it is a piece of ironmongery designed to look fierce and provide a feeling of security but useless if there is no padlock backing it up. Just like the B52s lumps of metalwork flying around trying to look all scary but with no presidential authority backing them up they are useless.
May as well have asked the NATO nations around the Baltic Sea to throw paper aeroplanes into the sky!
Sadly you are correct, the foundation of military power is political will..without political will military power is pointless.
The UK owns $750 Bn of US treasury bonds. Other European central banks have 5 – 6 times that amount. Why are we lending such huge amounts to the US government which has aligned itself with our enemy Russia and is clearly an unreliable trade partner? Instead of propping up the dollar and funding the orange baboon’s demented policies Europeans must collectively dump treasuries and invest in Euro and gbp bonds issued to fund military investments in Europe. A former senior us politician once said “when I die I want to come back as the bond market because everyone fears the bond market”. We are America’s bank manager. Time to call in the loan. The let’s see how popular trump is when interest rates go through the roof.
Worth doing some real research on that. EU have no bonds and have their own bonds. America owes them nothing. UK have roughly $ 600 billion but we also have to remember that the US suspended loans before the war and in 1934 the UK refused to pay £4 billion back then..and remember if we do the rubbish you mention. Imagine the banks and companies that world up sticks and leave. That’s why fools like yourself are not in charge. And you v n to suggest that America is an ally of Putin makes you and the rest look like idiots in ho have TDS and hate America. Did you hear that Biden also shouted at Zelensky. Do you remember Putin going to president Bush ranch and staying in 2007?
I am surprised that the comments on here make the majority look really really stupid. How on god’s green earth is Trump switching sides.? The UK and Europe have had 3 years and did nothing but throw the tax payers money at Ukraine. Now we will have a deal. Where America benefits from what they gave and Putin won’t dare attack Ukraine. But fools think he is on the russian side. Trump is too smart. And then I hear cry babies from the looney left say JD Vance called us Brits this and that. No he didn’t you idiots. He n vwr mentioned Britain. But he would have been correct as we have not had a war on our shores for a long time. Falklands 1982 how close was that to our little island? It’s hard to believe that the comments from people who think they are grown up and our politicians in the UK and EU are no better. They would rather have a war, they can sell weapons and rob the economy.
I bet once the deal is signed Russia won’t be near Ukraine. And yes they will fly into our air space. And just like we do theirs. That’s a game they play. But to act like a spoilt selfish brat and say that there is no defence because of Trump and Putin. Fools will never listen and learn. And it is high time we looked after ourselves. We can’t rely on Americans. We know we can’t rely on the EU. Look at the back stabbing they did over Brexit. And they are meant to be friends lol. So sit down rest your mouth and fingers. Speak to a specialist who may give you advice. But we will have peace all because of Trump. Not because of the UK, EU or Ukraine. Russia is going for p qce because they don’t know what Trump may do. Look at Biden and what he didn’t do. He also shouted at Zelensky. No shouting from politicians about that and remember Putin was also in America as guest of other presidents. Didn’t he spend time at Bush house in 2007? Did Bush suddenly become a russian friend?
The Americans are well within their rights to withdraw military aid if they want but you forget that collectively, Europe has donated as much to Ukraine. Also, while Europe does need to contribute more towards their own defences, they have financially and militarily supported some of the USA’s most catastrophic misadventures in places like Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and Libya.
Europe are not asking the Americans to defend them specifically, they are asking the Americans to honour their obligations under NATO should they be attacked as part of a peace-keeping mission in Ukraine. You all seem to conveniently forget that Article 5 has only been triggered once in its history – on behalf of the US.
It is becoming apparent that the US wants all the benefits of NATO membership without any of the responsibilities.
As for standing alone, Europe (with the exception of the delusional UK prime minister) is now moving in that direction, so what is the problem? Part of that drive to go it alone will inevitably involve a recognition that the US is not an ally that can be counted on to honour its NATO obligations. That’s the reality. The special relationship is over – get used to it.
He is not on the Russia side, he is only on the U.S. side…he does not give a shit about Europe, other than what advantages it can give to the US and to make sure it cannot be a strategic competitor..it’s never about sides only about what a nation thinks is in its own interests and its very clear Trump now feels dealing with Russia is in the U.S. interest and basically dividing up Ukraine supports that interest…Trump is not our friend at best he can be a mutual business associate.
My god norman your speil is out of the russian textbook. I’m not going through it all but Putin has no intention of peace unless Ukraine bows down to his wishes. The invasion is more than likely about the resources buried beneath the ground in Ukraine – Trump is after exactly the same – none of them give a hoot about Ukraine. The same goes for Greenland – it’s all about resources – people are just an inconvenience to them especially ones who defy them or question their motives. As regards the EU – the UK slagged them off for years – a long time before we left – we were the ones that messed the EU about – no wonder they dug in – the politicians dealing with it were useless on the UK side. And as regards war – I doubt very much the families of the military personnel would thank you very much for missing out Iraq and Afghanistan. What were they in your mind – and just as a matter of fact – a war does not have to be fought on our shores for it to be a war – I have family members buried in Syria, Iraq and one member that was never found somewhere in France. I take it you are refering to Trump as a specialist – if that’s the case you really need to see a psychiatrist as you are completely off your fexking head. Oh and by the way – as the famous line in faulty towers stated – you started it – my addition – ya gobshxte.
They are there for show. If anything, their patrols make many of us feel less assured. The US is no longer an ally and I hope European leaders are not fooled by this display and continue to forge their own path.
Reassure? Given Trump is Putin’s glove puppet with Putin’s arm so far up trumps arse that trump can’t work it’s own mouth I would class the presence of USA planes as a THREAT. News that Trump is talking with pro Putin figures in Ukraine as well as trying to wreck Zelensky in front of the world means without a doubt Trump is giving Ukraine to Russia because the yank already has a deal with Putin.
It is time for the UK, Europe, in fact the free world (of which the USA is clearly not part) to ditch ALL USA military equipment (why invest in himars, f35 or any other such second rate overly expensive crap when the ignorant, stupid, nasty bastards in the USA can make them useless at the flick of a switch?). Now after believing the crap spewing out of the USA despite seeing them letting down the UK in ww1 and ww2, letting down Tibet when it was invaded, letting down half of Europe at the end of ww2, kicking Taiwan out of the UN, screwing us, France and Israel over Suez, failing south Korea, Vietnam, Iraq even not to mention the incredible spectacle of Trump surrendering over Afghanistan where the ‘worlds greatest military’ (according to their own loud mouths) was roundly and completely defeated by a bunch of ill trained people with outbid date weapons. No, it’s time the free world stopped trading with the USA, set up a proper defence organisation of countries that keep their word, including not just Europe and UK but Australia, New Zealand and other countries. We should gold exercises, develop weapons, develop mass nuclear capability including weapons specifically targeted at the USA as they are clearly not a friend and more likely a foe as they are working with Russia, with Putin’s arm up trumps arse probably because Putin has thr inside track on what trump was doing to kiddies on that infamous island