The U.S. is not sending B-1 bombers to Guam
Despite reports that are beginning to circulate on the Internet, the U.S. is not sending B-1 Lancer heavy bombers to its massive Pacific Ocean base on Guam. "They’re not at Guam," a U.S. Pacific Air Forces spokeswoman just told Killer Apps. "They definitely didn’t even stop through." The U.S. constantly rotates B-2 stealth bombers and ...
Despite reports that are beginning to circulate on the Internet, the U.S. is not sending B-1 Lancer heavy bombers to its massive Pacific Ocean base on Guam.
Despite reports that are beginning to circulate on the Internet, the U.S. is not sending B-1 Lancer heavy bombers to its massive Pacific Ocean base on Guam.
"They’re not at Guam," a U.S. Pacific Air Forces spokeswoman just told Killer Apps. "They definitely didn’t even stop through."
The U.S. constantly rotates B-2 stealth bombers and B-52 Stratofortress bombers through Anderson Air Force Base, Guam under a scheme meant to maintain a constant heavy bomber presence in the Pacific. Last week, the U.S. sent six B-52s from Minot AFB in North Dakota to Guam. Also last week, a pair of B-2s also flew a 13,000-mile round-trip mission from Missouri to South Korea to perform a practice bombing run over the peninsula — the North Koreans loved that.
B-1s, however, often deploy to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean or to a base on the Persian Gulf, where they are used to provide air support to troops in Afghanistan.
"They’re pretty concerned with the desert, so they’re pretty busy over there," added the spokeswoman when asked if the B-1s ever deploy to Anderson as part of the Air Force’s "continuous bomber presence" mission.
John Reed is a national security reporter for Foreign Policy. He comes to FP after editing Military.com’s publication Defense Tech and working as the associate editor of DoDBuzz. Between 2007 and 2010, he covered major trends in military aviation and the defense industry around the world for Defense News and Inside the Air Force. Before moving to Washington in August 2007, Reed worked in corporate sales and business development for a Swedish IT firm, The Meltwater Group in Mountain View CA, and Philadelphia, PA. Prior to that, he worked as a reporter at the Tracy Press and the Scotts Valley Press-Banner newspapers in California. His first story as a professional reporter involved chasing escaped emus around California’s central valley with Mexican cowboys armed with lassos and local police armed with shotguns. Luckily for the giant birds, the cowboys caught them first and the emus were ok. A New England native, Reed graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a dual degree in international affairs and history.
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