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The lead headline on Drudge this morning is an article in Defense One, which portends a return to a 24-hour alert, which hasn’t been seen since the demise of Strategic Air Command. As intriguing as that headline is, it’s really not practical, and it’s a stretch, if not a bluff.
At Barksdale AFB, the Air Force is preparing to renovate the “Christmas tree,” or the alert pad that used to mark every base with a long runway and a SAC presence. I grew up near Pease AFB in Portsmouth during the Cold War, and well remember the FB-111’s sitting on the pad, and practicing MITO (minimum interval take-off) drills at all hours. I remember going to the mall with some of my airmen acquaintances and seeing the blue school bus pull up to collect them when the alert klaxon sounded. I remember the December day in 1984 when a Russian sub off Finland almost trigger WW3.
Returning to those days might make for heady headlines, but U.S. bomber doctrine really can’t support it. The B-52 is a very old platform, and while we can afford to have a few of them rotating through 24-hour alert status, the toll that would take on maintenance, logistics, and airframes is unsustainable. There are way less than 100 B-52H aircraft in service, most of the based at Barksdale, with some at Minot. All of them are far older than their crews, having been last produced in 1963.
The B-1B is mostly employed on missions in support of our Afghanistan and ISIS wars, with many of them moved to Air National Guard units. It’s not a good candidate for alert pad operation. The B-2 is far too expensive and rare (only 21 were built) to be wasted sitting on an alert pad. We have no aircraft like the purpose-built FB-111 platform–those are all gone. And the Buffs now cost in excess of $10,000 per hour in maintenance costs.
Having the alert facilities renovated and ready might look good, but it’s hardly going to bring back the days of Curtis LeMay, nuclear bomber patrols, and 24-hour flights to the Russian border.
EXCLUSIVE: US Preparing to Put Nuclear Bombers Back on 24-Hour Alert – Defense One
If the order comes, the B-52s will return to a ready-to-fly posture not seen since the Cold War. That means the long-dormant concrete pads at the ends of this base’s 11,000-foot runway â dubbed the âChristmas tree“ for their angular markings â could once again find several B-52s parked on them, laden with nuclear weapons and set to take off at a moment’s notice. Goldfein, who is the Air Force’s top officer and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is asking his force to think about new ways that nuclear weapons could be used for deterrence, or even combat.
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