I’m confused. Whenever we have war exercises don’t we dispatch weapons systems that may be used? They are making it sound like we are having war games and Trump interrupted the meeting and said, “we are sending B52’s over there.”
Or am I missing something?
I think the article is saying that we’re sending more aircraft than might be required for the exercise, or that the move is uncharacteristic of such exercises i.e. maybe the aircraft normally stage out of Japan or Alaska but this time they’re in-country. I hope the runway they’re staging from lets them climb out headed North, and that they wait until the last minute to turn away from NK airspace. Maybe watching a steady stream of fully-loaded B-52s will dampen the NorKs enthusiasm for punching the US in the nose.
My folks used to live near Westover AFB back in the 60s when it was still SAC, and my dad told me of the time that he was out in the garden, and felt a terrible presence behind him. He turned to see what appeared to be an all-black B-52 coming overhead very low, with all engines throttled down. He almost couldn’t hear it, even though it couldn’t have been more than a thousand feet up, just gliding in on a very shallow final to the base about 15 miles away. He said it was the closest thing he’d ever seen to the Angel of Death, and he was a Marine i.e. not easily rattled.