Posted on 05/18/2014 3:50:01 PM PDT by gaijin
Seymour Hersh first exposed the My Lai Massacre and kicked off the hubbub regarding Abu Ghraib. He is now writing a history on the W.O.T.
How many bombers are typically in a "wing" of B-52's...? Is the proper number SIXTY, or is it less?
I think Hersh is describing a once-planned bombing mission of ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY B-52's, ordered by a NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER...?
I must be mistaken...?
As Mr. Hersh wrote at the London Review of Books:
In the aftermath of the 21 August attack Obama ordered the Pentagon to draw up targets for bombing. Early in the process, the former intelligence official said, ‘the White House rejected 35 target sets provided by the joint chiefs of staff as being insufficiently “painful” to the Assad regime.’ The original targets included only military sites and nothing by way of civilian infrastructure. Under White House pressure, the US attack plan evolved into ‘a monster strike’: two wings of B-52 bombers were shifted to airbases close to Syria, and navy submarines and ships equipped with Tomahawk missiles were deployed. ‘Every day the target list was getting longer,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘The Pentagon planners said we can’t use only Tomahawks to strike at Syria’s missile sites because their warheads are buried too far below ground, so the two B-52 air wings with two-thousand pound bombs were assigned to the mission. Then we’ll need standby search-and-rescue teams to recover downed pilots and drones for target selection. It became huge.’ The new target list was meant to ‘completely eradicate any military capabilities Assad had’, the former intelligence official said. The core targets included electric power grids, oil and gas depots, all known logistic and weapons depots, all known command and control facilities, and all known military and intelligence buildings.
(Excerpt) Read more at lrb.co.uk ...
I STRONGLY think all Benghazi freeps need to read the info at the above source link, as there are many other details regarding what was going on at Bengazi.
According to wikipedia, we only have 85 B-52s in active service.
Back when I was a SAC trained killer we had about 12 to 16 in a wing if my memory is correct. About six on or in the alert area an six or so on the flight line and hangers etc ....Kincheloe AFB back in early 70’s...
Sounds MUCH more plausible, thank you..!!
Back when I was a SAC trained killer we had about 12 to 16 in a wing if my memory is correct.
I'll confirm. We had 15 or so.
I'll confirm. We had 15 or so.
And, a bit of clarification...in SAC, Bomb Wings had a split of Bombers and Tankers. We had ~15 B-52Gs and ~15 KC-135As.
Obama is a blood thirsty evil demon. those in Congress, the police, the courts, the press and the military that protect him are even worse.
Same here. We had half and half B-52As and KC-135A and later KC-135Q refueling aircraft. The “Q” had separate tanks and could refuel the SR-71.
"The standard strike formation for the Arc Light B-52s was the three-ship 'cell.' The attack could be either by a single cell or multiple cells...Air support kept Khe Sanh alive and eventually broke the siege. On an average day, 350 tactical fighters and 60 B-52s pounded the enemy."
Well back in the day a standard size USAF fighter squadron would have about 24 fighter planes. The "peace dividend" at the end of the cold war shrunk them down to 18 fighters. A fighter wing in the day with 2 squadrons would be around 44 to 48 fighters and 3 Sq. wing could have about 72. However, some A-10 wings like at RAF Woodridge/Bentwaters had over 100 assigned. Then came those composite wings and I forgot how many those had. ;^) These days, it's probably 12 and kite. ;-)
Original Syria strike was to include two B-52 wings,
Probably about 2 to 6 and a kite. ;^) Heh.
Is this not the strike that John Kerry described to Congress as "unbelievably small", a mere "pinprick"?
One wonders why the CIC seems prepared to obliterate Assad's regime, but has been reluctant to use force against other Muslim regimes.
“Under White House pressure, the US attack plan evolved into ‘a monster strike’: two wings of B-52 bombers were shifted to airbases close to Syria, and navy submarines and ships equipped with Tomahawk missiles were deployed.””
And Putin was willing to engage U.S. Forces with a thin line of warships, to stop Obama from attacking yet another country.
I would have LOVED to have been a fly-on-the-wall when that aide rushed in to the situation room, with the NSA-intercepted message that Putin was about to go to war over Syria. You KNOW the narcissist did not take that well, hence the US-financed Ukraine Civil War now.
Remember how all the Democrat wonks went on TV afterwards to say, “Well, there are OTHER ways to get at Putin!!’
Now we know what they meant.
Agree totally. This is actually big news.
When a Nobel Peace Price winner orders a bombing strike of 30 B-25's IT IS A PIN-PRICK...?
JUST WOW...!
B-52’s, not B-25’s, sorry.
Transcript...
Barry (takes toke): “Yeah, Tomahawks... Oh, and B52s!” Takes another toke. “No... TWO WINGS of B52s dude!”
Aide (takes toke) “No way!”
Barry: “And civilian targets too. That’ll be heavy man. I’ll show them!”
Anyone who knows how stoned teen agers behave knows everything about how the Obama adminstration creates and implements policies.
The USAF has only two active wings of B-52s - 2nd Bomber Wing at Barksdale and 5th Bomber Wing at Minot.
Yes, I remember about 15 on average, commanded by a Full Colonel.
Absolute rubbish...there are 76 B-52s remaining in the USAF inventory, divided between Minot and Barksdale. For argument’s sake, let’s say they allocated four squadrons to the mission, a total of 48 aircraft. And this deployment went undetected?
For starters, there’s the monumental job of getting more than 40 heavy bombers from bases in Louisiana and North Dakota, to installations in western Europe. As I recall, there are only two bases in that part of the world that have handled B-52s during recent contingency operations, RAF Fairford in the UK, and Moron AB in Spain. Yet, we supposedly sent dozens of heavy bombers to those installations and no one noticed.
Then, there’s the critical element of tanker support. The deployment of all those bombers would be accompanied by an even larger contingent of KC-135s and KC-10s, to refuel the B-52s pre and post-strike (as required) and provide tanking support for other aircraft, such as fighter aircraft, ECM platforms, AWACS, Rivet Joint, Compass Call, etc. Never heard anything about a large-scale tanker deployment, or the move of additional ISR, ECM and battle management platforms to the theater. Strike two, Mr. Hersh.
Additionally, if you’re dispatching large numbers of aircraft to overseas bases, you’ll need hundreds, even thousands of support personnel. That means Air Mobility Command (AMC) would have been awfully busy, along with various civilian contract carriers. And once they arrive, they’ve got to have some place to eat, sleep, bathe, etc. Didn’t see a report about tent cities going up at Moron or Fairford, or a sudden influx of airmen who tied up all available hotel rooms for miles around those bases.
Finally, the B-52s primary weapon (these days) is as a stand-off cruise missile platform. Syria has the relatively advanced SA-17 surface-to-air missile and rest assured, the USAF is not going to send B-52s into that type of threat environment. And in a stand-off role, there is only a limited amount of damage the Buffs could inflict against buried and hardened targets. Neutralizing the AD environment would take a level of effort Barry O wasn’t prepared to authorize. The same holds true for the B-52 deployment.
Hersh has been resting on his laurels for years. This claim is laughable and easily disprovable.
I'm going to guess that there are only about 100 Buffs H models in the active inventory...
Time to go looky look. :-0) ...
Even less than 100, and according GlobalSecurity.org, we have 76 Buffs in service:
"... To address this issue, the Air Force will add five additional B-52 attrition reserve aircraft, bringing the B-52 total from 71 to 76 for a total bomber force of 190. The B-52 fleet will remain the same with 44 combat-coded aircraft. ...."
Only 44 "combat-coded" ?
A wing is just a composition of two or more squadrons. How many aircraft in a squadron can vary from a few to a few dozen in each squadron.
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