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Air Force has employed the Small Diameter Bomb for the first time in Afghanistan. An F-15E Strike Eagle deployed to Bagram Air Base from the 391st Fighter Squadron at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, dropped the GPS-aided GBU-39B on a close air support mission on Jan. 27 to aid International Security Assistance Forces under attack by enemy fighters. “The [joint terminal attack controller] asked us to drop that specific weapon on that specific spot, and that’s what we did,” said Wrangler, one of the F-15E’s two-person crewmembers. An Air Force release notes, “The enemy stopped fighting and retreated.”
A-10 Thunderbolt II attack planes in the Middle East are flying with fresh modifications as the Air Force looks to make the plane more versatile amid America’s ongoing blockade of Iranian ports and a tenuous ceasefire in the U.S. air war against Iran.