Loh to USAF: Ellsworth Move “Irresponsible”: Retired Air Force Gen. Mike Loh is making one last effort to help save Ellsworth AFB, S.D., from the BRAC axe. The former Air Force vice chief of staff provided videotaped testimony against the Pentagon plan to shutter Ellsworth and shift its B-1B bombers to Dyess AFB, Tex., when BRAC commissioners traveled to South Dakota in June. Loh has now written a letter to the commission because he is “more convinced now than I was in June that the Pentagon is wrong,” he tells the Rapid City Journal. In his letter, Loh claims the Pentagon decision to downsize to a single B-1B base is “irresponsible.”
The U.S. strike on Iran's nuclear development facilities saw the first use of the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a weapon specifically designed for such a mission more than 20 years ago. The Air Force B-2s were the only platform with the stealth and carrying capacity needed to haul the huge…