Approximately 150 airmen from the 492nd Fighter Squadron at RAF Lakenheath, England, deployed to Bulgaria July 11 to take part in the two-week training exercise dubbed Immediate Response that pairs US and Bulgarian forces, reports Stars and Stripes. Ten F-15E Strike Eagles from the 492nd are scheduled to fly to Bulgaria for the start of the exercise on July 19. The 492nd plans to conduct air-to-air training with Bulgarian MiG-21s and MiG-29s.
The future U.S. bomber force could provide a way for the Pentagon to simultaneously deter conflict with peer adversaries in two geographically disparate theaters, said Mark Gunzinger, the director of future concepts and capability assessments at AFA's Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, during a March 21 event. But doing so…