When the U.S. attacked Iran’s nuclear development facilities in June, more than 130 fighters played a crucial supporting role. But the seven B-2 stealth bombers—flying direct from the U.S. heartland—were indisputably the heart of the operation, each delivering two monster conventional bombs designed to penetrate deeply buried and hardened targets. The mission underscored that the bomber is again assuming a central role in the application of American airpower, and that a shift in balance between bombers and short-range systems may be overdue.
Signs of the bomber’s resurging importance are reflected in a number of other developments:
- Combatant commanders (COCOM) are demanding more bomber presence and bomber task forces (BTFs) in their theaters to show the flag, reassure partners and allies, demonstrate the flexibility of airpower, and conduct strikes.
- Congress has funded increased production capacity for the new B-21 bomber.
- Despite cost overruns, the Air Force and Congress remain committed to a massive overhaul and life extension of the B-52.
- Global Strike Command (GSC) is adding end strength to cover its rising responsibilities, including more bombers.
- Some bombers are being brought out of retirement to keep up with the demand.
Since early 2024, “I have seen more activity and more demand signals for bombers than I have seen probably in the last, at least, five to 10 years,” said Gen. Thomas Bussiere, head of Air Force Global Strike Command, in a July interview. Bussiere has been nominated to be the Air Force’s next Vice Chief of Staff.
The demand for bombers is “unyielding,” he said.
There is a growing “realization of the value and prominence of long-range strike and the ability to hold at risk anything on the planet at a time and place of our choosing,” Bussiere asserted.
To address that need, a greater buy of B-21s should be considered, he said, not only because of “the urgency to replace our aging bombers and the increased cost and challenges of sustaining a legacy bomber fleet” but a “world environment that, quite frankly, everybody looks at and says, ‘we need more long-range strike, not less.’”
The demand for bombers “to deter in peacetime—including bomber task forces—and conduct long-range strikes in war now far outstrips the capacity of the current force,” said Mark Gunzinger, director of future aerospace concepts and capability assessments at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
“We have a raid-size, not a campaign-size bomber force,” Gunzinger said. “And this demand is growing, even as the bomber force continues to shrink because of budget-driven retirements.”
The Air Force fields 140 bombers of three types today. In 1990, just before the end of the Cold War, its bomber fleet numbered more than 500 aircraft.
The bomber force can’t be structured to carry out merely one-off raids, said Maj. Gen. Jason Armagost, commander of 8th Air Force.
“I can never assume that any single strike is going to be enough,” he said on a Mitchell Institute webinar in August.
After the Iran mission—Operation Midnight Hammer—the Air Force had to be “ready for … the next problem to be confronted,” he said, but regrouping for comparable action right away wouldn’t have been easy. Had there not been a cease-fire “about 30 hours after the strike,” the Air Force might not have been able to mount a similar-sized follow-up. “You can’t count on” a rapid end to hostilities after one such operation, he observed.
Midnight Hammer illustrated that “there’s a reversion to first principles of airpower,” Armagost said, “where mass matters, where capability matters, and where the ability to do something is not innovated out of nothing.”
The shortfall in long-range strike is the result of budget-driven, not threat-driven, reductions, he said.
“On the bomber side, we’re sitting at a ‘banquet of consequences,’” Armagost observed, “of decades, now, of force reduction” in an effort to be efficient. This has collided with the new spike in demand, “particularly over the last two years.”
Rising Demand Signal
Bussiere said bomber task forces have been dispatched around the world 48 times during the past 18 months. Since 2018, the Air Force has sent bombers in pairs and small groups to locations as far flung as Australia, South Korea, and Sweden. The short-notice, and usually short-duration deployments, highlight the bomber’s ability to appear quickly—and usually, unexpectedly—operate with local forces and move on to new locations, sometimes through several COCOM areas of responsibility on a single deployment.
Among the missions Bussiere mentioned were “eight no-notice activations” involving all three operational platforms—the B-1, B-2 and B-52. Those included six instances where the bombers flew somewhere to “do destruction on behalf of their nation.” Most of those had to do with attacking the Houthis in Yemen, which have been targeting shipping and aircraft around the Arabian Peninsula. But other BTFs have flown into hotspots like the South China Sea, the skies near the Korean Demilitarized Zone, and all around Europe.
Global Strike Command (GSC) deployed six B-2 stealth bombers to Diego Garcia for months this year, both to conduct operations against the Houthis in Yemen and to “message” Iran. Bussiere acknowledged that it was one of the longest and largest deployments of the stealth aircraft ever.
Bombers send “a very distinct and unique message” to foes and allies alike, Bussiere said, one that even a squadron of fighters can’t match. They are associated with the ability to inflict mass destruction with either conventional or nuclear weapons, and their movements get noticed. Allies and partners “love to train [with] and integrate with our bomber force,” he said.
To cope with increased demands, Bussiere said GSC will need more manpower. Plans call for an increase in end strength of 15 percent by 2030, although some of that will cover new systems like the Sentinel missile and a flying command post.
There have been several reductions in the B-1B force in recent years. Most of these were driven by long wings-extended missions during the Afghanistan and anti-ISIS campaigns, which stressed the aircraft in ways never intended and created maintenance challenges. But the platform remains extremely capable and can carry a larger payload than either the B-2 or B-52.
To preserve the fleet’s capacity, a couple of B-1Bs have been regenerated from the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., “Boneyard” in recent years to replace aircraft lost in accidents, one to a fire in April 2022 and another condemned after a January 2024 crash.
“There’s still a few left in the Boneyard that we could potentially pull out if needed,” Bussiere said. In 2021, the B-1 fleet was reduced from 62 to 45 aircraft; those retired were the most problem-prone ones. The savings of taking them out of service has been applied to spare parts and maintainers to keep the remainder in good shape until the B-21 arrives.
The B-52—the newest of which was built in 1962—is getting a massive overhaul which will convert the fleet from B-52H to B-52J configuration. This entails a $15 billion replacement of its original engines with more fuel-efficient and reliable power plants, as well as a $3.4 billion upgrade of its radar, with other structural, communications, and networking improvements in the pipeline. Despite overruns on the radar upgrade, Congress still supports it, but it has directed greater oversight and firmer timelines from the Air Force.
Bring on the B-21
The B-21 Raider will be joining the fleet in the next few years, and there will be a transition period in which GSC will operate four bomber types—the B-1, B-2, B-21, and B-52—before necking down to just the latter two.
A second B-21 will join the test fleet soon, Bussiere said, but the conditions defining what will constitute initial operational capability for the new bomber are classified. However, the B-1 and B-2 are notionally expected to retire circa 2031-2032, before operational B-21s enter the fleet.
This budget season, Congress approved spending $4.5 billion to accelerate and/or expand production capacity for the B-21, although it didn’t spell out any planned increases to the buy objective. Since 2018, the Air Force has said the buy should be “at least 100.” The actual rate of production is classified, but is believed to be about seven per year; a number deliberately set small at the program’s 2015 inception to protect it from budget cuts.
Congress’ move to expand production expansion was “not a surprise,” Bussiere said.
“We have been studying this now for a little over a year. We have great understanding on the capability, capacity, and cost to … increase the ramp rate.”
Bussiere thinks the Air Force should consider buying 145 B-21s, but the “at least 100” figure is still the official target. He testified in May to the Senate Armed Services Committee that since that objective was set in the mid-2010s, the strategic environment has changed: China has deployed air-launched ICBMs on some of its bombers and built hundreds of silos; Russia invaded Ukraine; North Korea has built up its nuclear arsenal.
Gen. Anthony Cotton, head of U.S. Strategic Command, has argued for 145 B-21s as a more appropriate number, one that Bussiere agrees should be studied. Combined with 75 B-52s, that would give the Air Force a fleet of 220 bombers by the mid-2030s, compared with 140 today.
A “steeper” B-21 ramp rate, Bussiere said, would allow the Air Force to more rapidly modernize the bomber fleet. He doesn’t think the B-21 would become a bigger budget-cutting target as a result, because the program is doing well and he’s “very happy” with its progress.
More B-21s would “help rebuild deterrence this decade, when the potential for Chinese aggression may be greatest,” Gunzinger said, adding, “I think DOD and the Congress are beginning to understand the value of accelerating B-21 acquisition.”
He noted, too, that long-range strike “is one of our military’s greatest shortfalls, and it is a shortfall that Army, Navy, and Marine Corps strike systems cannot fill.” The long-range hypersonic systems the Army and Navy are developing will cost $40 million or more per shot, versus $50,000 or less for a satellite-guided bomb dropped from a bomber.
“It’s simply math,” Gunzinger said. Bombers are the economical approach “from a cost-per-effect perspective.”
Keep The Old Iron
In an upcoming Mitchell paper, “Strategic Attack: Maintaining the Air Force’s Capacity to Deny Sanctuaries,” Gunzinger and co-author Heather Penney argue that “it makes a great deal of sense to keep all remaining B-2s and B-1s in the force until at least 2035,” and still buy B-21s at an accelerated rate. Doing so would also “hedge against unforeseen … problems” with the B-21, he added.
In the paper, the authors argue that the Air Force has a “once-in-a- generation opportunity to rebuild its sanctuary-denial capacity” that the rest of the force and U.S. allies depend on.
To prevail in a Pacific war, the U.S. must be able to strike at Chinese home-based missile-launchers, they write. Only the B-21 and other sixth-generation aircraft will be able to “penetrate highly contested environments over long ranges to deny sanctuaries to China’s military.”
The authors said their analysis and those of others have determined that a 300-aircraft bomber fleet is needed to deter China. That number would assure that a credible tempo of long-range strike operations can be flown in wartime and also be able to strike China’s numerous missile launchers before they can launch massive barrages at U.S. forces. Gunzinger and Penney urge Congress to provide the Air Force with the resources to buy “at least 200 penetrating B-21s, as rapidly as possible” in order to “reduce the risk of losing a conflict with China.”
The B-2s should be retained “until a sizable force of B-21s—surpassing 100 aircraft—are fully operational in the 2030s,” the authors say. The B-2, they note, is the only in-hand stealth bomber capable of penetrating “high-density air threats and striking the most challenging mobile, fixed, or hardened/deeply buried targets.” Retiring B-2s “prematurely” would increase the risk that the PLA or other militaries could knock out or “greatly degrade” U.S. forces early in a conflict, they said.
They also urge the Air Force to conduct a “cost-per-effect analysis” to help set “a balanced mix of long-range penetrating and stand-off combat aircraft and munitions.” That analysis should factor in “the whole system-of-systems that long-range kill chains require to be resilient and effective at the scale needed in a peer conflict.”
This potential rebalancing was raised by former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall more than two years ago. In May 2023, Kendall told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he’s not sure “the future Air Force will look all that much like the one we have today” because he sees “a shift in the balance between shorter-range tactical air capabilities and longer-range strike capabilities that bombers provide.”
In January of this year, Kendall emphasized the point in an interview with Air and Space Forces Magazine. The force, he said, “is somewhat out of balance right now” between long-range and short-range investments, because short-range aircraft require vulnerable forward bases and tankers that bombers do not.
Though it would take some time for Northrop Grumman to spool up to a higher B-21 production rate, it would be “well worth considering” doing so, considering the “flexibility you have with the bomber force,” Kendall said.
