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Stuttering is the director of studies at
the Mitchell Institute for aerospace
studies in Virginia. Berkey is the institute's executive
director the flying branch.
However put a
happy spin on the decision to halt the
bomber rotation which since 2004 has
maintained a small force of bombers in
the western pacific region in order to
deter chinese aggression. Bombers aren't necessarily going to
deploy less often or in fewer numbers, the air force implied.
Rather they're simply going to deploy
less predictably under a new scheme the
service calls dynamic force employment. Our diverse bomber fleet B-52, B-1 and B-2 allows us to respond to global
events anytime, anywhere. Whether they're launched from Louisiana Guam or the UK long-range strategic bombers have and
will remain a bedrock of our deterrence? Air force global strike command tweeted
on april 16 2020.
The air force six days later launched
its first dynamic bomber sortie. A single B1 took off from its base in South Dakota and over the course of a
30-hour sortie, flew all the way to japan
and formed up with japanese air force F2
and F-15 fighters and locally based U.S air force F-16s before turning back
toward the united states. The B-1 sortie might have seemed to
underscore the air force's continuing
commitment to a global bomber presence
despite the flying branch also planning
on cutting its 157 strong bomber fleet
by 1B2 and 17B1.
The service as part of its 2021 budget
submission has asked congress for
permission to begin decommissioning the
bombers. The B-1s in particular suffered
from overuse over Afghanistan and the
middle east in the decades followed terror attacks and also
suffered from a dearth of maintenance. The result in 2019 was an abysmal
readiness rate for the swing wing bomber.
In july 2019 just seven of 62 B-1s were
fully mission capable, South Dakota
senator Mike Rounds revealed, "readiness somewhat improved in 2020".
The air force framed the first dynamic B-1 mission as evidence of the service's
enduring and undiminished ability to
deploy long-range air power, but
stuttering and berkey see the situation
differently. The defunct bomber rotation
was a tremendous success they wrote.
It
clearly communicated u.s readiness to
act decisively when u.s and allied
interests were challenged. Halting the bomber rotation now sends
the opposite message just as the region
grows more dangerous. Stutzriam and Berkey added "this is a decision with significant risk
yet it is an outcome compelled by past
choices resulting in a bomber force on
the edge".
