US & NATO Bombers Just Flew Over 30 Nations, Including 5 Bordering Russia
by Rick Rozoff
AntiWar.com
U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa announced that American B-52H Stratofortress strategic bombers accompanied by military aircraft from twenty-one other NATO nations flew over all 30 NATO member states today. Those would include the five that border Russia – Norway, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – of course.
The B-52s (designed to carry nuclear weapons during the Cold War), like their fellow nuclear-capable long-range bombers the B-1 and B-2, started deployment to Europe in 2018 under the aegis of the Pentagon’s Bomber Task Force and so far this year have maintained a ready presence in Europe, in one instance landing at a Norwegian air base within the Arctic Circle.
Today’s transcontinental flights were codenamed Operation Allied Sky and were the second such since last August when six B-52s accompanied by 80 NATO fighter jets flew over the thirty member states in a single day. The message sent by the operations shouldn’t be difficult to understand.
Currently the B-52s are based at the Morón Air Base in Spain under NATO arrangements, as four, soon to be six, U.S. guided-missile destroyers equipped with interceptor missiles are based at the Naval Station Rota in the same nation, also under NATO auspices.
The NATO allies providing warplanes to escort the American nuclear-era bombers were Belgium, Britain, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Turkey.
If you’re one of two nations in Europe not enrolled in (conscripted, dragooned into) NATO’s continental military phalanx – in other words, if you’re Russia and Belarus – the handwriting is in the sky.
General Jeff Harrigian, jointly NATO Allied Air Command and U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa commander (to demonstrate there’s no difference between the Pentagon and NATO), said of today’s unambiguous spectacle, “Today’s mission is an awesome demonstration of NATO air superiority and together there is no challenge we cannot tackle.”
The Harrigians of the world, both in North America and Europe, appear to be preparing a pyrotechnical extravaganza the likes of which humanity has been spared until now. One that could dwarf in comparison the horrors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima – by several orders of magnitude.
But it’s all in a day’s work. Nothing for the world to take note of – so it appears.
Rick Rozoff is a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. He is the manager of Stop NATO. This originally appeared at Anti-Bellum.