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| B-2 Spirit (Image: Wiki Commons) |
A pure bomber command is likely to be established for the first time in US military history after the Air Force made the announcement last week to reassign all its heavy bombers to the Global Strike Command last week, James Hasik, a senior researcher from the Washington-based Atlantic Council wrote in a piece for National Interest magazine.
The USAF put the nuclear-capable B-52Hs and B-2As bombers of the 8th Air Force and the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles of the 20th Air Force under the Global Strike Command in 2009. However, the de-nuclearized B-1B bombers stayed with the Air Combat Command's 12th Air Force. Such policy reconfigures the newly established Global Strike Command as a Bomber and Missile Command according to the author.
Hasik said that the consolidation of heavy bombers under the Global Strike Command will provide a single organizational home to all big bomber crews, including those of the forthcoming Long-Range Strike Bombers. "With that art of the possible emerging, the organizational heft of this new 'Bomber Command' may then spur some really new thinking, which the USAF genuinely needs for dealing with the mounting threat from China," Hasik said.
Read the full story at Want China Times