The Air Force has employed the Small Diameter Bomb for the first time in Afghanistan. An F-15E Strike Eagle deployed to Bagram Air Base from the 391st Fighter Squadron at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, dropped the GPS-aided GBU-39B on a close air support mission on Jan. 27 to aid International Security Assistance Forces under attack by enemy fighters. “The [joint terminal attack controller] asked us to drop that specific weapon on that specific spot, and that’s what we did,” said Wrangler, one of the F-15E’s two-person crewmembers. An Air Force release notes, “The enemy stopped fighting and retreated.”
As with previous stealth aircraft unveilings, the Air Force’s imagery of the F-47 Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter has been doctored to keep adversaries guessing about its true shaping and design philosophy.