The BUFFs are starting to come home.
After more than a month of operations that saw 10 B-52s—nearly 15 percent of the entire fleet—operating across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, four have returned to the U.S., with the rest slated to follow in the coming weeks.
U.S. Air Forces in Europe announced Dec. 13 that four B-52s from Barksdale Air Force Base, La., have left RAF Fairford, U.K., where they deployed for a Bomber Task Force rotation in early November.
While based out of Fairford for the deployment, the Barksdale B-52s maintained a steady operations tempo that included:
- A rare live-fire weapons drop in Lithuania during which they coordinated with Lithuanian, Czech, Swedish, and Norwegian joint terminal attack controllers
- A simulated weapons drop training mission over Finland, integrating with Swedish and Finnish fighters along the way
- A multidomain find, fix, track and target military exercise with Norway and the U.K. in the Arctic, along with fourth- and fifth-gen aircraft
- A joint exercise with Morocco
“Working alongside our Allies and partners highlights the strength of collaboration. Every mission was a testament to the power of teamwork, shared expertise, and a unified commitment to security,” Capt. Aaron Gurley, bomber task force mission planner for USAFE, said in a release. “Together, we built solutions that no single nation could achieve alone, proving that our collective strength truly defines the success of every operation.”
There are still six B-52s deployed in the Middle East from Minot Air Force Base, N.D. They are now slated to return home in the coming weeks following the deployment of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman to U.S. Central Command on Dec. 14, Air & Space Forces Magazine understands.
Additionally, a squadron of F-15E Strike Eagle fighters—one of two squadrons of Strike Eagles in the region—is scheduled to depart the Middle East now that the Truman and its embarked Carrier Air Wing 1, which includes multiple squadrons of F/A-18 Super Hornets, is in the area. The Pentagon temporarily deployed the additional U.S. Air Force airpower to make up for the departure of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier last month.
Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder declined to say if the extra Air Force squadrons would depart after Truman’s arrival in the Middle East.
“We won’t announce departure activity or deployment activity in advance for multiple reasons,” Ryder said.
The B-52s in the Middle East have had an eventful deployment as well. One flew to Bahrain for display in the Bahrain International Airshow, its first-ever appearance at that event, and another bomber in the region integrated with British Royal Air Force fighters on Nov. 18.
Then, on Dec. 8, it flew alongside F-15Es and A-10s to conduct dozens of airstrikes against Islamic State leaders, fighters, and camps in central Syria—capitalizing on the sudden demise of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.
The Pentagon announced more airstrikes against the group on Dec. 16, though they did not say what platforms conducted the strikes.
The 10 B-52 bombers deployed at one time marked one of the biggest movements of Stratofortresses in recent history. The Air Force has 76 B-52s in its inventory, so 10 deployed equals 13.2 percent of the fleet.
But of those 76, there are several constantly being cycled through depot maintenance, and several more are dedicated to testing weapons and upgrades like the bombers’ new engines and radar. On top of that, the fleet had a mission-capable rate of 54 percent in 2023, which measures the percentage of time an aircraft is able to perform at least one of its core missions.
Taken together, and the 10 B-52s deployed could have represented upwards of a quarter of the combat-ready fleet.