The USA has struck military targets in Yemen using Northrop Grumman B-2 stealth bombers.
Washington’s military headquarters overseeing Middle East operations confirmed the overnight strikes on 16 October targeting weapons storage sites belonging to Houthi militants.
“These actions were taken to degrade the Houthis’ capability to continue their reckless and unlawful attacks on international commercial shipping and on US, coalition and merchant personnel and vessels,” says US Central Command (CENTCOM).
The sites contained “various advanced conventional weapons”, according to the Pentagon. For much of the past year, the Iran-backed Houthis have repeatedly launched guided missiles and one-way unmanned air vehicles at ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, including at commercial and Western naval vessels.
The Houthi campaign began as a response to Israel’s bloody military operation in Gaza, which the USA has supported with materiel aid and air-interdiction sorties. US and UK fighters have repeatedly struck Houthi targets in Yemen in an attempt to reduce the group’s ability to threaten shipping traffic.
CENTCOM says the latest strikes, which also included unspecified naval assets, hit hardened underground facilities storing missiles, weapons components and other unspecified munitions.
The battlefield deployment of B-2s was apparently meant as a message to Washington’s global adversaries, rather than due to a particular need for the flying-wing’s low-observability.
“The employment of the B-2 bomber demonstrates US global strike capabilities to reach these targets, when necessary, anytime, anywhere,” CENTCOM says.
Previous Middle East strikes have been carried out by cruise missiles or Boeing B-1B heavy-bombers.
The Pentagon has not specified if the B-2s launched from their home base of Whiteman AFB in the continental USA, or if the jets operated from a forward-deployed location. Spirits have made multiple appearances overseas in the past year, including in Australia and Iceland.
In April, the air force launched a sizeable B-2 show-of-force, scrambling 12 of the nuclear-capable bombers simultaneously – representing 60% of the total stealth-bomber fleet.
Washington maintains only a small fleet of the strategic bombers, with just 19 operational B-2s in service. The US Air Force (USAF) had operated 20 of the jets but plans to scrap one Spirit bomber that was irreparably damaged in a 2022 emergency landing at Whiteman, Missouri.
The USAF and Northrop are currently flight testing the Spirit’s successor – the B-21 Raider. Air force leaders plan to field a fleet of at least 100 B-21s, with the first aircraft expected to enter service in the middle of this decade.
In the meantime, the USAF plans to upgrade its B-2s while B-21 production ramps up.
