An American Boeing B-52H heavy bomber has dropped live ordnance over ally Lithuania as part of multi-national military drills.
The strike mission was part of a NATO training exercise on 15 November that saw the US Air Force (USAF) bomber and an Italian air force Eurofighter Typhoon strike fighter drop active weapons onto a Lithuanian training range.
Strikes from the combat aircraft were assisted by a team of specialised targeting personnel on the ground known as “joint terminal attack controllers”, or JTACs, drawn from the ranks of Norway, Lithuania, the Czech Republic and Sweden.
“This mission allowed aircrew to familiarise themselves with the operations in Lithuania and the coalition forces on the ground,” says the USAF’s European headquarters at Ramstein AFB, Germany.
American B-52Hs began arriving in the UK on 5 November for rotational duty. Washington regularly deploys limited numbers of bomber aircraft to Europe under what the Pentagon calls Bomber Task Forces (BTF).
The USAF says such deployments expose aircrew to the forward air bases and operational constraints in geographies where they might someday fly real combat missions.
BTF rotations typically last at least several weeks and in the past have included Boeing B-1B supersonic bombers and flying-wing Northrop Grumman B-2 stealth jets.
The B-52s currently deployed to Europe were drawn from the 20th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron in Louisiana.
The appearance of one of the USA’s most-powerful weapon systems over Eastern Europe comes as Baltic NATO members are increasingly concerned about security.
Donald Trump’s pending return to the White House has fuelled speculation that Washington may soon reduce military and political support for beleaguered Ukraine, providing an opening for Russia to probe the vulnerability of its other neighbours, particularly the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
Moscow is suspected in the recent severing of two undersea fibre-optic cables on the floor of the Baltic Sea, which were discovered cut on 19 November.
The destruction of the cables, which linked Sweden to Lithuania and Finland with Germany, has been decried by European officials as an act of sabotage likely perpetrated by Russia.
