Two B-52 Stratofortress Bombers Take Part In Arctic Defender 24 In Alaska

The B-52 bomber crews treated the deployment to Alaska as an extension of the Agile Warbird, an ACE (Agile Combat Employment) Minot AFB conducts routinely.

Two B-52 Stratofortresses from Minot Air Force Base, in North Dakota, recently took part in the Arctic Defender 24 exercise at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska on Jul. 25, 2024, marking a “significant milestone in military cooperation and readiness,” a statement said.

This was a “rare deployment to Alaska’s airspace,” for Minot AFB’s BUFFs, the public release states.

AD 24 is a German Air Force-led “field training exercise in which fighter pilots from multiple nations practice air war operations in Alaska. This time, roughly 500 personnel from the U.S., Canada, Germany, Italy and Spain took part in the drills at JBER and Eielson AFB at Alaska that began on Jul. 8, 2024.

AD is a part of several exercises under the Pacific Skies 24 that comprises several drills in the Indo-Pacific theater.

“The Arctic Defender 2024 exercise is the first of five individual exercises during our Pacific Skies deployment together with our European partners from Spain and France,” said Chief of the German air force Lt. Gen. Ingo Gerhartz.

The participating aircraft include the F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-22 Raptor, F-35 Lightning II, the U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornet; French Dassault Rafale, Airbus A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport and A400M Atlas; German air force A400M Transport, Eurofighter Typhoon, H145M Special Forces Helicopter, and PA-200 Tornado; Spanish air force Eurofighters; and Royal Canadian Air Force CC-130H Hercules.

July 25 — In a rare deployment to Alaska, two US Air Force B-52H Stratofortresses from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota recently took part in Exercise Arctic Defender at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.https://t.co/MJCWg7Ujwl pic.twitter.com/nmmfV9Koj5

— Ryan Chan 陳家翹 (@ryankakiuchan) July 26, 2024

The B-52’s somewhat rare deployment to Alaska comes as Chinese and Russian Tu-95 and H-6K strategic bombers carried out the first joint flight into Alaska’s ADIZ (Air Defense Identification Zone).

Smooth coordination

Interestingly, the bomber crews treated the deployment to Alaska as an extension of the Agile Warbird, an ACE (Agile Combat Employment) Minot AFB conducts routinely. Several B-52s and airmen from Minot arrived at facilities like the Fairchild and Dyess AFBs at Washington and Texas respectively for the ACE practice on Jul. 15. This will be expanded upon subsequently.

The statement quoted Minot’s 69th Bomb Squadron Captains David Mills and Shinryu Aoyama, the former who said it was “not everyday that a B-52 comes up to Alaska airspace and takes part in an exercise.” This was despite the “challenging,” rainy and “dreary” weather conditions. Mills, a B-52 flight lead and instructor pilot, along with Aoyama, a B-52 co-pilot, said the exercise refines their “operational capabilities, especially given ongoing runway repairs at Minot.”

“The planning and execution of the ACE exercise involved meticulous coordination with various units and personnel in order to effectively launch from Spokane, Washington, to join U.S. and Allied forces in the Joint Pacific-Alaska Range Complex.”

The crews had to coordinate with the “aircraft maintenance squadrons and aerospace ground equipment to ensure we had everything needed to operate from a forward operating base,” Mills said. The integration with allied forces added “another layer of complexity and learning,” in particular “working alongside German tactical air command and coalition nation fighters.”

Aoyama said the B-52 was part of the “strike package” for the Arctic Defender on July 16. Whether this drill involved other fighter assets and if it practiced conventional or nuclear strikes is not known.

ACE, Hub and spoke

But it certainly cannot be detached from the broader emergence of the Arctic as a major flashpoint between Russia-China and the United States. At a military-tactical level, the “ACE exercise focused on enhancing operational agility and effectiveness in challenging environments.” ACE involves operating fighters and multirole aircraft from non-traditional air bases, like long highways with minimal support infrastructure.

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This is with a view to spread out air assets and not concentrate on major and large air bases that are likely to come under adversary (in this case Russian and Chinese) long-range ballistic and cruise missile barrages to be disabled permanently. While safety is one reason, the activation of ACE by fanning out and distributing air operations from bigger air bases also presents targeting dilemmas to an attacking adversary.

This past week, the Multinational Multirole Tanker Transport Unit, based at Eindhoven Airport in The 🇳🇱, participated in the 🇩🇪-led exercise, Arctic Defender, hosted in Alaska, USA 🇺🇸.

Check out their A330 refuel a 🇩🇪 Eurofighter Typhoon.

Read more: https://t.co/COyaFRMo8E pic.twitter.com/vi2hpInidB

— NATO Air Command (@NATO_AIRCOM) July 16, 2024

The Captains said their takeaway was the “seamless integration and operational synergy with our allies,” important for the “high-end scenarios in the Pacific region,” Mills added The crew also faced “typical logistical challenges” including “adapting to dynamic mission changes and coordinating real-time data updates while in flight.”

“It’s challenging to get all the data when the mission planning cell is planning the [sortie] at the same time you’re in the air,” Mills explained. The highlight was the successful execution of the ‘hub-and-spoke mission’ which involved taking off from Spokane and operating out of Alaska’s airspace.

The ‘hub-and-spoke’ concept USAF elements operating out of their home bases (“hubs”) that host the units and formations and fanning and converging across the smaller airfields (“spokes”). The latter is inside the theater’s operational area and within the adversary’s (China or Russia’s) weapons engagement zone.

Exercise Agile Warbird

“The B-52 crews used Arctic Defender to integrate large-force employment into Exercise Agile Warbird, a Minot AFB Agile Combat Employment exercise,” the statement added.

Minot AFB’s Agile Warbird that took place on Jul. 15, 2024, saw B-52s from the 23rd Bomb Squadron and 69th Bomb Squadron fly out from Minot and land at Fairchild and Dyess AFBs. Four B-52 arrived at Fairchild, but the number of these aircraft that reached Dyess AFB is not known.

The ACE-centric exercise was aimed at sharpening airmen’s ability “to mobilize quickly and operate the Minot bombers from anywhere at a moment’s notice” and “operate out of a diverse location.”