USAF Fairford B-2 bombers have arrived

Two Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit Stealth Bombers and two B-1B multi-role bombers have been spotted at the Fairford RAF base over the last week (Green Party). The base, in rural Gloucestershire, last saw action in 2003 when B-52 bombers flew from there to bomb Iraq. It is the largest USAF bomber base in Europe and the only one with maintenance facilities for the B-2. These B-2 and B1 -B bombers are also based at Whiteman AFB Miss. Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and Guam in the Pacific.

You can see plenty of photographs, especially the sinister B-2 at the unofficial Fairdford Base site here taken in the last few days.

The Wilts and Glos Standard (6/04/06) reports that defence chiefs have denied the visit of top-secret bombers to RAF Fairford last week have anything to do with a future operation in Iran. A spokesperson said: "That is complete rubbish. Fairford is not being used for that purpose." However no-one from US Air Force was available for comment on future deployment of the bombers.

The Countdown to War Paul Rogers openDemocracy

He quotes Joseph Cirincione, Director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in an article "Fool me Twice" on 27 March 2006, notes the way in which the US administration is increasingly presenting Iran as the key threat to the region can no longer be dismissed as posturing, but may rather "be a coordinated campaign to prepare the way for a military strike on Iran".

Rogers notes that a few days after Cirincione's piece was published, the Sunday Telegraph reported ("A direct strike might be a necessary last resort.") that British military chiefs were meeting to consider the consequences of a US strike on Iran. The paper presented a detailed assessment, including striking graphics, of what an attack would entail.

He also details how In the approach to the Iraq war, USAF's's 457th air expeditionary wing was based at Fairford; fourteen B-52s flew in from Minot (North Dakota) and deployed there for 7 weeks while conducting more than a hundred bombing sorties over Iraq.

It is likely that the first such exercise in preparation for action over Iran took place last week when three B-2s flew into Fairford within a few days in what appears to be the first orchestrated deployment of this kind. This may well be an indicator of training now underway.

The second signal he says will be a sudden increase in base security at Fairford, including the policing of an extended cordon and closure of local roads to minimise any external observation of activities there.

Pic Ranunculus ficaria common UK spring flower of the buttercup family, now well in flower much nicer to contemplate than bombing Iran.