BAFB Airmen repeat history, enhance national security

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Mike Andriacco
  • 2d Bomb Wing Public Affairs
BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. --  On May 12, 1938, three B-17 flying fortresses from the 2d Bombardment Group changed the future of air power when they intercepted an ocean liner 725 miles off the coast of New York.

On Aug. 21, almost 70 years later, three B-52s from Barksdale repeated history and advanced air power's global lethality when they intercepted the United States Navy Ship, the 2nd Lt John P. Bobo, 1,000 miles off the eastern seaboard.

Both missions showcased the military's ability to deter, dissuade or destroy maritime threats before they can harm U.S. citizens in the public's eye.

In the 1938 mission, Col. Robert Olds, 2d BG commander, developed a "training mission" in the guise of a routine coastal defense exercise. The real reason was to garner public support and cut through the red tape that was blocking the Army Air Corps from purchasing more than the original 13 B-17s, said Lane Callaway, Eighth Air Force Historian.

The mission itself violated an agreement formed in 1931 between Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Army chief of staff, and Admiral William Pratt, chief of Naval operations, where the Army was limited to immediate coastal defense, while the Navy assumed long-range air and sea offensive operations, Mr. Callaway said.

However, despite protests from the Navy's top leadership that this mission was simply coastal defense, it captured the public's imagination and led to the birth of the Air Force.

"Historically, this can be seen as the first efforts to separate the Army Air Corps from the Army ground forces, leading to the development of an independent Air Force in 1947," Mr. Callaway said.

Friday's mission was also a precursor of things to come as air power is further developed for use in the 21st Century and beyond.

"Our nation's strategic airpower capabilities are critical to national defense on many fronts," said General Robert J. Elder, Eighth Air Force commander. "Global expeditionary air, space and cyberspace forces provide vigilance that is persistent, focused and predictive; reach that is reliable, rapid and agile; and power that is precise, stealthy and decisive."

The use of a targeting pod provided real-time intelligence and feedback from the air and enabled decisions about a potential maritime threat to be made quickly and accurately.

"This is a vignette of global strike, meaning the maritime piece of that capability," said Col. Robert Wheeler, 2d BW commander. "It's the ability to move quickly and to attack targets anywhere in the world from the continental United States."

Cyberspace also played a new and essential role in aiding the exploitation of the targeting pod technology.

"We made connectivity through various links and multiple assets were used to keep us in contact with the Air Operations Center here at Barksdale," said Lt. Col. Bob Norberg, 917th Operations Support Flight commander and mission commander. "We communicated the entire time throughout the flight; it was a really good day for the Air Force."

Enabling that communication was an extended data link capability brought onto the B-52 for this mission.

The data link served a similar function as an internet chat room or conference call in the air between the AOC and the B-52s as they flew out to meet the ship, said Col. Todd Westhauser, 2d Operations Group commander.

Bringing the 2d BW, 917th Wing, 53d Wing and the Air Force Weapons school together to accomplish the mission showed not only the capabilities of air power, but has immediate implications for direct national defense as well.

"We used multiple units to push technology and capability against a threat to our nation from cargo or container ships coming into our nation with unknown cargo," Colonel Wheeler said.

Not knowing what's inside them, the U.S. military might have to go out and meet the threat 1,000 miles from U.S. coastlines before they ever become a direct threat to the U.S. itself, Colonel Wheeler said.

The new technology also increases joint strike capabilities.

"If we can identify a target, we can pass that information to assets that are closer, maybe Navy ships or other Air Force aircraft in the vicinity," Colonel Westhauser said.

"It gives terrorists or whoever is trying to harm us another thing to think about," he added.

Whatever the technology, without today's Airmen, the technology would be hard pressed to live up to expectations.

"I applaud the superior Airmanship of the aircrews and the efforts of all of the Air Force Airmen who carried out this specific mission in support of the Air Force mission to defend the United States in Air, Space and Cyberspace," General Elder said.