U.S. Stealth Aircraft Are Now Training From New And Untraditional Bases

B-2s arriving in Hawaii on August 15th, 2018. USAF

Warzone/The Drive: Stealth Pushes Forward: B-2s Refuel On Wake Island, F-22s Fly From Austere Base In Mideast

America's most capable and complex combat aircraft are beginning to operate from new, untraditional locales with minimal support.

As the USAF comes to terms with the realities of what a peer state conflict would look like and just how vulnerable its sprawling, well-established bases are, the flying force is taking its most capable but also most finicky aircraft and challenging them to operate from less developed locations. This is part of a larger Air Force initiative that aims to make combat units able to deploy on very short notice to locales where bases really don't exist at all and will have to be built quickly from the ground up.

Just in the last week, F-22s from Al Dhafra Air Base in the UAE packed what they could in a single KC-10 Extender and flew to an austere field far closer to the Syrian conflict. Meanwhile, B-2s that are temporarily forward deployed to Hawaii used remote Wake Island as a pitstop during combat training operations.

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WNU Editor: In any major war, the traditional bases that these aircraft operate from will be targeted. It makes sense to train these aircraft on other bases/airports.