US B-52 Pilots Just Did Something UNBELIEVABLE To Iran

Iran had already been shattered by the US stealth bombers and 5th generation fighter jets that had wrecked most of the country's defences. Now comes the rise of the B-52 Stratofortress. Iran just learned to fear this 74-year-old US bomber, as it has unleashed a historically badass attack on Iran. Tehran already knows the war is lost, as the B-52s pulverise everything in their path. This is genius by the US. It shows us that America is planning for the long haul to take out Iran's regime forever.

If you want to find out more about this genius move, then stick with us. First, the arrival of the B-52s is the latest major news out of the Iran conflict. The big, ugly, fat fellow is now flying with near impunity over Iran, signaling that Tehran regime's air defenses are shot and they can't do anything to stop the US from using one of its older, non-stealthy bombers to cause even more damage. Think about it like this. US B-2s kick the doors in, with some help from dozens of American and Israeli fighter jets.

Now the B-52s have arrived and they're already bombing what's left of Iran's military nodes into oblivion. What we're seeing right now is a transition from surgical efficiency to utter brute force. That might seem strange to say after the US and Israel unleashed an insane 1,000 strikes against Iran's defenses in the first 24 hours of this new conflict. However, those strikes were indeed surgical. They were preceded by cyber operations, including jamming and spoofing of Iran's radar networks. Once communications were disrupted, the first wave of US and Israeli strikes came in. Air defenses were shattered,

naval and aerial assets were destroyed. Decapitation strikes focused on Iran's leaders, up to and including the now-dead Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, were carried out. Those first 24 hours represented a massive firestorm that was more precise than anything that Iran saw coming. But what Iran never expected was that the US was simply laying the table for the arrival of something much bigger.

With surgery completed, the US is delivering sledgehammer shots to the wounds, and Iran can do nothing about it. Now the B-52s have arrived, and in just a minute we're going to tell you precisely what they're doing in Iran. Before we do, let's take a quick look at just how much power the newest arrivals to the Iranian theatre bring to the table. The B-52 differs from the B-2 that we've already seen conduct 30-hour-plus bombing

runs over Iran, because the B-52 is a non-stealth bomber. In other words, it can't sneak past enemy radars and air defenses like its much newer and far more expensive cousin. But what the B-52 can do very well is help a country that has achieved air superiority to utterly annihilate targets on the ground. The bomber has a payload capacity of around 70,000 pounds, and it makes full use of that capacity to load up on precision-guided munitions that the US can use to shatter the remnants of Iran's defenses and military

nodes. Mack's afterburner explains more in his examination of the arrival of B-52s in Iran. He says, that is a heavy hitter. I mean 70 JDAMs can be carried in the B-52. The number of JDAMs alone tells you everything you need to know about how much firepower the B-52 can bring to the table. These guided air-to-surface weapons come in three flavors, 500lb, 1,000lb, and 2,000lb. At 70 JDAMs, we're assuming that Afterburner believes the B-52s sent into Iran would likely be carrying the 1,000lb variety, though as Afterburner also reveals, this may not be the best choice. Even though air superiority is established, you could have a one-off surface-to-air missile

system that lights up and could fire at a B-52, he explains about the current situation in Iran. So Iran's air defenses are wrecked, but not totally gone, as we'll explain later in the video. The possibility of these one-off strikes likely means that America's B-52s are flying in loaded with JASSMs or Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile. These subsonic missiles, which can travel between 230 and 575 miles, depending on the variant, allow America's

B-52s to take off and launch at targets from a distance, with the bomber staying well out of range of whatever meagre air defenses Iran has left. This consideration brings us back to what we mentioned earlier about what the B-52s are doing in Iran. U.S. B-2s conducted the stealthy and surgical strikes, creating an environment in which the B-52s could operate in relative safety. Now that the B-52s have arrived, they are beating down on everything that Iran has left. And right now, after Berner says, the primary focus of the

older U.S. bombers is the command and control, or C-2 nodes, that what's left of Iran's military relies on to coordinate its defense. Coordination on Iran's part is likely falling apart by the minute, after Berner explains as he discusses what America's B-52s are targeting. Their launchers get isolated once one of those command nodes are taken down, their reloads are incredibly slow with their production facilities being hit as well, and now their rebuild times are basically non-existent. In other words, the B-52s are going to destroy the very nodes that allow Iran to wave the one big stick that it has in America's face, ballistic missiles.

We'll come back to what's happening on the Iranian missile front in just a second. First, the War Zone, or TWZ, agrees with Afterburner that America's B-52s are wreaking havoc on Iran's C-2 nodes. It carries comments from Air Force General Dan Cain, who says that Iran's C2 structures are in a bad way, and that part of the reason is the switch from precision to power. "'CENTCOM is now shifting in day four already from large, deliberate strike packages using

standoff munitions at range outside an enemy's ability to shoot at us now into stand-in precision strikes overhead Iran,' Cain says. So maybe it's more accurate to say precision and power is the new phase. Regardless, Iran is feeling the pain of the arrival of the B-52 as the results are already immense. We can see that in the strike numbers alone. After the initial 24-hour spate of 1,000 strikes, the US along with Israel has doubled its strike load. The first 72 hours of the conflict have seen the two allies combine

to shatter 2,000 targets inside Iran. B-52s will have played a big part in this escalation as they fire standoff munitions at targets that are no longer properly guarded by an Iranian air defense network that was far weaker than it should have been from the start. PBS News reports that Iran's health ministry claims that 920 people have been killed as of March 4th, though it's unclear if these are civilians or military personnel. Other estimates, such as those shared by the Jerusalem Post, claim that more than 1,000

members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps died within the first wave of strikes, so we can safely assume that even more have been eliminated now that America's B-52s have entered the fray. This is a destructive force. However, perhaps the biggest impact made by the arrival of America's bombers came on the defensive front. We told you earlier that the US B-52s seem to be mostly targeting Iran's C-2 nodes. In a ground war, these nodes would be key to coordinating soldiers and logistics. This isn't a ground war and as we

mentioned earlier, Iran's biggest stick in this fight is its stockpile of ballistic missiles. Iran Watch says that CENTCOM, which is US Central Command, estimated this stockpile to be over 3,000 missiles back in 2022. Iran has likely burned through a good chunk of that stockpile with its attacks against Israel and the US military bases, both before and during this current conflict. As of the beginning of the war, the Israel Defense Forces estimated that Iran had about 2,500 missiles.

Either way, it's a lot. And thanks to America's B-52s, Iran isn't getting the most out of these stockpiles. Taking out C-2 nodes means that Iran can't coordinate its missile launches. When you combine that with other strikes that are focused on Iran's missile launch sites, you get the crippling of the one piece of power that Iran can project. And we're seeing that in the numbers. In a March 4th piece, CNN reported on more comments made by Kaine, and they revealed that Iran's

ballistic missiles are slowly being taken out of the picture. As of this morning, US Central Command is making steady progress. Iran's theater ballistic missile shots are down 86% from the first day of fighting," Cain said during a brief statement delivered at the Pentagon. He added that there's been a 23% decrease just in the last 24 hours, and as a nice little bonus, Iran's one-way attack drones are shot down 73%. What we're seeing here is the slow whittling down of Iran's entire military strategy, and the B-52s that have arrived in the country are playing a key role. But you may remember that we told you earlier in the video that sending in the B-52s was

a genius move by the US. This destruction of Iran's offensive capacity isn't the reason why, though it certainly helps. There's another reason. Before we go deeper into that, if this is the kind of insight that you want more of, make sure you're subscribed to the Military Show.

We break it down like this every single week. So what makes the arrival of the B-52s such a genius move by the US? US President Donald Trump gave us a little hint on March 2nd when he indicated that the Iran war could stretch on far longer than some might anticipate. The US has projected four to five weeks for the conflict, though Trump added that the US military has the capability to go far longer than that. In other words, the US is already assuming that it's going to be a multi-week conflict and remember we're still in week one. Plus the US has to gear up for the possibility that the war could extend even longer, which means

one very important thing. The US has to focus on keeping costs down while battering Iran with as much firepower as it can muster. And it's here that the genius of using the B-52s instead of continuing to use the newer and stealthier B-2s comes into play. As tempting as it is to think of the US military as an overwhelming behemoth that has an infinite bankroll, the country still wants to ensure that it's not blowing money where it doesn't need to. And one of the ways the US could have found itself pouring money down the drain in the extended conflict that it anticipates the Iran war becoming, is by continuing to use the B-2 for bombing runs. 1945 sums it up when explaining why the B-52s have entered the picture, stating,

"...capable of carrying large volumes of precision-guided munitions, the B-52 has a long loiter time and costs less per hour to operate than the B-2. Basically, the B-52 is ideal for sustained bombardment once the skies are permissive. And permissive is precisely what Iran's skies are right now. On the cost front, WION explains that the B-2 costs about twice as much as the B-52 simply to get into the air. The combination of the B-2's stealth coatings and heavy maintenance means that the more modern bomber is best suited to the

shock and awe approach of the initial surgical strikes that we've seen in Iran, after which it withdraws and allows other bombers to enter the fray. There is also the very important direct cost factor to consider. A single B-2 costs the US about $2 billion to build, so if one happened to be taken out or malfunctioned in the skies over Iran, that's a pretty big hole created in whatever budget the US has in mind for its Iran war. Contrast this to the B-52. The US has been overhauling its B-52 bombers, having spent $15 billion by 2021 as part of a $48.6 billion program intended to keep these aging aircraft in the air until 2060. But right now the US has 76 B-52s in service, so even with that overhaul, it's

looking at around $640 million per unit, plus the cost of building the bomber over 70 years ago, which IG.Space says amounted to about $1.14 billion when adjusted for inflation. So what you get here is less risk. The B-52 going down is still an expensive loss, but it's nowhere near as expensive as losing the far more costly and advanced B-2. Then there are the running costs we mentioned earlier.

According to the national interest, a B-2 bomber costs about $200,000 per flight hour. As we mentioned, the B-2s the US sent into Iran during the surgical part of its strike strategy were in the air for well over 30 hours. That's an expenditure of over $6 million right now. The B-52, on the other hand, costs about $70,000 to fly per hour. Even when adjusting for inflation, this is right around half of what the B-2 costs, just as

WION said. From a pure cost perspective, the switch to B-52 bombers is a genius move. The US gets to continue unloading enormous amounts of firepower on Iran using some of the most advanced weapons and it does it with a bomber that places a significantly smaller financial burden on America's defence budget. If a sustained campaign, even a 4-5 week one, is what the Trump administration is anticipating, this switch was vital to ensure that the campaign could continue.

All of this brings us to the situation as it stands right now. Iran isn't in a good place. We've covered bits and pieces of that already, particularly on the ballistic missile front and the state of Iran's air defences, but it's worth digging into the latter problem a little more. Their integrated air defence system is nowhere near as advanced as Western nations, after Berner says of what Iran had even before the bombs started flying.

And as we've seen, Chinese surface-to-air missiles and radars, Russian surface-to-air missiles and radars being completely decimated by these B-52s and other bombers. Iran was on the losing end of the air defense game before the war even started. Army Technology explains more in a March 3rd article, where it discusses how the air defenses that Iran has aren't even necessarily the Chinese and Russian units that Afterburner highlights.

Iran has some of those, sure, but much of its air defense network is made up of cheap copycats of the Russian S-300 and the Chinese HQ-7, which Iran has reverse-engineered into its own versions that, until now, were untested in combat. Now that they've been tested, these knockoffs have been found wanting. Plus, reverse-engineering without any innovation means that the systems that Iran built for itself carry the same weaknesses as those that they're based on. For instance, Iran's S-300 copycats are vulnerable

to Israeli weapons such as the Icebreaker missile, which are designed to take advantage of the electronic warfare vulnerabilities of the radars used for the S-300 systems. Iran didn't do anything to fix these vulnerabilities in its versions of the Russian and Chinese systems that it's copied, and it's paying the price now. Now Iran is in a situation where its weak air defense network is worse than it already was. Newsweek says that the country has likely started moving air defenses from the east

to the west, as it anticipates more attacks from the western direction. But that's not exactly a power move. It just means that Iran's east becomes territory that America's B-52s can use to launch their standoff munitions from the side of the country that Iran leaves unguarded. Tehran and Isfahan may be a little better guarded than they were following the initial spate of strikes, but it just isn't enough to do anything notable to stop the US and Israeli strikes.

What's most likely, as Afterburner said, is that Iran will fall back to hoping that it gets lucky with the occasional strike caused by American complacency. That's not an air defence strategy. It's a gamble that doesn't have anywhere near the payoff that Iran needs it to have. As for the US, it has total air superiority. That doesn't mean that it has air supremacy, which is when a country is able to operate with 100% confidence that it will be unopposed in an opponent's airspace.

But it's as close to achieving that supremacy as it needs to be to start sending non-stealth bombers into Iran. This is a sign of American confidence that Iran absolutely did not want to see because it signals that Trump isn't lying when he says he anticipates this campaign going on for several weeks. A lot more strikes are going to be coming from America's B-52 fleet, and that's even without mentioning the carrier groups that the US has operating in the Persian Gulf region, along with the dozens of fighter jets and supporting aircraft that they bring to the equation. As for what happens next, the scope of the war expands.

It's already heading in that direction inside Iran itself, as Afterburner says that the arrival of B-52s represents a clear shift toward even greater volume and persistence in the campaign. However, the scope is broadening in terms of where the US is conducting attacks and what it may be planning next. For instance, March 4th saw the US torpedo the Irish Dana in international waters off Sri Lanka's southern coast.

That's a long way from the Persian Gulf, and it suggests that the US is expanding the range of its attacks to cover military assets that Iran has stationed outside of its own territory. There's also the looming specter of the US sending boots on the ground to Iran. According to Chatham House, that will be needed if America's goal is indeed to take down Iran's regime. Trump's plan of helping the Iranian people rise up again and topple the theocracy sounds

more like hope than a real strategy. There are no signs yet of any effective domestic opposition or of defections from the regime, the think tank claims. And if that's the case, it suggests that the Iranian people don't have the required confidence in their own abilities to topple the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and what remains of Iran's senior leadership. So that brings us to an interesting prospect. Perhaps the arrival of the B-52s and what looks set to be weeks of sustained strikes

are setting up for a third phase of the Iran war. First came the surgery, then the sledgehammer. What follows next might be the overwhelming of the Iranian war. First came the surgery, then the sledgehammer. What follows next might be the overwhelming of the Iranian regime by US soldiers heading onto the ground. What we know for certain is that Iran's regime has been rocked to its core and it may never recover fully. That's bad news for the regime, of course, but it's also terrible news for Putin, who has been gambling on the strengthening of the relationship between Russia and Iran

to position himself as a global geopolitical player. If the Iranian regime falls, Putin takes a massive blow, and you can find out why if you check out our video. And if you enjoyed this video, make sure you're subscribed to the Military Show to catch all of our coverage of Operation make sure you're subscribed to the Military Show to catch all of our coverage of Operation Epic Fury. And thank you for watching.