The U.S. Air Force has used B-2A Spirit stealth bombers to attack Houthi targets in Yemen during the recent campaign against the rebel group, a U.S. official told The War Zone. That campaign began March 15 with a series of aviation and missile strikes against the Iranian-backed group. You can read more about the deployment of B-2s to the remote Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia here.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational details, declined to say how many of these aircraft were used, how often or when. The confirmation however, provides more context about the collection of these jets on Diego Garcia. CNN was the first to report that B-2s from that island attacked the Houthis.
Last week, a large force of B-2 Spirit bombers and other supporting assets deployed to Diego Garcia, which TWZ was first to report on. The latest satellite imagery, dated April 2, obtained by The War Zone from the Planet Labs archive shows at least six B-2s and six KC-135s on the remote island.
The unprecedented stealth bomber deployment comes amid growing U.S. threats to the regime in Tehran, as well as stepped-up strikes on their Houthi proxies in Yemen. The Air Force only has 20 of the stealth bombers in total, meaning 30 percent of the entire fleet is now forward-deployed in the Indian Ocean. Factoring in that only a portion of the B-2 fleet is available for operational tasking at any one time due to maintenance and other factors, this represents a far higher percentage of the bombers that the Air Force has to actually send out on missions.
The B-2 is currently the only U.S. aircraft certified to operationally employ the 30,000-pound GBU-57/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bunker buster bombs, and the Houthis have an extensive network of underground facilities that the MOP may be needed to strike. Each B-2 can carry two of these huge weapons.
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The B-2s are less vulnerable to conventional anti-aircraft attacks because they are virtually invisible to most radar signals. In the past, the Houthis have been able to shoot down US drones used in attacks.
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