January 10, 2020
eight jet engines and its wingspan is so great that it
has wheels on the tips of the wings so they don’t hit
the ground on landing.
The Pentagon has dispatched six B-52 bombers and about 3,500 combat troops to the Middle East in an obvious effort to scare the Islamic Republic into limiting any retaliation for the assassination of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleymani.
The troops are the first infantry force to be sent to the region in the past year. Many other troops were sent there in 2019, but all of them manned defensive gear like air defense missiles. The latest troops come from the 82nd Airborne Division and are ground fighters. But that doesn’t signal any ground invasion is being planned—3,500 is too small a number for an actual invasion. The 2003 invasion of Iraq involved more than 100,000 US ground troops.
The dispatch of the six B-52s is also more show than threat. The B-52s were sent to the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. But the giant bomber aircraft, which can carry the largest bomb load of any aircraft, have a range of 8,800 miles (14,000 kilometers) and don’t need to get closer to Iran.
With aerial refueling, they can fly from the United States. In fact, in the 2003 invasion of Iran, the United States did not send B-52s to Diego Garcia. Instead they ran their bombing missions on Iraq by flying from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.