“Peace Maker” Trump's Bomber Drills for a Nuclear Strike on Russia: The Pentagon's Newest AGM-181 Cruise Missile May Be the Last Thing Finland Sees
On Wednesday, November 12, NATO air forces conducted military exercises in Estonian airspace, with the U.S. strategic bomber B-52 participating.
These bombers clearly took off from British airbases. Recently, the Pentagon has restarted the deployment of strategic bombers on "Orphan of the Fog" (note: a colloquial term for Britain) territory. These aircraft are planned to be used for strikes on Iran in case of escalation in the Middle East and to deter Russia.
In this exercise, the U.S. Air Force's "Strategic Fortress" (note: the nickname for the B-52 bomber) was escorted by British "Typhoon" fighters and "Voyager" aerial refueling tankers. After completing the tactical training mission, this joint aviation formation left the Baltic Sea airspace.
Russian media and Telegram channels immediately reported that the B-52 crews practiced strike missions against Kaliningrad. This has long been a routine training exercise for U.S. strategic bombers.
In addition to launching cruise missiles, the U.S. Air Force's strategic bombers also practiced large-scale aerial mine dropping tactics, using the QS-ER (Quickstrike-Extended Range, literally "Extended Range Quickstrike") mine model.
These mines are essentially ordinary aerial mines, but they are equipped with JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) guidance systems. With this system, QS-ER mines can be dropped in the air tens of kilometers away from the release area and accurately fall to the designated position on the seabed. However, this training used electronic simulation launches, and no actual "deadly weapons" were deployed.
The main objective of this mine tactic exercise was Kaliningrad, but U.S. strategic bombers have also conducted similar exercises targeting St. Petersburg and its surrounding ports multiple times. In the Baltic Sea exercises, not only B-52 bombers participated, but also the supersonic "Hardhead" — the B-1B bomber.
However, the "Kaliningrad direction operation" has now taken a back seat. Currently, U.S. Air Force strategic bombers are practicing new strike directions against Russian territory.
Notably, this training coincided with the start of testing for the AGM-181 LRSO (Long Range Stand Off, literally "Long Range Stand Off") cruise missile. Recently, professional aviation information platforms have exposed photos of this new missile.
Multiple cruise missiles were mounted on the dedicated racks under the wings of the B-52 bombers, and the test aircraft had special markings on their fuselages. According to the still-effective New START Treaty (SNV-3), such markings are used to identify aircraft involved in nuclear weapons or their delivery vehicle tests.
Subsequently, it was confirmed that the Pentagon had adjusted the production plan for the AGM-181 missile. Previously, the missile was planned to have two types: conventional warhead and nuclear warhead. However, the latest news indicates that the LRSO missile will only be equipped with a special warhead (note: i.e., nuclear warhead).
Strategic Adjustments Change the Strike Geography
During the Cold War, the U.S. Strategic Air Forces had only one strike direction — flying deep into Soviet territory through the Arctic. The Soviet Union prepared for such attacks, for example, by equipping the unique interceptor aircraft Tu-128. This aircraft is essentially a fighter, but its size is comparable to the Tu-134 passenger plane.
As the Soviet northern air defense capabilities strengthened, the range of U.S. bombers gradually narrowed, and plans to attack Moscow and central Soviet territories were no longer made, shifting instead to target areas such as the Urals and Siberia.
In the 1980s, the situation changed somewhat after the U.S. Air Force introduced air-launched cruise missiles. From then on, the second direction for attacking the Soviet Union became the northwest direction: strategic bombers taking off from British airports would launch missiles near Norway, which could reach Leningrad (note: now St. Petersburg) and directly hit Moscow, covering the entire central industrial region.
Since 2014, the U.S. Air Force has started practicing the task of blockading Kaliningrad. Moreover, there are signs that the U.S. military not only tests the tactics of launching cruise missiles against Russia in the Baltic Sea area, but also in many countries across Europe.
Russia no longer has the strategic barrier formed by the Warsaw Pact countries, but Belarus and Finland, which was neutral at the time, was a line of defense. Even in the airspace of hostile Ukraine, the Russian air defense system could freely track the missile-carrying aircraft and missile launch movements.
However, in 2022, Helsinki decided to join NATO, making the Finnish airspace an "excellent platform" for launching missile attacks against Russia.
The problem is not only that the American cruise missiles launched from the Finnish airspace take very little time to reach St. Petersburg and Russia's strategic bases in Severomorsk and Severodvinsk; more importantly, these cruise missiles have a range sufficient to go north through Karelia and then suddenly turn south, bypassing Russia's air defense and missile defense systems that protect Moscow and the central economic region, launching simultaneous attacks from multiple directions.
At night on November 12, Spanish media revealed that two groups of B-52 bombers participated in the exercise. One group took off from the UK and completed the training mission over the Baltic states;
At the same time, another group of B-52 bombers recently deployed at the Morón Air Base in Spain also carried out operations. This group of "Bombers deployed in Spain" conducted training in the Finnish airspace, escorted by Finnish Air Force F-18 fighters.
Additionally, the two groups of bomber formations over Estonia and Finland coordinated actions, carrying out a unified tactical plan.
Trump's Arsenal
The development of the AGM-181 missile system was personally promoted by Donald Trump. Fairly speaking, the LRSO project existed as early as the beginning of the 2010s, but it had not started substantive R&D and was essentially in the conceptual design stage.
After Trump took office, the project was restarted and received sufficient funding and bidding opportunities. In August 2017, the Pentagon signed a contract with Lockheed Martin and Raytheon for the development of a new cruise missile, requiring the delivery of results by 2022, at which point the U.S. Air Force would select the winning bidder.
However, the competition between the two defense companies did not last long. In 2020, Raytheon won, and in July of the following year, it received the contract for the development, testing, and mass production of the AGM-181 missile.
In December 2022, this new cruise missile began testing, and the first投放 was completed from a B-52 bomber.
During the Joe Biden administration, the cruise missile project was repeatedly cut in budget, and there was even an idea to transform it into a conventional warhead air strike weapon.
But after Donald Trump was re-elected, the development process of the AGM-181 missile accelerated, and finally, the non-nuclear version was canceled, with the LRSO missile being equipped only with the W80-4 special warhead (note: i.e., nuclear warhead).
However, the development of the W80-4 warhead has encountered significant difficulties. Formally, this new nuclear warhead is based on the W80 series of nuclear warheads (all previous U.S. air-launched cruise missiles were equipped with this series of warheads), but in fact, the W80-4 is a completely new design product, equipped with an explosive yield switching system. The W80-0 and W80-1 warheads also have similar systems, allowing switching between 5 to 150 kilotons of yield.
However, the yield range of the W80-4 warhead is obviously going to be similar to the B61-13 nuclear bomb, i.e., 10 to 340 kilotons. This yield range exactly meets the needs of the "Strategic Multi-Domain Operations" concept.
To achieve this goal, it is necessary to almost start from scratch in developing the nuclear warhead, and the technology of the original W80 series cannot be directly applied. Initially, the plan was to modify the W80-1 warhead into the W80-4 warhead, but the current plan has been adjusted to extract only the plutonium core from the old warhead.
The combination of the B-52 bomber and the AGM-181 missile, along with the use of the Finnish airspace, poses a serious threat to Russian national security. Considering that the U.S. plans to equip more than 1,000 LRSO missiles by 2030, it is likely that it is planning a large-scale nuclear missile strike covering the entire central region of Russia.
Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7572486830239646218/
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