Iran’s defenses were shattered by stealth bombers and fighter jets—but the real hammer has just arrived. The B-52 Stratofortress, a 74-year-old icon of American airpower, is now flying over Iran and unleashing massive firepower on what remains of the regime’s military network. With command nodes collapsing and missile launches plummeting, the strategy is shifting from precision strikes to relentless bombardment. But the most surprising part isn’t the destruction—it’s why the U.S. chose the B-52 now.
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00:00Iran had already been shattered by the US stealth bombers and fifth-generation fighter jets that
00:05had wrecked most of the country's defenses. Now comes the rise of the B-52 Stratofortress.
00:11Iran just learned to fear this 74-year-old US bomber, as it has unleashed a historically
00:17badass attack on Iran. Tehran already knows the war is lost as the B-52s pulverize everything
00:24in their path. This is genius by the US. It shows us that America is planning for the
00:29long haul to take out Iran's regime forever. If you want to find out more about this genius move,
00:35then stick with us. First, the arrival of the B-52s is the latest major news out of the Iran
00:40conflict. The big, ugly, fat fellow is now flying with near impunity over Iran, signaling the Tehran
00:46regime's air defenses are shot and they can't do anything to stop the US from using one of its
00:51older, non-stealthy bombers to cause even more damage. Think about it like this. US B-2s kick
00:57the doors in, with some help from dozens of American and Israeli fighter jets. Now the B-52s
01:02have arrived and they're already bombing what's left of Iran's military nodes into oblivion.
01:06What we're seeing right now is a transition from surgical efficiency to utter brute force.
01:12That might seem strange to say after the US and Israel unleashed an insane 1,000 strikes against
01:18Iran's defenses in the first 24 hours of this new conflict. However, those strikes were indeed
01:22surgical. They were preceded by cyber operations, including jamming and spoofing of Iran's radar
01:28networks. Once communications were disrupted, the first wave of US and Israeli strikes came in.
01:34Air defenses were shattered. Naval and aerial assets were destroyed. Decapitation strikes focused on
01:39Iran's leaders, up to and including the now dead Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, were carried out.
01:44Those first 24 hours represented a massive firestorm that was more precise than anything that Iran saw
01:49coming. But what Iran never expected was that the US was simply laying the table for the arrival of
01:54something much bigger. With surgery completed, the US is delivering sledgehammer shots to the wounds,
02:01and Iran can do nothing about it. Now the B-52s have arrived, and in just a minute we're going
02:06to tell
02:06you precisely what they're doing in Iran. Before we do, let's take a quick look at just how much power
02:11the newest arrivals to the Iranian theater bring to the table. The B-52 differs from the B-2 that
02:16we've
02:16already seen conduct 30-hour-plus bombing runs over Iran, because the B-52 is a non-stealth bomber.
02:22In other words, it can't sneak past enemy radars and air defenses like its much newer and far more
02:27expensive cousin. But what the B-52 can do very well is help a country that has achieved air
02:32superiority to utterly annihilate targets on the ground. The bomber has a payload capacity of around
02:39£70,000, and it makes full use of that capacity to load up on precision-guided munitions
02:44that the US can use to shatter the remnants of Iran's defenses and military nodes.
02:48Max Afterburner explains more in his examination of the arrival of B-52s in Iran. He says,
02:54That is a heavy hitter. I mean, 70 JDAMs can be carried in the B-52. The number of JDAMs
02:59alone
02:59tells you everything you need to know about how much firepower the B-52 can bring to the table.
03:04These guided air-to-surface weapons come in three flavors, £500, £1,000, and £2,000.
03:10At 70 JDAMs, we are assuming that Afterburner believes the B-52s sent into Iran would likely
03:16be carrying the £1,000 variety, though, as Afterburner also reveals, this may not be the
03:21best choice. Even though air superiority is established, you could have a one-off surface
03:25to air missile system that lights up and could fire at a B-52, he explains about the current
03:29situation in Iran. So, Iran's air defenses are wrecked, but not totally gone, as we'll explain later
03:34in the video. The possibility of these one-off strikes likely means that America's B-52s are
03:39flying in loaded with JASANs, or Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile. These subsonic missiles,
03:45which can travel between 230 and 575 miles, depending on the variant, allow America's B-52s
03:51to take off and launch at targets from a distance, with the bombers staying well out of range of
03:56whatever meagre air defenses Iran has left. This consideration brings us back to what we
04:00mentioned earlier about what the B-52s are doing in Iran. U.S. B-2s conducted the stealthy and
04:06surgical strikes, creating an environment in which the B-52s could operate in relative safety.
04:10Now that the B-52s have arrived, they are beating down on everything that Iran has left.
04:15And right now, Afterburner says, the primary focus of the older U.S. bombers is the command and control,
04:20or C-2 nodes, that what's left of Iran's military relies on to coordinate its defense.
04:25Coordination on Iran's part is likely falling apart by the minute, Afterburner explains,
04:29as he discusses what America's B-52s are targeting. Their launchers get isolated once
04:34one of those command nodes are taken down, their reloads are incredibly slow, with their
04:38production facilities being hit as well, and now their rebuild times are basically non-existent.
04:43In other words, the B-52s are going to destroy the very nodes that allow Iran to wave the one
04:47big stick that it has in America's face, ballistic missiles. We'll come back to what's happening on
04:53the Iranian missile front in just a second. First, the Warzone, or TWZ, agrees with Afterburner
04:58that America's B-52s are wreaking havoc on Iran's C-2 nodes.
05:02It carries comments from Air Force General Dan Kane, who says that Iran's C-2 structures
05:07are in a bad way, and that part of the reason is the switch from precision to power.
05:12CENTCOM is now shifting in day four already from large, deliberate strike packages using
05:16standoff munitions at range outside an enemy's ability to shoot at us, now into stand-in precision
05:21strikes overhead Iran, Kane says.
05:23So maybe it's more accurate to say precision and power is the new phase.
05:27Regardless, Iran is feeling the pain of the arrival of the B-52, as the results are already
05:32immense. We can see that in the strike numbers alone. After the initial 24-hour spate of 1,000
05:38strikes, the US, along with Israel, has doubled its strike load. The first 72 hours of the conflict
05:43have seen the two allies combine to shatter 2,000 targets inside Iran.
05:47B-52s will have played a big part in this escalation, as they fire standoff munitions at targets
05:53that are no longer properly guarded by an Iranian air defense network that was far weaker than
05:57it should have been from the start. PBS News reports that Iran's health ministry claims
06:01that 920 people have been killed as of March 4, though it's unclear if these are civilians
06:07or military personnel. Other estimates, such as those shared by the Jerusalem Post, claim
06:11that more than 1,000 members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps died within the first
06:16wave of strikes, so we can safely assume that even more have been eliminated now that America's
06:21B-52s have entered the fray. This is a destructive force.
06:25However, perhaps the biggest impact made by the arrival of America's bombers came on the
06:29defensive front. We told you earlier that the US B-52s seem to be mostly targeting Iran's
06:34C-2 nodes. In a ground war, these nodes would be key to coordinating soldiers and logistics.
06:40This isn't a ground war, and as we mentioned earlier, Iran's biggest stick in this fight
06:44is its stockpile of ballistic missiles. Iran Watch says that CENTCOM, which is US Central
06:50Command, estimated this stockpile to be over 3,000 missiles back in 2022. Iran has likely
06:56burned through a good chunk of that stockpile with its attacks against Israel and the US
06:59military bases, both before and during this current conflict. As of the beginning of the war,
07:04the Israel Defense Forces estimated that Iran had about 2,500 missiles. Either way, it's a lot.
07:10And thanks to America's B-52s, Iran isn't getting the most out of these stockpiles.
07:15Taking out C-2 nodes means that Iran can't coordinate its missile launches. When you combine
07:19that with other strikes that are focused on Iran's missile launch sites, you get the
07:23crippling of the one piece of power that Iran can project. And we're seeing that in the numbers.
07:28In a March 4th piece, CNN reported on more comments made by Kane, and they revealed that
07:32Iran's ballistic missiles are slowly being taken out of the picture.
07:35As of this morning, US Central Command is making steady progress.
07:39Iran's theater ballistic missile shots are down 86% from the first day of fighting,
07:44Kane said during a brief statement delivered at the Pentagon.
07:46He added that there has been a 23% decrease just in the last 24 hours.
07:51And as a nice little bonus, Iran's one-way attack drones are shot down 73%.
07:56What we're seeing here is the slow whittling down of Iran's entire military strategy,
08:00and the B-52s that have arrived in the country are playing a key role.
08:03But you may remember that we told you earlier in the video that sending in the B-52s was a
08:07genius move by the US. This destruction of Iran's offensive capacity isn't the reason why,
08:12though it certainly helps. There's another reason. Before we go deeper into that,
08:16if this is the kind of insight that you want more of, make sure you're subscribed to the
08:20military show. We break it down like this every single week.
08:23So what makes the arrival of the B-52s such a genius move by the US?
08:27US President Donald Trump gave us a little hint on March 2nd, when he indicated that the Iran war
08:32could stretch on far longer than some might anticipate. The US has
08:36projected four to five weeks for the conflict, though Trump added that the US military has the
08:41capability to go far longer than that. In other words, the US is already assuming that it's going
08:46to be a multi-week conflict, and remember, we're still in week one. Plus, the US has to gear up
08:51for
08:52the possibility that the war could extend even longer, which means one very important thing.
08:56The US has to focus on keeping costs down while battering Iran with as much firepower as it can
09:01muster. And it's here that the genius of using the B-52s instead of continuing to use the newer
09:06and stealthier B-2s comes into play. As tempting as it is to think of the US military as an
09:11overwhelming
09:12behemoth that has an infinite bankroll, the country still wants to ensure that it's not blowing money
09:16where it doesn't need to. And one of the ways the US could have found itself pouring money down the
09:20drain in the extended conflict that it anticipates the Iran war becoming is by continuing to use the
09:26B-2 for bombing runs. 1945 sums it up when explaining why the B-52s have entered the picture, stating,
09:33capable of carrying large volumes of precision-guided munitions, the B-52 has a long loiter
09:37time and costs less per hour to operate than the B-2. Basically, the B-52 is ideal for sustained
09:43bombardment once the skies are permissive. And permissive is precisely what Iran's skies are right now.
09:49On the cost front, WION explains that the B-2 costs about twice as much as the B-52,
09:54simply to get into the air. The combination of the B-2's stealth coatings and heavy maintenance
09:59means that the more modern bomber is best suited to the shock and awe approach of the initial
10:03surgical strikes that we've seen in Iran, after which it withdraws and allows other bombers to enter
10:07the fray. There is also the very important direct cost factor to consider. A single B-2 costs the US
10:13about $2 billion to build. So if one happens to be taken out or malfunction in the skies over Iran,
10:19that's a pretty big hole created in whatever budget the US has in mind for its Iran war.
10:24Contrast this to the B-52. The US has been overhauling its B-52 bombers, having spent $15
10:29billion by 2021 as part of a $48.6 billion program intended to keep these aging aircraft in the air
10:36until 2060. But right now the US has 76 B-52s in service. So even with that overhaul, it's looking
10:43at around $640 million per unit, plus the cost of building the bomber over 70 years ago, which
10:49IG.Space says amounted to about $1.14 billion when adjusted for inflation. So what you get here is
10:55less risk. The B-52 going down is still an expensive loss, but it's nowhere near as expensive as losing
11:01the
11:01far more costly and advanced B-2. Then there are the running costs we mentioned earlier.
11:06According to the national interest, a B-2 bomber costs about $200,000 per flight hour.
11:11As we mentioned, the B-2s the US sent into Iran during the surgical part of its strike strategy
11:15were in the air for well over 30 hours. That's an expenditure of over $6 million right there.
11:21The B-52, on the other hand, costs about $70,000 to fly per hour. Even when adjusting for inflation,
11:26this is right around half of what the B-2 costs, just as WION said. From a pure cost perspective,
11:32the switch to B-52 bombers is a genius move. The US gets to continue unloading enormous amounts
11:37of firepower on Iran using some of the most advanced weapons, and it does it with a bomber
11:42that places a significantly smaller financial burden on America's defense budget. If a sustained
11:47campaign, even a 4-5 week one, is what the Trump administration is anticipating, this switch was
11:52vital to ensure that the campaign could continue. All of this brings us to the situation as
11:56it stands right now. Iran isn't in a good place. We've covered bits and pieces of that already,
12:02particularly on the ballistic missile front and the state of Iran's air defenses, but it's worth
12:06digging into the latter problem a little more. Their integrated air defense system is nowhere
12:10near as advanced as Western nations, afterburner says of what Iran had even before the bombs started
12:15flying. And as we've seen, Chinese surface-to-air missiles and radars, Russians surface-to-air missiles
12:20and radars being completely decimated by these B-52s and other bombers. Iran was on the losing
12:25end of the air defense game before the war even started. Army Technology explains more in a March
12:303rd article, where it discusses how the air defenses that Iran has aren't even necessarily
12:35the Chinese and Russian units that afterburner highlights. Iran has some of those, sure,
12:40but much of its air defense network is made up of cheap copycats of the Russian S-300 and the
12:44Chinese HQ-7, which Iran has reverse-engineered into its own versions that, until now, were untested in
12:50combat. Now that they've been tested, these knockoffs have been found wanting. Plus, reverse
12:55engineering without any innovation means that the systems that Iran built for itself carry the same
13:00weaknesses as those that they're based on. For instance, Iran's S-300 copycats are vulnerable
13:05to Israeli weapons such as the Icebreaker missile, which are designed to take advantage of the electronic
13:10warfare vulnerabilities of the radars used for the S-300 systems. Iran didn't do anything to fix these
13:15vulnerabilities in its versions of the Russian and Chinese systems that it's copied, and it's paying the price
13:19now. Now Iran is in a situation where its weak air defense network is worse than it already was.
13:25Newsweek says that the country has likely started moving air defenses from the east to the west,
13:30as it anticipates more attacks from the western direction. But that's not exactly a power move,
13:35it just means that Iran's east becomes territory that America's B-52s can use to launch their standoff
13:39munitions from the side of the country that Iran leaves unguarded. Tehran and Isfahan may be a little
13:45better guarded than they were following the initial spate of strikes, but it just isn't enough to do
13:49anything notable to stop the US and Israeli strikes. What's most likely, as Afterburner said, is that
13:55Iran will fall back to hoping that it gets lucky with the occasional strike caused by American
13:59complacency. That's not an air defense strategy. It's a gamble that doesn't have anywhere near the
14:04payoff that Iran needs it to have. As for the US, it has total air superiority. That doesn't mean that
14:10it has air supremacy, which is when a country is able to operate with 100% confidence that it will
14:15be
14:15unopposed in an opponent's airspace. But it's as close to achieving that supremacy as it needs to
14:20be to start sending non-stealth bombers into Iran. This is a sign of American confidence that Iran
14:25absolutely did not want to see because it signals that Trump isn't lying when he says he anticipates
14:30this campaign going on for several weeks. A lot more strikes are going to be coming from America's
14:35B-52 fleet, and that's even without mentioning the carrier groups that the US has operating in
14:39the Persian Gulf region, along with the dozens of fighter jets and supporting aircraft that they
14:43bring to the equation. As for what happens next, the scope of the war expands. It's already heading
14:49in that direction inside Iran itself, as Afterburner says that the arrival of B-52s
14:53represents a clear shift toward even greater volume and persistence in the campaign.
14:58However, the scope is broadening in terms of where the US is conducting attacks
15:02and what it may be planning next. For instance, March 4 saw the US torpedo the Iris Dana in
15:08international waters off Sri Lanka's southern coast. That's a long way from the Persian Gulf,
15:12and it suggests that the US is expanding the range of its attacks to cover military assets that Iran has
15:17stationed outside of its own territory. There's also the looming spectre of the US sending boots on
15:22the ground to Iran. According to Chatham House, that will be needed if America's goal is indeed to take
15:28down Iran's regime. Trump's plan of helping the Iranian people rise up again and topple the
15:33theocracy sounds more like hope than a real strategy. There are no signs yet of any effective
15:37domestic opposition or of defections from the regime, the think tank claims. And if that's the
15:42case, it suggests that the Iranian people don't have the required confidence in their own abilities
15:47to topple the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and what remains of Iran's senior leadership.
15:51So that brings us to an interesting prospect. Perhaps the arrival of the B-52s, and what looks set to
15:57be
15:57weeks of sustained strikes, are setting up for a third phase of the Iran war. First came the surgery,
16:02then the sledgehammer. What follows next might be the overwhelming of the Iranian regime by US
16:07soldiers heading onto the ground. What we know for certain is that Iran's regime has been rocked to
16:12its core and it may never recover fully. That's bad news for the regime, of course. But it's also
16:18terrible news for Putin, who has been gambling on the strengthening of the relationship between Russia
16:22and Iran to position himself as a global geopolitical player. If the Iranian regime falls, Putin takes a
16:28massive blow, and you can find out why if you check out our video. And if you enjoyed this video,
16:33make sure you're subscribed to the military show to catch all of our coverage of Operation Epic Fury.
16:38And thank you for watching.
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