Last week, a British bomb disposal robot roamed the area near the Royal Air Force (RAF) base at Fairford and 85 homes were evacuated as the threat of an attack appeared imminent.
Days later, the United States speedily sent B-1 bombers stationed there, which were used to strike Iran in its ongoing war, back home. About a dozen had been stationed at the air base.
The foiled incident resulted in no charges and the release of five suspects, and subsequently a separate British-Iranian suspect. But the US cited concerns about more potential attacks for its decision to withdraw its fleet. Tehran has denied any link to the alleged plot to target the base.
RAF Fairford was a pit stop for US bombers during the war – but more importantly, it allowed Washington to rapidly unleash intensive strikes on Iran, say analysts.
They added that their withdrawal reduces Washington’s ability to rapidly generate and sustain bombing missions, but it will not prevent the US from continuing to strike Iran.
“The United States has lost a convenient launchpad, not its underlying strike capability,” Dania Thafer, executive director of the Gulf International Forum and a lecturer at Georgetown University, told Al Jazeera.
Long bombing campaigns made more demanding
The analysts were in agreement that the British base gave the US a faster and more efficient way to sustain strikes on Iran.
The bombers at the Fairford base were officially stationed there for defensive strikes – at the behest of the UK government – and likely had a modest targeting list, said Christoph Bergs, an analyst at the world’s oldest defence and security thinktank, the Royal United Services Institute.
“Their withdrawal reduces the capacity to quickly surge sorties against Iran, reducing the threat level somewhat,” Bergs told Al Jazeera.
Thafer explained that while the loss of the bombers does not remove the US’s ability to strike or escalate, “depending on where other assets are positioned, it could make a prolonged bombing campaign more demanding”.
The removal of B-1 bombers imposes a number of tactical costs, says Arun Dawson. He is a PhD candidate at King’s College London’s Freeman Air and Space Institute and a researcher with the UK Nuclear Deterrence Network.
Unlike the more modern B-2 stealth bomber designed to make enemy tracking difficult – which has also previously been stationed at RAF Fairford – “the B-1’s principal advantage is its conventional weapons payload – the largest of any aircraft in the US military”, Dawson told Al Jazeera. The B-1 carries at least 34 tonnes of ordnance, he said.
“This makes the B-1 particularly effective at delivering large volumes of precision-guided weapons against multiple targets during a prolonged air campaign,” said Dawson.
“In the Iran war, those targets may include air-defence infrastructure, ballistic missile sites and IRGC facilities,” he added, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
With the B-1s withdrawing, the US may now have to rely more heavily on longer-range missions from the US or other distant bases, increasing flight times, crew fatigue and the need for aerial refuelling, he explained.
Still, the US may have made the withdrawal decision based on an examination of risks, said Dawson.
“Their abrupt departure suggests that specific threats may have been directed at the aircraft, their crews or the base itself,” he said.
Washington may have also calculated that temporarily withdrawing the bombers could protect it for future operations, especially if the US does not expect the Iran war to intensify any time soon, said Dawson.
For David Des Roches, a professor at the Thayer Marshall Institute and a former Pentagon official, the B-1 withdrawal suggests that the risks outweighed the benefits of keeping the jets at the UK airbase.
The security incident last week “exposed a vulnerability” as the aircraft were “out in the open” and only about 300 yards (275 metres) from where the public could see them.
“So they were very vulnerable to, say, drone attacks or other kind[s] of mortar attacks,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Just a small drone or any kind of a drone with explosives on board could conceivably cause significant damage,” said Des Roches.
The former Pentagon official acknowledged that the deployment of the US bombers means “you lose a little bit of operational ability,” but said that given the threat seen at Fairford, “we should have had overhead cover for all of our aircraft, globally, years ago”.
Can the bombers go elsewhere?
The US has two potential options if the bombers are to be redeployed: to Diego Garcia, the remote coral atoll in the central Indian Ocean hosting both a US and UK military base; or to its many US bases in the Gulf.
Thafer pointed out that Diego Garcia offers greater protection from potential Iranian attacks, but requires longer flight distances.
Rerouting the bombers to Diego Garcia will also depend on how quickly additional aircraft can be folded into the local basing infrastructure, pointed out Bergs.
Stationing them in the Gulf closer to Iran would give them the advantage of shortened transit times, reduced tanker requirements and the ability to generate sorties more rapidly, said Dawson.
But basing in the Gulf region, the analysts agreed, will require more deliberate negotiations around risk mitigation, given that these countries have taken the brunt of Iranian counterstrikes throughout the war. They also want to avoid being seen as direct participants in a US campaign against Iran.
Fairford had therefore offered a “useful” middle ground between the two options, said Thafer.
But with Fairford no longer an option, Diego Garcia would be the more obvious choice, Dawson said, offering not only greater distance from Iran but also a more secure operating environment. It has infrastructure designed to support large-scale US air operations, he said.
US capabilities in the war ahead
For now, the withdrawal appears to blunt rather than eliminate US bombing capacity against Iran.
However, the practical impact on US military options will depend largely on whether the administration sees a need for such strikes now, or whether the threat posed by similar aircraft stationed at Diego Garcia is sufficient for the time being, said Bergs.
The expected arrival of the Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group and the Makin Island Marine Expeditionary Force to the Middle East by November, meanwhile, will add significant US carrier-based air power in the region, said Dawson.
“Aircraft for aircraft, carrier fighters cannot substitute for the B-1’s enormous payload, but there are many more of them, giving commanders additional options for shorter-range strikes,” he said.
What this episode highlights, said the researcher, is the importance – and the vulnerability – of the US’ alliances and overseas basing.
Washington has long enjoyed access to a global network of military facilities – which has been key for its ability to project power rapidly and at scale, he said.
But if those bases face attacks or political restrictions – the implications would extend beyond the Iran war, warned Dawson.
They would affect “how the US military structures its forces, distributes its assets, generates combat power and sustains operations overseas”.
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