The most advanced current US stealth bomber, the B-2 Spirit, is described by its manufacturer, Northrop Grumman, as "a low-observable, strategic, long-range, heavy bomber capable of penetrating sophisticated and dense air-defense shields. It is capable of all-altitude attack missions up to 50,000ft, with a range of more than 6,000nm unrefuelled and over 10,000nm with one refuelling, giving it the ability to fly to any point in the world within hours."
Its prospective replacement, the New or Next Generation (2018) Bomber, will be yet more difficult if not impossible to detect with radar and repulse by air defenses and would be the warplane of choice to deliver nuclear payloads deep inside the interior of an intended target nation as it is able to "survive in hostile airspace for extended time" and can carry nuclear weapons.
The deployment of either of the above to Europe would raise an alarm in Russia for just that reason, but could be done under NATO "mutual defense" auspices, either to Poland and the Baltic states or to newly-acquired US strategic airbases in Bulgaria and Romania, directly across the Black Sea from Russia.
See:
Black Sea: Pentagon's Gateway To Three Continents And The Middle East
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/37498
Cloaked in secrecy as they have been for more than half a century, if US warheads are transported from bases in Germany to Poland, Estonia or Bulgaria, it won't be reported on the evening news.
The air component is an integral part of a broader strategy that also includes nuclear cruise missiles and the third position American missile shield plan for Eastern Europe that would serve as the foundation for a NATO continent-wide missile system.
A commentary in the Russian Information Agency Novosti of almost two years ago provided this unnerving scenario:
"[L]ong-range cruise missiles should be launched from [several] areas to hit Russian ICBM silos. Their flying time to targets is between 2.5 and
three hours. The American ABM in Europe is supposed to destroy the surviving Russian missiles. This is the whole point....[T]here are numerous indications of a war in the making."
On the issue of so-called missile defense plans for NATO nations in general and new member states in Eastern Europe in particular, see:
21st Century Star Wars And NATO's 60th Anniversary Summit
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/36725
Last month the same above-cited Russian source warned that, "The missile defense problem has nothing to do with Iran, but it cannot be separated from Russia's relations with NATO countries. It is impossible to pluck the issue of missile defense out of the whole range of security issues in Europe....At the end of the day the possible deployment of American bases with strike weapons in the new NATO member countries is no less of a threat than the deployment of a missile defense system or the possible accession of Georgia and Ukraine to NATO."
No less a Western establishment authority as the Council on Foreign Relations recently quoted an expert acknowledging that "[Russia believes] that nuclear missiles will be deployed in Poland near Russia and these nuclear missiles will have also a first-strike capability and could hit Moscow before [Russia's response] could get airborne, so this is going to actually be seen not so much as missile defense as a deployment of first-strike capability."
(Council on Foreign Relations, March 18, 2009)
Although the deployments of US warplanes, missiles and nuclear warheads in Europe are often presented as bilateral arrangements between Washington and the respective host countries, in fact they are an inevitable and ineradicable component of NATO relations and demands.
Self-styled global, 21st Century NATO will meet for its sixtieth anniversary summit in France and Germany in three days and is expected to craft a new Strategic Concept, one that will leave few spots on Earth unaffected.
And it will reaffirm its policy of basing and when it deems fit using nuclear weapons.
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