"We are a bomb truck," said Lt. Col. Dennis Zabka, the squadron commander and the senior officer on the Guam flight. "We carry the widest variety of munitions of any aircraft."
In late August, a B-52 hit turbulence over the Black Sea, a fault line between the West and Russia, when a Russian Su-27 fighter flew within 100 feet. A week later, two B-52s made a statement of their own by circling over the Ukrainian coast, not far from the Russian-held Crimean peninsula.
On Jan. 17, a pair of B-52s flew from the U.S. to the Persian Gulf and back in a nonstop flight intended to deter Iran -- a mission the bombers have carried out five times in recent months.
And in the western Pacific, B-52s have been a key part of the jostling as Beijing seeks to expand its sphere of influence and Washington aims to preserve its role as the region's pre-eminent military power.
China has tried to drive American forces from near its shores, shadowing Navy ships in the South China Sea and demanding that U.S. military aircraft avoid a Chinese self-declared air identification zone extending 200 miles into the East China Sea. The zone covers islands known as the Senkaku in Japan that are held by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing.
Guam is a crucial U.S. outpost in this contest. The Air Force is adding fortified bunkers to Munitions Storage Area One at Andersen, making it one of the service's largest bomb and missile storage facilities. The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command is proposing to build a $1.6 billion air defense network on the island to supplement the Thaad antimissile system deployed there in 2014.
Some of the defenses are more rudimentary: Traps baited with mice safeguard Andersen's runways to keep brown tree snakes from slithering on to the airfield.
It was from there that the 69th Bomb Squadron, whose home base is Minot, N.D., set out on a mission to fly through what China considers its air zone.
After climbing into an unarmed B-52 named "Christine," crew members strapped their legs, waist and chest into their seats, fastened their helmets and connected their oxygen supply.
They pulled out pins with a red lanyard from each arm of the seat, removing the safety so they could eject if they had to. As the plane flew north toward Japan, the crew used its decades-old radio to check in with air traffic controllers in San Francisco and Japan before pivoting southwest toward China.
The crew was ready with a scripted reply when a Chinese air controller warned the B-52 it would be intercepted: "I am a United States military aircraft conducting lawful military activities in international airspace." No intercept occurred.
At the end of the 12-hour flight, the crew's first stop was to the maintenance squadron, which worked through the night to get the old plane ready for its next mission.
The adaptability of the B-52 has surprised former Defense Secretary Gates, who as a boy used to watch the planes from a nearby Boeing factory fly over his family's house in Wichita, Kan. "Who knew that 60 years later, the damn thing would still be flying?" he said.
Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
01-24-21 1308ET
