Trump Orders Nuclear-armed Bombers Back on 24-hour Ready Alert

The Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana has a long history of its B-52 Bomber crews and how they were instrumental in keeping the peace during the Cold War which ended officially in 1991.  General David Goldfein, Air Force Chief of Staff under “Mad Dog” Mattis, is traveling from one area to the next to explain the new posture of the military under the threat of a nuclear strike by North Korea.

Goldfein’s aim is to prepare our personnel for the mind-frame that may be alien to many of them, considering that most will not even have been born before 1991.

Louisiana’s Barksdale base is being renovated in order to accommodate new flight crews.

Already, various improvements have been made to prepare Barksdale — home to the 2d Bomb Wing and Air Force Global Strike Command, which oversees the service’s nuclear forces — to return B-52s to an alert posture. Near the alert pads, an old concrete building — where B-52 crews during the Cold War would sleep, ready to run to their aircraft and take off at a moment’s notice — is being renovated.

Inside, beds are being installed for more than 100 crew members, more than enough room for the crews that would man bombers positioned on the nine alert pads outside. There’s a recreation room, with a pool table, TVs and a shuffleboard table. Large paintings of the patches for each squadron at Barksdale adorn the walls of a large stairway.

One painting — a symbol of the Cold War — depicts a silhouette of a B-52 with the words “Peace The Old Fashioned Way,” written underneath. At the bottom of the stairwell, there is a Strategic Air Command logo, yet another reminder of the Cold War days when American B-52s sat at the ready on the runway outside.

Turn to the following page to read about the two newest additions of aircraft to the base that will mark the next stage in nuclear warfare in the 21st Century!

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