The United States bomber fleet has played a key role in the Operation Epic Fury military campaign targeting Iran. U.S. forces have struck more than 13,000 targets as part of a layered approach used to dismantle the Iranian regime’s security apparatus, prioritizing locations that pose an imminent threat, according to U.S. Central Command’s website.
The U.S. launched more than 60 bomber missions to strike Iran, involving all three bombers,
B-1s, B-2s and B-52s, according to U.S. Department of War (DOW) officials. Eighteen of those bomber missions involved round-trip flights from the U.S. to deliver bombs on military targets in Iran, with each one lasting more than 30 hours, said U.S. Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The bomber fleet played a key role in delivering large-scale conventional strikes during Epic Fury, DOW officials said. B-52 Stratofortress aircraft deployed to the mission carried joint direct attack munition (JDAM) weapons. The JDAM uses and integrated global positioning-inertial navigation system (GPS/INS) to provide high-accuracy, continuous positioning in obstructed areas, including orientation data (heading, pitch, roll) to engage targets.
The development signaled a weakening of Iranian air defenses and a shift from the aircraft’s typical role as a standoff weapon, according to news reports. The bombers carry bunker-busting bombs capable of targeting Iran’s underground missile facilities. The strategy switched toward “more and more dynamic targets servicing mobile targets around the battle space,” Gen. Caine said during a March 2026 news conference. “We’ve continued to do the work against Iran’s missile, drone and naval production facilities.”
The U.S. deployed a significant portion of its bomber fleet to Royal Air Force Fairford in the United Kingdom, where they remain ready to resume operations if and when necessary, Gen. Caine said during an April 2026 news conference.
The U.S. bomber fleet is part of the military’s nuclear triad and an essential component of the U.S. Air Force’s air superiority by providing long-range precision strike capabilities. The fleet also provides assurance to U.S. Allies. In 2018, Air Force Global Strike Command began Bomber Task Force deployments, which involve bomber flights to allied nations around the world to take part in patrols and exercises to assure Allies and deter adversaries.
“What the bombers bring to the equation is that they have larger payloads of weapons and longer duration missions, which gives them the ability to maintain a presence in the weapons engagement zone for longer periods of time to respond to dynamic targets that have just been located, such as mobile missile launchers breaking concealment,” Mark Gunzinger, a former
B-52 pilot and director of Future Concepts and Capability Assessments at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “The payloads also give them the capacity to carry multiple weapons that are designed to penetrate hardened and deeply buried facilities and other targets — 1,000 pounders, 5,000 pounders, and up.”