October B52 deployment

[Thunder]

Happy to be proved wrong but I’ve never heard of a RCH callsign ever providing aerial refuelling?

[POL]

Happens occasionally, Finnish Hornets and Norwegian F-16/F-35s come to mind in recent times?

[Thunder]

Never knew that, cheers Chris.

[Gary]

Right for my and the other staff sanity, I'll be locking this thread can all tracking info go in the following thread which will be moved to the bomber deployment area once proven they are in fact heading to the UK viewtopic.php?f=342&t=181765

I'm off to London shortly to see Alice Cooper play nice or any bitchslapping will be done on my return

[ChrisCwmbran]

Remember to feed his baby Frankensteins!

[exatco]

ADSB spot at 1120 UK local time.
South East Pittsburgh Heading NE
60-0061 AE587D....with AE589D....trailing behind is AE587E. No serial showing on number 2 and 3.

[roughcutter]

Any idea how long the deployment is on for? The reason I ask is that my hands are tied with various commitments and it's going to be at least a fortnight before I can get away
MarkL

[Reach1985]

Any idea how long the deployment is on for? The reason I ask is that my hands are tied with various commitments and it's going to be at least a fortnight before I can get away
MarkL

Hi Mark, roughly speaking recent bomber deployments have been around 2-3 weeks of the aircraft actually here (a bit longer if you take in the support flights etc. Which usually take place in the week preceding and post the aircraft being deployed here). As far as I’m aware this deployment is not in support of any planned exercises like the deployments we’ve had for Baltops/Sabre Strike in the last few years - obviously if they are here to support exercises it’s fairly easy to guess on a rough time frame from a quick Google of the planned exercise but if they are here as part of the ongoing bomber deployments to Europe programme then for operational reasons an end date is usually not published but at a guess have a look how long the B-52’s were here earlier in the year and the B-2’s in the summer if memory serves they were both of around 3 weeks so the smart money would be on a similar time frame I’d guess. But please don’t take this as anything other than a guess. The short answer is we don’t know at this stage unless someone’s mums best friends dog met a pilot in Fairford town centre and they know exactly how long they are here for!!

[roughcutter]

In other words "how long's a piece of string?" Guess I'll just have to watch this space and finger's crossed then, heyho
Thanks for the reply, MarkL

[Starbuck]

Any word on merch like the last deployment?

[Thunder]

Any word on merch like the last deployment?

What's merch?

[mikerd]

Merchandise Thunder. As in patches etc for sale.

[Thunder]

Ah ok,

[thevulcan]

Interesting use of words by Team Barksdale over the past few days
"Last week B52s from teambarksdale arrived at raf fairford AS PART of bomber task force Europe."
Elsewhere on a post made by Barksdale today.
"By varying types and overall numbers of airframes on each bomber task force ROTATION"
Seems we might have a presence of bombers at fairford in some way or form for a forseeable future. Would explain the large number of support as airframes appear to be switched and increased/decreased. This would also explain the NOTAM for a permanent weather frequency for Fairford
For those who can look
https://m.facebook.com/TeamBarksdale/?r ... tn__=%7E-R

[filmman]

Its nice to see that others are beginning to realise, as I already hinted, that Fairford's role is becoming far more bomber orientated. It's sort of been sneaked in whilst attention was on RC-135 re-basing. Now guess which bombers, clue the USAF is posslbly expanding quicker than new builds; so they might be storing less airframes? But what stored bombers and restoration would take too long, I hear you say? The answer might be another surprise. I await developments.
Filmman

[thevulcan]

For those wondering how long the BUFFs might be here
EGTT/QFAXX/IV/NBO/A /000/999/5141N00147W005
A) EGVA B) 1910210700 C) 2001171800
D) MON-FRI 0700-1800
E) TRANSIENT ARRIVALS MUST ARRIVE BTN 0700-1800 MONDAY TO FRIDAY.
TIMES OUTSIDE OF THESE HOURS WILL BE REVIEWED ON A CASE BY CASE
BASIS.

Seems to be a lot of transitioning flights for Fairford over the coming months.

[James Cutting]

What's that got to do with B-52's? That says Transient aircraft.

[thevulcan]

Transient aircraft could be support for the B52s?

[POL]

But if they're support for the B-52s, they won't be transient aircraft...

[johnwayne]

For those wondering how long the BUFFs might be here
EGTT/QFAXX/IV/NBO/A /000/999/5141N00147W005
A) EGVA B) 1910210700 C) 2001171800
D) MON-FRI 0700-1800
E) TRANSIENT ARRIVALS MUST ARRIVE BTN 0700-1800 MONDAY TO FRIDAY.
TIMES OUTSIDE OF THESE HOURS WILL BE REVIEWED ON A CASE BY CASE
BASIS.

Seems to be a lot of transitioning flights for Fairford over the coming months.

I'd suggest this Notam implies that the airfield is likely to be notamed open 0800-1900L weekdays at least for the coming 3 months .