The Strategic Power of Long Range Strikes
Operation Midnight Hammer brings to mind another long-range bombing campaign that demonstrated the power of strategic resolve.
As the uneasy cease-fire between Israel and Iran enters its second day, initial indications about the battle damage assessment are starting to find their way into the media. In particular, a leaked preliminary assessment by the US Defense Intelligence Agency suggests that the American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities have delayed Tehran’s nuclear programme by months rather than years.
When questioned at the NATO summit yesterday, US President Donald Trump described the report as, “very inconclusive”.
“The intelligence says, ‘We don’t know. It could have been very severe’,” he stated, before adding, “I think we can take the, ‘we don’t know, it was very significant.’ It was obliteration.”
However, the contested effectiveness of these strikes recalls a historical precedent: a record-setting bombing campaign conducted under even more challenging circumstances. Following Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands on April 2, 1982, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ordered the Port Stanley airfield to be bombed in order to prevent its use by fast jets that could attack British Navy ships in the area.
Despite her Foreign Secretary Francis Pym favouring diplomacy and military planners wary of the extreme logistics, Thatcher ordered the longest-range bombing raids in history, involving Arvo Vulcans nearing retirement, flying 8,000 mile round trips from Ascension Island to the Falklands.
The range of the mission, known as Operation Black Buck, was not surpassed until Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001 when US B-2 Spirit bombers launched from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to deliver the first strikes against Taliban targets in Afghanistan, and then by Operation Midnight Hammer, again launching from Whiteman Air Force Base, in order to hit Iran’s nuclear facilities on the weekend.
Within weeks of the start of the Falklands War, the aging delta-wing Vulcan bombers, originally built to fly nuclear weapons over Russia, were retrofitted with additional fuel tanks to make the audacious mission. Each of the seven Black Buck missions relied on up to eleven Victor refuelling planes in a complex ‘daisy chain’ operation, with some tankers refuelled mid-flight to extend the Vulcan’s range.
Each Vulcan carried either twenty-one 1,000-pound bombs or up to four Shrike anti-radar missiles. Overweight at take-off by over two tonnes, the bombers required their engines to operate beyond their rated capacity to become airborne.
Black Buck One launched from Ascension Island on April 30. After close to seven hours of flying, Flight Lieutenant Martin Withers approached the Falklands at 300 feet to avoid radar detection before climbing to 1,000 feet for the final 40 mile bombing run. One bomb exploded on the runway and caused a large crater, and the other bombs caused minor damage to aircraft and equipment.
As Withers turned towards home, four Handley Page Victor tankers set off from Ascension Island. Three of those tankers would refuel the fourth in order to get it within range of Withers. At the same time, a Nimrod also set off from Ascension, its role was to drop life rafts into the South Atlantic if the Vulcan needed to ditch into the ocean.
In his memoir, Withers wrote that he had never been airborne in a Vulcan carrying less fuel than he was as Vulcan XM607 closed in on the final refuelling rendezvous. He described his first glimpse of the Victor tanker as, “the most beautiful sight in the world”.
However, much debate has been had in the years since about Operation Black Buck and whether the limited damage inflicted on the enemy justified the massive demands of resource and manpower.
The British Air Commander during the Falklands War was Sir John Curtiss and in 2003 he gave his view during a seminar at the RAF Museum Hendon.
So were the raids worth it? I have absolutely no doubt that they were, especially the first one, which sent a very stark message to Argentina - if we could reach the Falklands, then we could reach Buenos Aires. As a result, they moved a number of their Mirage fighters north to protect the capital which significantly reduced their ability to escort offensive missions against the Task Force.
Interestingly, Sir John had a Kiwi mother and part of his schooling was at Wanganui Collegiate before he returned to the UK to join the RAF in 1942.
Sir John’s assessment about the broader impact of the raids was echoed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Sunday morning when he was questioned by journalists about what Iran might do next in response to the American strikes.
I think Tehran is certainly calculating the reality that planes flew from the middle of America overnight, completely undetected over three of their most highly sensitive sites, and we were able to destroy their nuclear capabilities … We believe that will have a clear psychological impact on how they view the future, and we certainly hope they take the path of negotiated peace.
The Argentine ground forces surrendered on June 14, two days after the final Black Buck mission, marking the end of the ten week Falklands conflict.
For Thatcher, it was clear that she was fighting for more than just the territory and people of the Falklands. In her autobiography, she wrote:
I was presented with the dangers of a backlash against the British expatriates in Argentina, problems about getting support in the UN Security Council, the lack of reliance we could place on the European Community or the United States, the risk of the Soviets becoming involved, and the disadvantage of being looked at as a colonial power. All these considerations were fair enough. But when you are at war you cannot allow the difficulties to dominate your thinking: you have to set out with an iron will to overcome them. And anyway, what was the alternative? That a common or garden dictator should rule over the Queen’s subjects and prevail by fraud and violence? Not while I was Prime Minister.
Similarly, for Trump, while debate persists over whether the bunker busters destroyed Iran’s nuclear facilities, the strikes likely served a broader purpose: conveying a direct message from one leader to another, Trump to Khamenei, that the United States can, and will, take direct military action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Wow. I hope Flight Lieutenant Martin Withers and others were appropriately decorated.
Good article on the Falklands operation, but coming back to the present day operation and your last comment on Trump and the Iran nuclear weapon.
The Iranians have rejected the idea of getting nuclear weapons, of wanting nuclear weapons (although this may now change) and this is backed up by all non-political motivated intelligence in the West. All of their nuclear activities have been within the NPT (Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty) - even the enrichment of unranium to 60% (the limit of allowable civil enrichment). The negotiations, carried out now apparently in bad faith by Trump, should have been a slam dunk. It should have been the easiest treaty to negotiate by the 'Master Negotiator', but that is now toast.
Now the question becomes; Are Netanyahu and Trump going to become the Fathers of the Iranian Nuclear Bomb? Intelligence indicates that Iran's nuclear programme is only delayed a few months. There will be increasing pressure on the Iranian Government to go nuclear from inside the country - to prevent the attacks that took place by the Israelis. It may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And this is not to talk about Israel's strategic defeat in failing to collapse the Iranian Government and get the US involved in Regime change should Plan A have failed.