Pentagon pulls about a dozen B-1 bombers out of RAF Fairford after a fresh warning

The United States has withdrawn its bombers from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, the British base that counter-terror police have been investigating since late September. A Pentagon official confirmed on Sunday that the aircraft, thought to be about a dozen B-1s, had gone back to home stations in the United States. Tracking websites showed B-1 bombers leaving Fairford that day.

Vice-President JD Vance called the move an abundance of caution. He said Washington believed Iran was doing what it had done for 49 years, which he described as acts of terrorism against the United States and against other people. The Ministry of Defence in London has not commented. Whitehall officials, speaking about the threats they are handling, said there is an ongoing high tempo of threat from Iran to the United Kingdom, and that US airbases would sit high on any targeting list.

What happened on 27 September

On 27 September police were alerted to three suspicious vehicles near the airbase. Five men were arrested on suspicion of terror offences and later released on bail. A sixth man, a UK-Iranian national, was arrested afterwards on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts and was also released on bail. BBC reporting described the five as British men seen with three white vans close to the perimeter at night. The dual national's arrest came at the weekend, in the same window as the bombers' departure.

RAF Fairford, about 90 miles west of London, is the preferred European base for US bombers. The B-1s had been used in the US strikes on Iran that form the background to this deployment. The New York Times reported that US commanders had received new threats about an Iran-backed plot against the base, according to two US officials. The paper said the information belonged to the same threat warnings from three weeks earlier, and that officials moved after specific details emerged in the previous 24 hours.

A departure that outran the tankers

The speed is the operational detail. The aircraft reportedly took off while aerial-refuelling planes were still being scrambled to support the flight back across the Atlantic. Frank Gardner, the BBC security correspondent, wrote that the refuelling aircraft were still being fuelled while B-1 crews were ordered to scramble. Twelve B-1 Lancers are not a routine rotation. Moving them before the tankers were ready means someone judged the risk at the base to be immediate.

British officials would not describe the fresh intelligence. They did confirm the standing assessment that Iranian-linked threat activity against the UK is running at a high tempo. Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said the suspected plot was likely backed by Iran. That attribution is a political statement about a police investigation that has so far produced arrests and bail, not charges.

What the withdrawal changes

Fairford is no longer holding the bomber force that had been positioned for the Iran war. The planes are back at US home stations, which lengthens the flying time if Washington wants to use them again over the Gulf or the Arabian Sea. The base itself remains a British military site under investigation. Six men are on bail. The public record does not yet say what, if anything, was found in the vans, or whether the weekend warning named a time, a method or a person still at large.

The next fact that would change the picture is a charging decision, or a Pentagon account of where the B-1s landed and whether any will return. Until then the verified sequence is short: arrests on 27 September, a sixth arrest at the weekend, a specific warning inside 24 hours, and a scramble that left the tankers behind.