Pentagon pulls the last B-1 bombers out of RAF Fairford

The United States has pulled every bomber it had at RAF Fairford back to home stations in the United States. A Pentagon official confirmed the move on Sunday. Aircraft spotters and US media put the departing force at about a dozen B-1B Lancers, all of them gone on 4 October. The departure ends a deployment that, at its peak in March, put roughly two dozen bombers on the Gloucestershire base, about 18 B-1Bs and half a dozen B-52Hs.

Fairford sits about 90 miles, or 145 kilometres, west of London. It is the preferred European field for American strategic bombers. The aircraft that left on Sunday had been part of a seven-month stay that began in early March during the operation the US Air Force has called Epic Fury. After a shaky ceasefire with Iran in April, the bombers mostly flew training sorties. The B-52s had already gone home months earlier. What remained, until Sunday, was the last B-1 detachment.

Arrests, bail, and a new warning

The move comes a week after a police incident on 27 September. Officers were alerted to three suspicious vehicles near the base. Five men, aged 23 to 25, British nationals from London, were arrested on suspicion of explosives offences and of preparing a terrorist act. They were later released on bail. A sixth man, a dual British-Iranian national aged 25, was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts and was also released on bail. Counter-terror police have not charged anyone.

The New York Times reported that US commanders received new warnings of an Iran-backed plot against the base, and that the new detail was part of threat reporting from about three weeks earlier. Two US officials told the paper that specific information emerged in the previous 24 hours and that the aircraft left while aerial tankers were still being scrambled to support the flight home. Air and Space Forces Magazine quoted a joint line from the Pentagon and US European Command: all US bombers that had been deployed to RAF Fairford had redeployed to their home stations in the United States. The Pentagon also said bombing aircraft can still fly missions from the continental United States.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said there are strong indications that Iran played a part. Whitehall officials told the BBC 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. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, has said the case clearly involved the hands of a foreign actor. President Donald Trump said the United States knew the men who had been arrested and would not have agreed to their release on bail, and that London and Washington had worked closely. Iran has denied any role. In July Tehran said any base used for aggression against Iranian territory was a legitimate target for its forces.

Why the B-1, and what the withdrawal changes

Ezra Cohen, a defence official in Trump's first administration, told reporters the B-1 is no longer in production and that the fleet is small. Protecting the aircraft, he said, raises the cost of striking Iran because the bomber has to come from farther away. A Fairford launch toward the Gulf is a long sortie, often 12 to 15 hours with aerial refuelling, but it is shorter than a launch from Dyess in Texas or Ellsworth in South Dakota. Pulling the jets home does not ground them. It adds tanker hours, crew days, and notice.

The B-1B is a swing-wing bomber built for low-level penetration and later adapted to carry precision weapons. On the Iran strikes that began on 28 February, B-1s flying from Fairford carried bunker-busting bombs and air-to-surface missiles, after the British government approved a US request to use the base for what London described as defensive strikes. Sir Keir Starmer, then prime minister, authorised B-52 use from the same field in March. The current government has not commented on Sunday's departure. The Ministry of Defence has stayed silent.

Tracking sites showed B-1s leaving Fairford on Sunday. The Air Force has not published a tail-number list. Home stations for the B-1 are Dyess and Ellsworth. The Pentagon's line is that the B-1, the B-2 and the B-52 can still reach targets from those fields. What Fairford gave Washington was a forward park of aircraft already armed, fuelled and briefed, inside a day's flying of the Gulf. That park is now empty.

The legal position of the six men is unchanged. Bail is not a finding. Gasoline was found in vehicles examined in the inquiry, according to later reporting, and no explosives were recovered. Burnham's phrase, strong indications, is a political description of an intelligence judgement, not a charge sheet. The operational fact is simpler. A base that held America's forward bomber force in Europe on Saturday morning did not hold it on Sunday night.