Bombers Should Be Ready for Continuous Ops, 2-Star Says
Aug. 7, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak
The U.S. can’t assume that exercising long-range airpower will always mean one-off strikes such as the recent Midnight Hammer operation against Iran, the two-star general overseeing the Air Force bomber fleet said Aug. 7, arguing that the military must invest now in options for high-tempo operations many years away.
“I can never assume that any single strike is going to be enough,” 8th Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Jason Armagost said on a webinar hosted by the Air & Space Forces Association’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “We have to be ready and postured and capable of generating, very quickly … across the platforms, to bring that long range, global capability, [and] mass to problem sets.”
While Midnight Hammer—the June 22 strike against Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities—was a success, “we had to be ready for what was the next question to be asked, or what was the next problem to be confronted,” Armagost said. He suggested that following up with a second-day attack on June 23 might not have been possible with the forces available.
The action “resulted in a ceasefire about 30 hours after the strike,” he noted, but “you can’t count on that” to happen in every instance.
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/bombers-should-be-ready-for-continuous-ops-2-star-says/
