The most classic scene of the US military's large-scale air raids on Syria and Iraq is that the B-1B non-stealth strategic bomber flew from North America across the Atlantic, then to Europe, and then flew directly to the Middle East, without stopping for a moment, flying continuously for about 10 hours across more than 10,000 kilometers, and finally arrived in Syria and Iraq for carpet bombing. It does not carry long-range ground-to-ground missiles, but fires shorter-range JDAM satellite-guided bombs, which can be said to be dropped from the heads of Iranian forces. With a length of 44.8 meters and a span of about 42 meters when the wings are fully extended, the B-1b is a bit unimaginable that such a large non-stealth aircraft bombed Syria and Iraq as if no one was in a no-man's land.
If they had said hello in advance, it would have been normal for Syria and Iran not to dare to shoot it down. The key point is that the US military did not inform them in advance, and Syria and Iran have every right to shoot down these unfamiliar planes, even if they are found by the US military, it can be said that they do not know about it. In September 2018, when Syria was responding to an air attack by Israeli fighters, it shot down an Il-20 electronic reconnaissance plane of the Russian army with an anti-aircraft missile, and all 15 crew members on it were killed, which shows that the Syrian army dares to strike strange planes in the sky. But what is amazing is that the air defense systems of Syria and Iran did not react when the US B-1B bombed, and there were no reports of electronic suppression, which shows that the air defense systems of these two countries were turned on normally when the US bombing.
Not to mention that the air defense forces of Syria and Iraq have dozens of battalions combined, after the Russian Il-20 was mistakenly attacked, Syria was quickly equipped with three battalions of Russian-made S300PM long-range air defense systems, each battalion has 8 sets of launchers and more than 100 surface-to-air missiles, and the three battalions have a total of 24 sets of launchers and more than 300 missiles. All of this is provided free of charge by Russia, and there is no such thing as a reluctance to use that. Moreover, he shot down an Israeli F16 fighter, and even the Russian plane was hit, and he didn't care about shooting down another US bomber. The Syrian army's S300 is equipped with an anti-aircraft missile with a range of up to 250 kilometers, and its air search radar can also detect aircraft within a range of at least three or four hundred kilometers, and Syria's actual control area is less than 200,000 square kilometers.
In addition, the Russian army has also deployed an S300 missile battery in Syria, and they have not reported any anomalies. The Syrian air defense forces are also equipped with Iranian-made Bavar-373, which, according to Iran, is similar to the S300 of the Russian army. The Meeraj-4 phased array radar used has an air detection range of 450 kilometers and can still monitor aircraft throughout Syria. Moreover, the Syrian army has deployed as many as 900 long, medium and near air defense systems throughout the country, and even Israeli warplanes and their missiles can be detected and intercepted, but none of them have intercepted the B-1b, and may not even be detected.
This shows that the US military has adopted the tactics of ultra-low-altitude penetration, and it is likely to fly all the way from the Mediterranean Sea to the location of the target in Syria, and it is estimated that the low-altitude penetration will cover a distance of no less than four or five hundred kilometers, plus the terrain is used to evade radar detection. The U.S. military did the same during the Gulf War, but it was then that the U.S. military knocked out Iraq's air defense radar first, and then the B-1B came into play. Equipped with four General Electric turbofan engines, the aircraft can fly at an altitude of more than Mach 12,000 at an altitude of 1 meter, and when its wings are fully swept back, it can descend to an altitude of 60 meters above the ground and fly at a speed of Mach 0.9.
Its built-in bomb bay has an effective bomb load of up to 34 tons, which is equivalent to 84 Mk82 general-purpose bombs, each weighing 226 kg, or 15 GBU-38 JDAM satellite-guided bombs. The replacement missile can carry 8 large long-range air-launched cruise missiles or 24 short-range missiles. If its pylons were also full of bombs, the total bomb load would be nearly 60 tons, which would be at least equal to one squadron of F/A-18E/F fighters in one bombardment. Considering that fighters will carry auxiliary fuel tanks to fight, one B-1B may be equivalent to more than two F-18 squadrons, which means that two B-1Bs are equivalent to at least one 100,000-ton supercarrier. In this bombing, the B-1b in Syria took out at least one large base with 25 bunkers.
The purpose of the US military using it thousands of miles away is to prove that even if the US military reduces its troop deployment in the Middle East, even if it only deploys one aircraft carrier, the US military can control the situation in the Middle East at any time. This weapon of transcontinental combat is equivalent to the artifact of Zhenguo, but unfortunately it was not defeated. Of course, it only dares to attack the second-rate countries in the Middle East, and it does not dare to engage in low-altitude penetration in East Asia.