US deployed B-2 stealth bombers to Guam as North and South Korea held crucial talks

The US Air Force quietly deployed three stealth B-2 Spirit bombers to Guam this week as discussions between the North and South Koreans involving the Winter Olympics were about to commence, a move that the service says was scheduled in advance but came at a particularly sensitive time.

The bat-winged B-2s and 200 airmen deployed to Andersen Air Force Base on the US island territory from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. They are part of what the US military characterised as a short-term deployment that is part of the Pentagon’s bomber assurance and deterrence mission in the Pacific. The Air Force has rotated bombers in the Pacific for 15 years in a show of support for its allies in the region.

But the deployment of B-2s during the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang next month – and shortly after US President Donald Trump taunted North Korea by tweeting January 2 that his “nuclear button” was bigger than North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s – may be seen as inflammatory in the region. The planes have stealth technology and the ability to carry nuclear weapons, something that the B-1B Lancer bombers deployed to Guam last year do not have.

B-2s also are the only aircraft capable of dropping a relatively new conventional 14-tonne bomb known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, which is designed to pierce hardened bunkers and tunnels such as the ones in North Korea.

Marine Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie, the director of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday that it would be wrong to view the bomber deployment “within the single lens of what it means to the Korean Peninsula.” It affects allies across the Pacific, he said.

McKenzie, asked if the United States is also sending a message to China with the deployment, said “we send a signal to everyone” when the Pentagon moves bombers across the globe.