American Family News spoke to Air Force Col. (Ret.) Rob Maness, a former B-1 bomber squadron commander who dedicated over 30 years to the military. For him, one thing is clear: The United States has escalated its involvement in the fight against Iran by deploying B-52 bombers to the region.
Maness asserts that despite the controversies surrounding the downed F-15E aircraft, the mere presence of U.S. bombers flying over Iranian airspace serves as a strong testament to air superiority, as claimed by President Donald Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“A nation defends its airspace through offensive and defensive counter air assets,” he explains. For Iran, this primarily involves mostly obsolete U.S. aircraft, older models from the Soviet Union or China, surface-to-air missile systems, and anti-aircraft artillery.
“The F-15E shot down was likely brought down with a shoulder fired infrared seeker missile,” he notes. These weapons are commonly known as portable “fire-and-forget” surface-to-air missiles or MANPADS (Man-Portable Air-Defense System).
However, an Integrated Air Defense System (IADS) represents a coordinated, multi-tiered “system of systems” that integrates sensors, weaponry, and command-and-control capabilities to detect, monitor, and eliminate airborne threats. For Maness, “The fact that IADS are not responding as a system to our attack aircraft indicates we have degraded the system to the point that it is largely ineffective.” This suggests that the Iranian military’s ability to counteract U.S. air dominance is severely compromised.
For Americans seeking reassurance, Maness argues that the presence of B-1 and B-52 bombers flying in Iran’s airspace without any escort is a clear indication that the U.S. has achieved total air superiority. The B-52, renowned for its capacity to carry up to 70,000 pounds of munitions, is capable of deploying an extensive array of weapons from the U.S. arsenal, including gravity bombs, cluster bombs, precision-guided missiles, and joint direct attack munitions. The B-1, another strategic heavy bomber, boasts a similar payload capacity. Should President Trump opt to unleash “hell” upon Iran, these aircraft would undoubtedly play a pivotal role in that operation.
While the Pentagon evaluates the possibility of ground operations in Iran, Maness remarks that “if we keep up this level of combat [by air], it’s likely the Iranian government will give up, what’s left of it anyway, without American invasion forces.”
