The US military command has once again announced that they are strengthening Europe, now with three B-1 Lancer strategic bombers.

They have capacity for robots, mines and bombs.

On Monday, the first lifted from its base in Alaska.

The measure shows that the United States currently has "a slightly schizophrenic policy", says research leader Robert Dalsjö at the Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI).

He points out that US President Donald Trump recently decided to withdraw troops from Germany and Norway, while the Pentagon still wants to strengthen in Europe.

- The whole thing is in its own way strange and probably an expression of the Trump administration's divided, almost schizophrenic attitude towards Europe / NATO and towards Russia, where Trump is extremely Putin-friendly and anti-NATO.

The Pentagon is the opposite.

B-1 Lancer bomber ready to depart from Eielson Air Base in Alaska, USA.

Photo: United States Air Force, Ted Daigle September 10, 2020

Bombers arrived in August

At the end of August, the United States again placed six B-52 strategic bombers in the United Kingdom.

They have the capability for both conventional and nuclear weapons.

They flew demonstratively over NATO member states in Europe on the same day and were escorted by Allied time planes.

Robert Dalsjö, who has researched American security policy for a long time, believes that the Pentagon can send strategic bombers to Europe without President Trump noticing.

- Trump's very lack of attention means that the Pentagon can do things like this under the White House's radar.

He believes that it could also be a compensation for a large American military exercise (Defender Europe 2020) that would have been carried out in the summer of 2020. It would have been the largest reinforcement in Europe since the Cold War.

American B-52 bombers are escorted by American and Dutch fighter jets over the North Sea.

Photo: United States Air Force, Matthew Plew September 14, 2020

An entire American division would be sent - 20,000 soldiers.

But due to the corona pandemic, the exercise was canceled.

Now the Pentagon wants to convince that they are behind NATO's Article 5 - the rule that NATO countries must protect each other in the event of conflict or war.

"Trump's tirades against NATO and public contempt for Article 5 have raised doubts among the Allies, and signaling with the help of strategic aviation could then be a way of saying that the United States can and wants to protect Europe," says Robert Dalsjö.