Former Utah congressman/Air Force pilot details bombing missions like the one in Iran

SALT LAKE CITY — “Imagine sitting in the middle seat in a (Boeing) 757 for 36 hours and then having to stay awake and alert and work the whole time, right? That’s about what it’s like.”

That’s how Chris Stewart described the likely experience of the pilots of seven B-2 stealth bombers who carried out dramatic air raids against three Iranian nuclear sites on Saturday. In fact, Stewart said, the cockpit of the bomber is “much less comfortable” than sitting in a commercial aircraft.

He would know.

Although he’s most known for representing Utah’s 2nd Congressional District as a Republican from 2013 to 2023, Stewart began his career in the Air Force, where he flew helicopters, jets and the Rockwell B-1 Lancer, a supersonic heavy bomber that preceded the B-2.

The former congressman still holds the world record for the fastest nonstop flight around the world, which he accomplished in the B-1 in 36 hours and 13 minutes in 1995. That record stemmed from a training run for the type of bombing raid the U.S. just completed, Stewart told KSL.com Monday during a discussion about the strikes on Iran.

“While we were preparing for one of those missions, I thought, ‘Hey, we’re about a third of the way around the world, what if we just kept going one time?'” he said. “So, I’m reasonably familiar with what these stories are. Thirty-six hours in the aircraft is a long, long time.”

The undetected Iran attack

More than 125 aircraft were involved in the Iranian attacks over the weekend in what has been dubbed “Operation Midnight Hammer,” per the Pentagon. A group of bombers left a military base near Kansas City heading west toward Guam, but that was a decoy and the real group flew east undetected, refueling in mid-air and accompanied by fighter jets as they flew into Iranian airspace.

Stewart said sitting in an aircraft with an ejection seat can put the same physical stress on the body as sitting in traffic for four hours, calling any long flight “very, very draining.”

Space in the B-2 is also limited — the two pilots have room in the back of the cockpit with a toilet, microwave and often Styrofoam coolers for food, according to a 2018 Atlantic article. The space “allows just enough room for an average-size man to lie down” and some pilots bring cots or sleeping pads to try to catch some shut-eye.

“You’re really busy with two pilots,” Stewart said. “You can fly for a while with one pilot and give someone a chance to rest, but it’s not for anything more than a few minutes, really. … It’s exhausting.”

“The air refuelings are actually very difficult,” he added. “They’re very trying when you consider that they’re flying in combat and they’re flying over contested airspace for hundreds and hundreds of miles — it’s a challenge for the air crew.”

Iran plans in the works far in advance

While the planned strikes on Iran were kept under wraps until the bombers left hostile airspace, Stewart said the plans had likely been in progress for weeks in advance.

“That didn’t mean they made the decision to strike,” he said. “It just meant they made the decision to be prepared to have the option” — positioning tankers, fighter jets and selecting crew in advance so they could prepare to rest ahead of the grueling flight.

“The crew probably were notified, I would guess, sometime in the previous week,” Stewart added. “It wasn’t like they just woke them up and said, ‘Hey, you got to go,’ but it was something they’ve been planning and prepping for for quite a while.”