The US military has withdrawn all its bombers from RAF Fairford, a British air base in Gloucestershire, following a counter-terrorism investigation into suspicious activity near the facility in late September.
A Pentagon official confirmed on Sunday that approximately a dozen B-1 Lancer heavy bombers had been removed from the base and returned to their home stations in America. The US did not publicly state a reason for the withdrawal, but Whitehall sources have not disputed that it was a response to an incident on 27 September when police were alerted to three suspicious vehicles near the airbase.
Counter-terrorism police arrested six men in connection with the incident. Five were UK nationals aged 23 to 25, initially arrested in the early hours of 27 September on suspicion of explosives offences and later on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act. They were all released on bail. A sixth man, a 25-year-old UK-Iranian national, was arrested in London on Thursday and also released on bail on Saturday.
The BBC was told the bomber withdrawal was a military rather than a political decision, made at an operational level and communicated from US military leadership to British counterparts. The UK Ministry of Defence has not commented.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham said days after the incident that there were "strong indications" Iran had played a part, though he provided no details. Iran has strongly denied involvement. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News the incident "clearly involve[d] the hands of a foreign actor" but did not elaborate. President Donald Trump separately said he was "surprised" the five men had been released on bail, stating the US would not have released them.
RAF Fairford has served as a forward operating base for the US Air Force for decades. In recent months, the base hosted B-1 and B-52 bombers conducting operations in the Middle East after the UK approved US requests for defensive strikes on Iran. The bombers were armed with precision-guided "bunker busting" bombs and air-to-surface missiles. In July, Iran stated that "any base used for aggression against Iranian territory constitutes a legitimate target for our forces."
The Pentagon stressed that its bombing aircraft remain able to conduct missions globally, including through operations launched from the continental United States.