Why, is that a confusing term? Okay, fine: dropping something with the intention of ruining someone's day.
Last time I can recall was 1995, during the Kosovo campaign. That's a generation ago. And this was done in the framework of NATO, so in coordination with European allies.
Since you claim that the USAF (or USN, as the case may be) "quite often" overflies foreign countries on bombing runs (as above) without their permission - I'm asking you to provide specific examples.
You are drawing bombing runs out like a ruler. If you are defining it as over flying any country with ordinance on board a US military plane I would say every single day almost every where in the world you find us or see us or don’t see us. I never once checked for overflight permission of a NATO country ( f*ck France because you would be right it’s not happening) or even a Major Ally. Now as far as the Middle East, The Kingdom is “in”, they are “out”, they are back “in”… That is handled by flight operations and sometimes diplomats not Aviators.
Ever single flight in the beginning of GWOT and the invasion of Afghanistan involved an over flight. And one of the last flights was of course was to get Osama bin Laden absolutely did not involve over flight permission from the Afghanis or the Pakistanis.
The only country I know of that ever denied us permission for over flights are the French. Even the Turks when they don’t let us use their NATO bases except an emergency, don’t say a word about over flights. I honestly can’t think of a time that we attacked another country by flying through contested airspace because it either wasn’t contested or the wars were before we had stealth aircraft.
Today we can pass through anyone’s airspace without them knowing it. They can’t even pick up F35 which are mediocre.
Picking up and tracking a B2 or an F22 is not gonna happen. Even the F117 that was shot down by the Serbian (which by the way was damn fine work on their part) involved multiple day after day bombing run following the identical path and always giving itself away when it’s Bomb bay doors were open, then extrapolating from those faint returns to where the bomb struck (again and again) to swag where the aircraft would be. Then they volley fired. Several tries and then they got a near miss with sufficient hit to bring down the ship. But again that was the least stealthy aircraft we’ve ever had during its attack.
My argument is no one would need to know. Also Poland would love to host and reload and refuel a US combat Aircraft. They want to be friends with US. The want the American public to think well of them because they may very well need a friend someday and haven’t had 70 years of arrogant entitlement breed into them. They have a living memory of hating their overlords (unlike parts of east Germany that somehow mistily opine for the old days…(Helsinki syndrome* is strong in those ones)
From the Turkish border and from the Gulf Iran is wide open. Do you consider just flying over (overflight) on the way to a target to be on the “bomb run”?
Defining it as the last country you took off from. Are we defining it as the last country you passed through.
Because if you stayed over water it could be the US or Diego Garcia.
Are we defining it as the country through which you were launched your ordinance? Because that is a world difference from overflight.
I would say that I flew over every European ally (including France) at some point carrying hate mail, as well as most Asian Allies (RoK, Jap, PI, Thailand, Turkey and others (Panama, Honduras, Mexico, El Salvador too I’m sure. I never once asked for permission to carry ordinance. Not once.
) then over the Atlantic and refuel (“you only have too much gas when you are on fire”. It’s cute but actually not correct for two reasons: one, you’re burning jet. Two, empty tank explode, full tank burn. )
