MP-Willow I think you've been misinformed about the NATO exercises; the SAS does not take part in these 'competitions, neither do the Navy Seals, Delta Force or SBS.
The U.S Rangers are classed as a 'specialist' unit and are marked above the normal U.S Army, and Marines. Here in Britian we have the Army in which there are many different regiments, the most famed and highly skilled being the Paras. We then have the Royal Marines, the commandos who are not special forces, neither are the paras. Then there's the RAF Regiment, who are also not special forces but are all very well trained. The RAF regiment and Marines are normally the ones at the top of the NATO exercises, above the U.S Rangers, Marines and standard Army.
The first official incursion into Iraq (2003) was made by the Royal Marines and Navy SEALs, a British standard unit with an American specialist.
The B-52 will keep flying, they won't fall out of the sky because of the expensive matinence put into them, that keeps them flying. The B-52 can do low level attack work, and has done it in the past. On the SAMs, look at Vietnam, for 11 days in late 1972, pausing only to celebrate Christmas, B-52s pounded North Vietnams capital Hanoi and its harbour Haiphong in the most savage bombing campaign in the history of air warfare, it flattened the place but with a loss of 15 B-52s to the Vietcong SAMs.