Historically, B-2s have been limited to operating from Fairford and Whiteman, as well as Andersen Air Force Base on Guam and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, due to the specialized requirements to support the aircraft. All of these bases have hangars capable of shielding the bombers' sensitive radar-absorbing skins from the elements.

Other bases do have suitable facilities that they can be made available to the B-2s, if necessary. When one of the bombers traveled to Wake Island in September 2018, it had started out at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, which is situated adjacent to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport on the island of Oahu. This, in of itself, was something of an unusual deployment.

Mighty 22 spent less than five hours at Keflavik and its not clear if the crew even got out of the plane. During the B-2's visit to Wake Island, crews conducted a "hot pit" refuel, a practice where the plane never shuts down its engines. The Air Force often uses this tactic to speed up the pace of operations at forward locations, either for training or actual combat missions. When it comes to more complex and finicky aircraft, such as the B-2, it can also remove the need for complicated start-up procedures and help ensure it will be able to get airborne again without issue.