Barksdale AFB KBAD Airfield Map Art Barksdale Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base in northwest Louisiana, in Bossier Parish, and is contiguous to Bossier City, Louisiana along the base’s western and northwestern edge. The base occupies more than 22,000 acres east of Bossier City and along the southern edge of Interstate Highway 20. There are more than 15,000 active-duty and Air Force Reserve members serving at Barksdale. The host unit at Barksdale is the 2d Bomb Wing (2 BW), the oldest bomb wing in the Air Force. It is assigned to the Air Force Global Strike Command’s (AFGSC) Eighth Air Force (8 AF). Equipped with about 44 B-52H Stratofortress bombers, 2 BW provides flexible, responsive, global combat capability, autonomously or in concert with other forces, and trains all Air Force Global Strike Command and Air Force Reserve CommandBoeing B-52 Stratofortress crews. The base was established in 1932 as Barksdale Field, named for World War I aviator and test pilot Lieutenant Eugene Hoy Barksdale (1896-1926).
