By John LaForge
According to a November 2021 report by the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, the so-called ‘life extension program’ for the air-dropped thermonuclear bomb called B61-12, “is refurbishing, reusing, or replacing all of the bomb’s nuclear and non-nuclear components to extend the service life by at least 20 years.”
Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists told Politico that the upgrades to the bomb’s design are for “significantly greater accuracy.” This newfashioned H-bomb is also made so that U.S. and allied fighter jets — including F-15s, F-16s, F-35s, and European Tornado fighter jets — “are all able to carry the weapon, as opposed to the several older versions of the B61 that have been in storage for years.”
“Today, approximately 100 U.S. nuclear weapons are estimated to be stored at six bases in five countries, with one additional base (Lakenheath in England) currently undergoing modernization to potentially store nuclear weapons in the future,” Kristensen reported in November 2023. The United States is preparing to replace all older versions of the B61 now deployed in Europe with the incoming B61-12, Kristensen reported. The timeline for the first delivery has not been made public, so watchdogs are keen to observe the arrival — at any of the six NATO bases — of a U.S. Air Force C-17A Globemaster III, “the only transport aircraft authorized to move the nuclear weapons,” Kristensen noted.
Newsweek reported in 2022, “The 12-foot B61-12 bomb carries a 50-kiloton warhead — the equivalent of 50,000 tons of TNT.” The U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima killing 140,000 people was a 15-kiloton device, making the new weapon 3.3 times more powerful.
In December 2023, Kristensen reported that Dutch Air Force pilots at Volkel air base had begun training to attack with the new B61-12s. Volkel is part of the so-called NATO “nuclear sharing” program, in which “the United States Air Force equips Dutch F-16s (and aircraft of five other NATO countries), and trains their pilots to employ B61 nuclear bombs in war.”
Kristensen had earlier reported that in Germany, parliamentary “debate raised questions about whether individual soldiers could be held liable for the use of nuclear weapons. The 2008, legal guidelines for German soldiers prohibited their participation in the use of nuclear weapons, posing complications for Germany’s ongoing nuclear sharing mission. [But] revised guidelines, which were updated in 2018, reportedly no longer include this prohibition — presumably in order to allow German soldiers to fully participate in NATO’s nuclear sharing mission.”
Civil resisters tried in Germany for confronting nuclear attack training have defended their actions by pointing to treaty laws that forbid such preparations.
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