In England, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) reports that new U.S. B61-12 hydrogen bombs were secretly delivered to the UK’s Royal Air Force Base Lakenheath, in Suffolk, on July 16th. This transfer of U.S. H-bombs marks the first time since 2008 that the Pentagon has deployed its nuclear weapons in Britain. Prior to 2008, U.S. bombs had been stationed in the UK for 50 years.
The number of B61-12s has not been disclosed or leaked. Analysts identified an aircraft from the Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, bound for Lakenheath, according to Newsweek July 22nd and Bloomberg News July 28th. Kirtland Air Force Base is the headquarters of the U.S. Air Force “Nuclear Weapons Center,” a main nuclear weapons storage site and training ground for nuclear weapons attacks.
CND also wrote, “Despite being called an “RAF” [Royal Air Force] station, Lakenheath is run by the U.S. Air Force and currently only hosts USAF units and personnel.” This is why anti-war campaigners describe the base as “USAF Lakenheath.” The base hosts about 6,000 personnel, and is “the largest deployment of USAF personnel in Britain.”
Earlier, about 100 of the new H-bombs were secretly transferred to NATO bases in Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, and possibly Turkey. On January 16, Jill Hruby, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, announced, “The new B61-12 [thermonuclear] gravity bombs are fully forward deployed, and we have increased NATO’s visibility to our nuclear capabilities….”
The U.S. proliferation of the first-strike accurate air-drop gravity bombs to Europe needlessly destabilizes the shooting war between Russia and Ukraine, where operating nuclear reactors are potential targets and where attacks with nuclear warheads have been threatened.
As we’ve reported earlier, the delivery of U.S. nuclear weapons to governments party to the 1970 Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons or NPT, is an open violation of the treaty’s Articles I and II which prohibit any such “transfer” of nuclear weapons for any reason whatsoever. When Russia, in 2023, moved some of its nuclear weapons to stations in Belarus, the U.S. didn’t condemn the transfer as a violation of the NPT, as that would have unmasked the Pentagon’s own lawlessness. ⸺ JML
Leave a Reply