Washington will reportedly transfer dozens of F-35 jets and should even retailer nuclear weapons at RAF Lakenheath
The US may search to station nuclear weapons on British territory for the primary time since 2008, in keeping with Pentagon funds paperwork analyzed by a US think-tank and British media. American fighter jets able to nuclear bombing raids are additionally slated for a similar UK air base, the information counsel.
In a March funding request to Congress, the US navy sought $50 million for a brand new “surety dormitory” on the Lakenheath Royal Air Pressure base in Suffolk, north of the British capital, the Telegraph reported on Wednesday.
In response to the Federation of American Scientists, the time period “surety” is continuously utilized by the Pentagon to check with “the potential to maintain nuclear weapons protected, safe, and beneath constructive management.” Whereas the funds doc made point out of a NATO undertaking to assemble “safe websites and services” to retailer “particular weapons” within the UK, officers have but to substantiate any new deployments on the base in query.
RAF Lakenheath was one among three websites in Britain to accommodate US nuclear weapons all through the Chilly Warfare, holding 110 American warheads till a drawdown in 2008. Washington additionally equipped atomic bombs to UK forces beneath an initiative dubbed ‘Venture E’ till 1992, quickly after the autumn of the Soviet Union.
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commander of the UK-NATO Joint Chemical, Organic, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, instructed the Telegraph the brand new surety facility is prone to retailer nuclear arms.
“On this case, a surety dormitory is a bunker used to accommodate nuclear missiles and warheads. It must be hardened and a safe place – if the Russians needed to drop a bomb on them it wouldn’t create a nuclear accident,” he mentioned.
Building of the dormitory is scheduled to start subsequent summer season and finish in early 2026, the paperwork say.
The identical Pentagon funds request additionally exhibits that Washington plans to station two squadrons of F-35 A fighter jets – able to tactical nuclear bombing missions – at RAF Lakenheath. Unnamed British navy sources reached by the Telegraph mentioned 54 F-35s are set to switch older US F-15s on the base someday within the coming months.
The prospect of a contemporary nuclear deployment within the UK has triggered anxieties amongst some critics, with the Marketing campaign for Nuclear Disarmament stating the transfer can be “past irresponsible.”
“The deployment of the brand new B61-12 (gravity bombs) to Europe undermines any prospects for world peace and ensures Britain might be a goal in a nuclear battle between the US/NATO and Russia,” mentioned the marketing campaign’s common secretary, Kate Hudson. She added: “It is more and more clear that Lakenheath is as soon as once more an important cog in Washington’s abroad nuclear machine.”
Requested about the potential of nuclear weapons returning to the bottom throughout a latest briefing, Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh mentioned it was US coverage to “neither verify nor deny the presence or absence of nuclear weapons at any common or particular location.”
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