The U.S. is reportedly planning to relocate nuclear weapons to the U.K. for the first time in nearly two decades to counter the threat of Russian aggression engulfing the European continent.
The Telegraph reported that it gained access to sensitive Pentagon documents that said the U.S. has “procurement contracts for a new facility at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk” that confirms the U.S. “intends to place nuclear warheads three times the strength of the Hiroshima bomb at the air base.”
The U.S. stored nuclear weapons at RAF Lakenheath during the Cold War. The base is now expected to carry B61-12 nuclear gravity bombs, which are more than three times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The bombs are small and can be delivered by F-16s, F-15s, and F-35s.
The threat from Russia is so serious that Admiral Rob Bauer (Royal Netherlands Navy), Chairman of the Military Committee of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), warned last week that Europeans needed to be mentally ready to fight a major war against the Russians in the next two decades.
“The Pentagon had refused to comment on speculation that a new ‘surety dormitory’, first revealed in budget documents last year, was intended for the base, which is run by the US Air Force under British regulations and laws, to allow the US to house tactical nuclear weapons that can be deployed by F-35 fighter jets,” the report said. “The term ‘surety’ is used by the Pentagon to refer to the need to keep nuclear weapons safe when they are not being used.”
The U.S. Department of Defense has ordered new equipment for the base, the report said, including “ballistic shields designed to protect military personnel from attacks on ‘high value assets.’”
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Russia reportedly threatened to escalate the situation if the U.S. moves the nuclear weapons back to the U.K.
“If this step is ever made, we will view it as escalation, as a step toward escalation that would take things to a direction that is quite opposite to addressing the pressing issue of pulling all nuclear weapons out of European countries,” said Maria Zakharova, a Russian foreign ministry spokesman. “In the context of the transition of the United States and Nato to an openly confrontational course of inflicting a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia, this practice and its development force us to take compensating countermeasures designed to reliably protect the security interests of our country and its allies.”
A Pentagon spokesman told the newspaper that it would not “confirm nor deny the presence or absence of nuclear weapons at any general or specific location.”
