- by Graham Holton
- The Guardian
- Issue #2156
Anti-nuclear weapons protest march, Oxford, England, 1980. Photo: Kim Traynor – wikimedia.org (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Anti-nuclear campaigners have called for British PM Keir Starmer to reveal if US nuclear weapons are back in the UK. If they are, it would be the first time in seventeen years that the US has done this.
The UK’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review formally committed the country to join NATO’s nuclear deterrence mission and initiated the purchase of twelve US-built F35A jets, capable of delivering nuclear weapons. This could reintroduce the UK’s airborne nuclear capability. The weapons are expected to be stored for the US Air Force 493rd squadron.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament spotted a US Air Force C17 transport flight, authorised to carry nuclear arms, going to RAF Lakenheath from the US. Pentagon documents show the procurement of new dormitories and ballistic shields, consistent with US readiness for a ‘nuclear mission.’ The US has refurbished more than twenty previously abandoned nuclear storage bunkers at Lakenheath in Suffolk, potentially preparing it to house new B61-12 bombs, which yield up to fifty kilotons, equivalent to three times the power of the Hiroshima bomb.
UK officials maintain a ‘neither confirm nor deny’ policy regarding nuclear weapons deployed on British soil, but Russia has condemned the move calling it a provocative escalation.
William Alberque, a former director of Nato’s Arms Control, Disarmament and WMD Non-Proliferation Centre has said that the evidence is “overwhelming.” Hans Kristensen, nuclear information project director at the Federation of American Scientists, said that if correct this “would mean the number of US tactical nuclear weapons in Europe has been increased for the first time since the cold war,” increasing the number of nuclear weapons “to probably 125-130.”
