report<\/a> in the Financial Times, US officials have \u201csignalled openness\u201d to expand the number of countries where US nuclear-capable bombers are stationed in Europe. At present, US bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, and Britain are all cleared to host dual-capable aircraft (DCA) like the F-35A, as well as nuclear bombs like the B61-12. RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk is the most recent base to receive US nuclear weapons, with mounting evidence suggesting nuclear bombs were delivered there last summer. Reports of US nuclear deployments at Lakenheath was met with Russia announcing it would deploy its own nuclear weapons to neighbouring Belarus.<\/p>\nThe FT report said that Poland and other countries in central and eastern Europe were most interested in the plan. If such a deployment went ahead, it would put US nuclear-capable jets right on Russia\u2019s borders.<\/p>\n
The Polish government is also among nine countries to have signed up to a French-led nuclear weapons initiative, which could see French nuclear-capable jets stationed in participant\u2019s countries.<\/p>\n
CND General Secretary Sophie Bolt said:
\u201cReports of these talks shows that far from NATO pulling out of Europe under Donald Trump\u2019s presidency, its nuclear presence is only increasing. This is not going to make us any safer. On the contrary, stationing these nuke jets on Russia\u2019s borders would seriously increase the risk of a nuclear confrontation between NATO and Russia. It would only further undermine the chances of a ceasefire in this devastating war. More nuclear-capable F-35s in Europe simply means more profits for US arms companies. It\u2019s time to halt the nuclear expansion and close down US bases in Europe for good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Image credit: Senior Airman Koby I. Saunders \/ USAF<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump Administration is in talks with NATO members to increase the number of US nuclear-capable aircraft in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[202,47,290,7,231,21,291,20,142,292],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-dual-capable-aircraft","tag-europe","tag-f-35","tag-nato","tag-nuclear-sharing","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-raf-lakenheath","tag-russia","tag-trump","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}