The Western defence alliance NATO plans to expand nuclear deterrence in Europe in light of the ongoing threats from Russia under President Vladimir Putin, according to information obtained by dpa.<\/p>\n
This includes considerations whether to deploy additional US nuclear weapons in Europe.<\/p>\n
According to experts, the United States might have already transferred B61-12 bombs to the British air base at Lakenheath.<\/p>\n
Should the security situation deteriorate further, NATO countries located closer to Russia, including Poland, Finland and Lithuania, could also be considered as additional basing locations.<\/p>\n
The plans primarily involve so-called non-strategic nuclear weapons. Such bombs are intended for use against enemy troops, airfields, ports, command centres and other military infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Compared with strategic nuclear weapons, they often have a lower explosive yield and are usually delivered by fighter jets, shorter-range missiles and cruise missiles.<\/p>\n
Following the large-scale nuclear disarmament that took place after the end of the Cold War, roughly 100 B61-12 bombs remained in storage at six air force bases in Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey, according to estimates by nuclear experts.<\/p>\n
NATO aims to be able to respond to a nuclear attack<\/p>\n
In an interview with dpa, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte did not rule out that more US nuclear weapons could be stationed in Europe in future.<\/p>\n
However, he declined to comment on the details of the ongoing reviews and consultations for reasons of confidentiality.<\/p>\n
Rutte said in the interview conducted in mid-July that NATO was continuously assessing what capabilities were required and what the alliance’s nuclear deterrence mix should look like.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Western defence alliance NATO plans to expand nuclear deterrence in Europe in light of the ongoing threats…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[299,7,393,38,989,5379,5378,21,2497,235],"class_list":["post-9428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-mark-rutte","tag-nato","tag-nato-countries","tag-north-atlantic-treaty-organization","tag-nuclear-deterrence","tag-nuclear-disarmament","tag-nuclear-experts","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-president-vladimir-putin","tag-us-nuclear-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9428","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=9428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}