As of: January 28, 2024, 1:42 p.m
By: Christoph Gschoßmann
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The USA probably wants a nuclear weapons base in the United Kingdom again.
This is evident from procurement documents.
Lakenheath - Ukraine war, escalation between Hamas and Israel and the Houthi crisis: 2024 is not yet old, but there are already many trouble spots.
Above all, it is the threat from Russia that is driving the United States to take a new step that has not been considered necessary for 15 years: The USA is planning to station nuclear weapons in Great Britain again.
This is according to Pentagon documents and procurement contracts seen by the Telegraph.
These were posted on a U.S. government procurement website.
Nuclear warheads three times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb are to be deposited at a new Royal Air Force facility in Suffolk.
Specifically, it's about the Lakenheath base.
In 2008, Washington withdrew its last nuclear weapons from the United Kingdom as the Cold War threat appeared to have diminished.
Nuclear bombs in Lakenheath/Great Britain: Russia speaks of “countermeasures”
This has changed dramatically since Moscow's invasion of Kiev.
The Lakenheath “nuclear mission” is part of the US response to Russia’s war.
The bombs will be deployed from F-35 fighter jets.
Two squadrons of the aircraft are said to be stationed there, along with the 48th Fighter Squadron.
The US recently tested the new B-21 Raider stealth bomber.
Responding to a U.S. budget document last year outlining plans for the $50 million hostel for surety staff at RAF Lakenheath, Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, spoke of "countermeasures."
A mushroom cloud rises over the test site in the Nevada desert after an atomic bomb explodes.
The photo is from 1999. (Symbolic photo) © picture alliance / dpa
Zakharova: “If this step is ever taken, we will consider it an escalation, a step towards escalation, which would take things in a direction completely opposite to solving the urgent problem of withdrawing all nuclear weapons from European countries. “
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The US currently has warheads stationed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey as part of a NATO agreement on nuclear sharing.
The states themselves said through a Pentagon spokesman: “The United States regularly modernizes its military facilities in allied countries.”
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A plane at the British base at Lakenheath.
F-35 jets carrying nuclear bombs could take off from here.
© IMAGO/Mark Cosgrove/News Images
Such activities would often be accompanied by unclassified administrative budget documents.
The documents are “neither predictive nor intended to reveal specific posture or baseline details.” He also said it is “US policy not to confirm or deny the presence or absence of nuclear weapons in any general or specific location.”
NATO is currently implementing a program to develop and modernize nuclear sites.
The Kremlin has announced that nuclear weapons on British soil would be viewed as an “escalation” and would be met with “countervailing countermeasures.”
Another nuclear threat is also growing in Iran, where Tehran is enriching uranium.
Russian experts recently recommended a “strong means” to deter the West in the Ukraine war - nuclear weapons.
(cgsc)