WW3.0
US to send high-tech nuclear weapons to Nato bases amid rising tensions with Russia
America is to bring forward the delivery of dozens of highly accurate guided tactical nuclear weapons to Europe amid escalating tensions with Moscow.
The new B61-12 thermonuclear bombs are “dial-a-yield” devices, meaning their payload can be changed. They are expected to be sent to Nato bases within weeks.
B61-12s have four yields that can be selected - 0.3, 1.5, 10 or 50 kilotons. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 had a yield of about 15 kilotons.
The 12ft-long weapons feature new tailkits that allow them to be dropped from planes as a “dumb” gravity bomb, or in “guided drop” mode, with an accuracy of within 30m.
The move is part of a decade-long US$10 billion (NZ$17b) upgrade programme for several variants of B61-class unguided nuclear bombs, which first became part of the US arsenal in 1968.
Currently, the US has 100 older B61s stored at bases in European countries including Germany and Italy.
In what was seen as a move to reassure Nato allies amid Russian nuclear-sabre-rattling, the replacement process will begin in December, having previously been expected next spring.
Allies were told about the move last month, Politico reported.
The new weapons have had “all of the bomb’s nuclear and non-nuclear components” replaced or refurbished, according to the US energy department.
In addition to making them more accurate, the modifications have reduced the yield from the bombs they are replacing.
The US bombs being delivered to Europe can be dropped by a variety of aircraft including B-2 stealth bombers, and smaller warplanes like the F-15, F-35 and Tornado.
The Pentagon denied that the process of upgrading them had been affected by Kremlin posturing, or fears Russia could deploy a “dirty bomb” in Ukraine.
A Pentagon spokesman said it was “in no way linked to current events in Ukraine and was not sped up in any way”.
They added that the modernisation of B61 nuclear weapons had been “under way for years”.
The development came as Vladimir Putin dismissed accusations that Russia could use a tactical nuclear weapon as a “fuss,” and blamed the UK for initiating provocations.
He accused Liz Truss of having publicly threatened Russia with a nuclear attack when she was prime minister.
Putin claimed the former prime minister had made a “folly” and was a “bit out of it,” adding: “Someone should have corrected her. Washington could have said they have nothing to do with that.”
In a long speech, Putin described the Ukrainian crisis as part of “tectonic changes in the world order that have been going on for several years now”.
He added: “We are facing a historic milestone. Ahead of us is possibly the most dangerous, unpredictable and at the same time crucial decade since the end of the Second World War.”
First defence review in four years
As Putin spoke, the US released its long awaited National Defence Strategy, the first in four years, and its Nuclear Posture Review.
The 80-page defence strategy said China was “the most consequential strategic competitor for the coming decades”, and that would determine how the US military is equipped and developed in the future.
There was also a strong warning for Kim Jong-un that his regime would “end” if he used a nuclear weapon.
It said: “There is no scenario in which the Kim regime could employ nuclear weapons and survive.”
The review said US nuclear weapons were a deterrence not just against nuclear, but also conventional, attack.
“This includes nuclear employment of any scale, and it includes high-consequence attacks of a strategic nature that use non-nuclear means,” the document said.
It also confirmed the cancellation of a new submarine-launched cruise missile announced when Donald Trump was president.
Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, said the US already had enough nuclear capability.
He added: “I don’t think this [the cancellation] sends any message to Putin. He understands what our capability is.”
Austin added: “We are certainly concerned about escalation, we have been so from the very beginning of this conflict. It would be the first time that a nuclear weapon has been used in over 70 years.”
On Wednesday, Putin watched the so-called “Grom” exercises by Russia’s strategic nuclear forces, involving intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarines and long-range bombers.
Austin said: “We haven’t seen anything to cause us to believe, at this point, that [the exercise] is some kind of cover activity.”
Pentagon’s strategy won’t rule out nuclear
use against nonnuclear threats
BY TONY CAPACCIO
BLOOMBERG
Oct 28, 2022
The Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy has rejected limits on using nuclear weapons long championed by arms control advocates and, in the past, by U.S. President Joe Biden.
Citing burgeoning threats from China and Russia, the Defense Department said in the document released Thursday that “by the 2030s the United States will, for the first time in its history face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries.” In response, the U.S. will “maintain a very high bar for nuclear employment” without ruling out using the weapons in retaliation to a nonnuclear strategic threat to the homeland, U.S. forces abroad or allies.
Biden pledged in his 2020 presidential campaign to declare that the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be used only to deter or retaliate against a nuclear attack, a position blessed by progressive Democrats and reviled by defense hawks. The threat environment has changed dramatically since then, and the Pentagon strategy was forged in cooperation with the White House.
The nuclear report that’s part of the broader strategy said the Biden administration reviewed its nuclear policy and concluded that “No First Use” and “Sole Purpose” policies “would result in an unacceptable level of risk in light of the range of nonnuclear capabilities being developed and fielded by competitors that could inflict strategic-level damage” to the U.S. and allies.
Mackenzie Eaglen, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said she is “struck by how strong their position is on nuclear modernization and policy, and how much national security continuity there is between administrations of different parties. They’re willing to postpone their visionary policies in light of the harsh reality on nukes from China and Russia.”
President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have openly raised the possibility of using nuclear weapons in their invasion of Ukraine. But on Thursday, Putin said Russia only gave “hints” in response to repeated U.S. and European discussion of a possible nuclear conflict. “We don’t need a nuclear strike on Ukraine — there is no point, either military or political,” Putin told an audience of foreign policy analysts outside Moscow.
In the document, which was framed before the invasion, the Pentagon says Russia continues to “brandish its nuclear weapons in support of its revisionist security policy” while its modern arsenal is expected to grow further.
Meanwhile, China remains the U.S.’s “most consequential strategic competitor for coming decades,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a letter presenting the new defense strategy. He cited China’s “increasingly coercive actions to reshape the Indo-Pacific region and the international system to fit its authoritarian preferences,” even as it rapidly modernizes and expands its military.
China wants to have at least 1,000 deliverable nuclear warheads by the end of the decade, the nuclear strategy document says, saying it could use them for “coercive purposes, including military provocations against U.S. allies and partners in the region.”
The nuclear strategy document doesn’t spell out what nonnuclear threats could produce a U.S. nuclear response, but current threats include hypersonic weapons possessed by Russia and China for which the U.S. doesn’t yet have a proven defense.
It does spell out, however, in the strongest terms, what would happen to another nuclear power, North Korea, if it launched a nuclear attack on the U.S., South Korea or Japan. That action “will result in the end of that regime,” it says. U.S. nuclear weapons continue to play a role in deterring North Korean attacks.
The nuclear strategy affirmed modernization programs including the ongoing replacement of the aging U.S. air-sea-land nuclear triad. Among them are the Navy’s Columbia-class nuclear ICBM submarine, the ground-based Minuteman III ICBM replacement, the new air-launched Long-Range Standoff Weapon and F-35 fighter jets for Europe carrying nuclear weapons.
The review confirmed previous reports that the Pentagon will retire the B83-1 gravity bomb and cancel the Sea-Launched Cruise Missile program. But the review endorses a controversial Trump-era naval weapon, the low-yield W76-2 submarine-launched nuclear warhead, which is described as providing “an important means to deter limited nuclear use.”
The broader strategy report also offered gently worded criticism of major U.S. weapons programs, which often runs years behind plans and billions of dollars over initial budgets.
“Our current system is too slow and too focused on acquiring systems not designed to address the most critical challenges we now face,” the Pentagon said. It called for more “open systems that can rapidly incorporate cutting-edge technology” while reducing problems of “obsolescence” and high costs.
The Pentagon strategy documents were sent to Congress in classified form in March so they were considered during congressional approval of the fiscal 2023 defense budget.
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