Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century
 
Revolutionary
Socialism in the
21st Century

F35A arriving at Lakenheath. Photo via Defense Visual Information Distribution Service used uner CC licence.

Stealth – the new nuclear threat

Brian Parkin

Brian Parkin explains how, 38 years since the Greenham Common peace camps, American nuclear weapons are scheduled to return to Britain by stealth, in the shape of the nuclear-certified F35A strike fighter aircraft.

Nearly 40 years on from the European-wide campaigns against Cruise and Pershing missiles, American tactical nuclear weapons will be back in the UK, but this time by stealth. Stealth in the American Congress defence budget item regarding a new ‘dormitory’ and ‘vaults’ at the Lakenheath air base in Suffolk. Stealth in the new NATO European nuclear strategy; stealth in the furtive compliance from the British government; and above all stealth with which the ‘radar proof’ F35A strike fighter aircraft will deliver its up-graded ‘tactical’ nuclear bombs. A combination of rapid military technological advances with Cold War arrogance have once more brought the threat of nuclear weapons being used significantly closer.

 In the beginning…running out of SALT

In 1969, with the near-catastrophe of the Cuban missile crisis still recent, and the nuclear arms race accelerating, the Soviet Union initiated the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) with the US. This was a partial success, in that significant nuclear arms reductions took place, with the dismantling of both missiles and warheads overseen by a bi-lateral team of inspectors. The success was such that a SALT 2 round of talks was initiated in 1972, but then collapsed following the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, as well as a more hawkish turn to cold war mood in the US Congress.

Nevertheless, some of the aims of SALT 2, in the continued reduction in numbers of the larger Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) continued, but only as a re-think in Western strategic thinking. And as far as the ongoing aims of SALT 2 were concerned, the treaty was never ratified. But despite this apparent set-back, the parallel Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) treaty, finalised in 1991, did result in the mutual destruction of almost 2,700 ICBM’s. However, despite the appearance of a step-back from the nuclear brink, the devil was in the detail.

A winnable Armageddon?

The new Cold War of 1979 onwards saw both the US and the Soviet Union resorting to renewed military strutting and a new range of military hardware to go with it. But this time, both sides opted for first-strike ‘low-yield’ tactical weapons. Or so it seemed. From the late 1960s onwards, US strategists had regarded the Soviet Union’s eagerness to initiate non-proliferation talks as a sign of weakness. This weakness, it was assumed, lay in two vital areas: Russia’s technological lag behind that of the US; and the corresponding economic imbalance which meant that Russia could not match the US’ capacity to accelerate arms development and production.

For the Reagan administration in the US, eagerly supported by the Thatcher government in Britain, the ideal means by which the Soviet Union could be brought down was the Cruise missile – small, relatively cheap, and virtually undetectable by surveillance satellites. The technological advantage lay in a new generation of digital systems that allowed the missiles to fly at low altitude, thus avoiding enemy detection.

Such was the enthusiasm for this development, that the trans-Atlantic hawks started to enthuse about a first strike nuclear war being ‘winnable’ – only to be shot down, by not only the biggest anti-nuclear mobilisation since the early 1960’s, but also by many military strategists, who warned that this would lead to wide-spread retaliation with the risk of nuclear Armageddon. This reality prompted the hastily drafted Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) of 1988, which was intended to reduce the threat of the smaller warheads and short-range missiles, which had begun to pile up in central Europe along the borders of the Warsaw Pact and NATO.

However, as in the past, both signatories continued to develop newer defence systems to thwart the letter of the agreement, with the intention of stealing the tactical edge over the other. Despite the biggest round of treaties, agreements and talks since 1945, the arms race between the two main imperialist protagonists never stopped. In 2018 Donald Trump announced that the US was withdrawing from the INF, further ratcheting up the military tensions between the US and Russia (and also China).

Enter the F35

The dominant US and Russian strategic thinking over nearly five decades was that a nuclear ‘balance of terror’ through ‘mutually assured destruction’ would ensure peace. But as much smaller scale warheads and delivery systems became a reality, the temptation of a nuclear first strike and thus a winnable nuclear war, came back into favour.

With this in mind, a new generation of fighter and first strike aircraft were conceived, mainly in the US. But unlike all previous designs, the specification that defined them, was stealth – the ability to literally fly under (or unseen by) the radar. After around 20 years of specification development, followed by some 10 years of prototype competition, the final contract was awarded to Lockheed/Martin for the F35 Lightning 2 design.

This was to be the longest and most expensive contract in US military history. Ten years late in delivery, and at a cost of over $1 trillion (later adjusted to $2 trillion), it was realised that the F35 could only break even by overseas sales. It was for this reason that the F35 Joint Strike Fighter Project Office, involving five European NATO members plus Canada and Australia, was established.

The cost of ‘stealth’

The end of the INF, along with the return of State Department hawks determining a more belligerent US foreign policy, coincided with a strident Putin intent on re-arming Russia. This signalled a heightening of imperialist tensions, a rise in militarism, and a further acceleration of the arms race, with no end in sight.

The concept of ‘stealth’ is a form of first-strike weaponry beyond an enemy’s means of detection. For aircraft, this meant a whole new concept regarding shape, the ability to ‘disappear’ from radar screens, whilst being able to deliver the deadliest blow to the defensive capabilities of the other side, and then fight its way home. This specification has resulted in the Lockheed-Martin F35, in which all of the metal of the wings and fuselage have been replaced by plastics, carbon fibre and graphite deposits, and the entire aircraft sprayed with (highly secret) radar absorbent coatings.

With a pre-production cost of in excess of $1 trillion, plus, the US Congress insisted on the hard selling of this aircraft to mainly European NATO allies – and to Israel, where it has been used at least once in the war on Gaza. However, with a price-tag of around €120 million per aircraft, the US has had to add additional goodies, such as the equally unaffordable F35-integrated M1M-104 Patriot ground to air defence missile and radar system. Turkey’s decision to opt instead for a cheaper Russian air defence system led to them being suddenly bounced from the F35 programme in mid-2019.

By 2020, F35 deliveries were ready for the five European NATO partners, with all but Germany hosting US Air Force bases where F35 first strike aircraft would be assigned missions that by stealth had bypassed public scrutiny.

Frontline Europe

Since its very inception, NATO has had a Nuclear Planning Group (NPG), covering both strategic and tactical weapons, as well as their ‘delivery systems’- aircraft, land-launched missiles, submarine launched missiles etc. Until the START talks of the 1980’s and the termination of the INF, the US had pushed for a bigger tactical profile in Europe. However, with the rise of stealth weapons, tactical air-delivered guided bombs, this time delivered by the US F35 strike fighter, have been pushed as NATO’s particular weapon of choice.

Following the exit of Turkey, the US base at Lakenheath, Suffolk became the fifth Forward NATO Tactical Strike Plan base, joining bases in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany. The purpose of these bases is to maintain NATO’s nuclear capability in the form of its tactical strike force. But the development of the F35-A (a modified version capable of carrying heavier bombs) and the harmonisation of much NATO hardware, software and ammunition showed the continuation of what President Eisenhower in the late 1950s warned about – the Military Industrial Complex, a triad of militarism, comprising the defence forces, the defence industry and the warfare hawks in the US Congress. And the zenith of the MIC is the transition from the 4th to 5th generation Joint Strike Fighter F35.

The F35, the B61-12 bomb and Lakenheath

In January 2023 a routine Air Force budget paper was put before the US Congress for approval. Hidden in the small print of that paper was: Lakenheath, Project element 91211F/Category code 721-312/ Project number MSETI193001. This was for an expenditure of $384m for a 144 personnel dormitory and for 33 deep ‘surety vaults’, each capable of holding four B61-12 series bombs as well as storage capacity for another 110 bombs. Although this information should have been passed publically to the British Government and Suffolk County Council, as the local planning authority, such was the secrecy involved, that this only came to light thanks to the scrutiny of the Federation of American Scientists.

NATO’s air strategy had until recently largely relied on the decidedly un-stealthy US Air Force F15 Eagle strike aircraft. However, NATO’s intelligence regarding Russian defences has long been suspected for being skewed to favour US defence hardware, and it was thanks to such dodgy data that the European NATO summit in 2019 accepted the F35-A as the necessary first-strike aircraft for the five forward bases mentioned above.

However, all subsequent NATO summits have been eclipsed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which saw all NATO units placed on high alert, with construction plans at Lakenheath hurriedly moved up to completion by autumn 2025. A NATO summit in Latvia in 2022 was due to review the European deterrence plan, and deferred its decisions to the NATO Nuclear Forward Planning Group, which was then further ratified by the Forward Deployment plan for the five bases to be fully in place by mid-2025.

And as if by coincidence, on October 12 2023, the F35A was certified by the US Department of Defence as capable of carrying the B61-12 series guided nuclear bomb (first developed under Barack Obama). This bomb is the latest variant of the long-running thermo-nuclear B61 series, with a maximum possible ‘yield’ function of 50 kilotonnes – the equivalent of more than three Hiroshima bombs. And at over $38 million each, it has been dubbed by the Federation of American Scientists as ‘the bomb worth its weight in gold’.

In conclusion

The development of this new and deadly phase of a first-strike tactical nuclear strategy has been predicated on the myth of a winnable nuclear war. At no stage of this deadly game has there been any attempt to consult public opinion. So we are left with the nightmare scenario – at an opportune moment as determined by NATO strategists, F35s modified to carry two B61-12 guided bombs, will take off from five forward air bases, including Lakenheath, in order to first-strike Russian defence installations. This will be in the hope that a winnable nuclear war will be won, and the world made secure for freedom, democracy and the rule of the market. That is how close to a nuclear Armageddon we have reached. And all by stealth.

 

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