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Campaigners have called for Keir Starmer to tell parliament whether US nuclear weapons have returned to British soil after a distinctive US air force transport flight was spotted landing at RAF Lakenheath on Friday morning.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and several experts believe that it is highly likely that a number of US B61-12 gravity bombs were delivered to a US air force squadron last week, the first US nuclear deployment in the UK since 2008.
Tom Unterrainer, the chair of CND, said it was “completely inappropriate” for the public to find out about “a major escalation in nuclear danger” via the assessments of military experts and called for the prime minister to update MPs.
The head of the campaign group said the prime minister “must make a public statement about this major change in Britain’s security arrangements and allow for a transparent and democratic debate” on the issue.
Confirmation of any deployment of nuclear weapons by Starmer or the defence secretary, John Healey, is not expected, however. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence said: “It remains a long-standing UK and Nato policy to neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons at a given location.”
One expert, William Alberque, a former director of Nato’s Arms Control, Disarmament and WMD Non-Proliferation Centre, said “the evidence is overwhelming” to conclude that B61 nuclear bombs have been transported to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk.
He cited other specialists who had tracked an unusual C-17 transport flight last week from the US air force base at Kirtland, New Mexico, which hosts a repository of an estimated 2,500 nuclear weapons, to Lakenheath.
Taking off on Thursday, the transport plane landed in the UK on Friday and flew with its transponders on, meaning its flight was visible. The flight was operated by the 62nd Airlift Wing, the only US air force unit authorised to transport nuclear weapons.
Similar flights also took place last week to air bases in Belgium and the Netherlands, home to long established “nuclear sharing” missions – where American tactical nuclear weapons are stored at European air bases.
Though the UK announced at last month’s Nato summit that the RAF would purchase F-35A fighter jets, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, the likely transfer to Lakenheath is thought to have taken place several years before that deal will be completed.
Hans Kristensen, nuclear information project director at the Federation of American Scientists, said he believed it was possible a deployment of nuclear weapons had taken place, and would come after a modernisation of the underground storage facilities at the Lakenheath base.
The “addition of weapons to Lakenheath would mean the number of US tactical nuclear weapons in Europe has been increased for the first time since the cold war” from approximately 100 bombs “to probably 125-130”, Kristensen said.
It would also indicate that “Nato has changed its policy of not responding with new nuclear weapons to Russia’s nuclear threats and behaviour”, he added.
The B61-12 is a relatively simple gravity bomb that must be flown and dropped over its target. It comes in four variants, only one of which is more powerful than the 15kt weapon used to bomb Hiroshima in 1945. It has an explosive yield of 50kt, while the others are 0.3kt, 1.5kt and 10kt.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has prompted a remilitarisation in Europe, and Nato allies agreed last month at the Nato summit to lift core defence spending to 3.5% of GDP by 2035.
The weapons are expected to be stored for the US air force 493rd squadron, nicknamed the Grim Reapers, based at Lakenheath. Last week, members of the unit were selling a distinctive commemorative coin at the Royal International Air Tattoo, with a heavyhanded clue that their mission had changed.
Photographed by Tony Osborne, a journalist with Aviation Week, the coin comes in the shape of mushroom cloud. One side features a skull, a large missile, and the inscription “prepare to meet thy maker” – while the other shows an explosion.
“It’s quite an overt way of saying yes,” Osborne said. The coin was sold out by the second day of the air show, the journalist added, such was its popularity among those attending the event at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire.
