Canard Enchaîné Reports, U.S. Will Deploy Latest Model of Tactical B-61 Nuclear Bombs on European Soil

PARIS, April 23, 2022 (EIRNS)—Claude Angeli, Editor in Chief editor of the French satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné, a conduit for publishing “leaks” from French military intelligence, this week covers “New U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe.” On April 12, reports Angeli, French military attachés stationed in Washington attended a closed-door seminar of the Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance Deterrence Center. Its main speaker was Jessica Cox, director of the Nuclear Policy Directorate at NATO HQ in Brussels. The new orientations outlined by Cox were confirmed to the French delegates by the Pentagon and transmitted via the chiefs of staff to the Elysée. Too bad for Macron who dreams of European defense. The new version (model 12) of the B-61 nuclear bombs will “very soon be stored on European soil and, progressively (between now and 2030), countries that bought American F-35 jets will be able to deploy them against an aggressor, under strict control of the Pentagon.”

The B-61 nuclear bomb is the U.S.’s primary thermonuclear gravity bomb in the U.S. Enduring Stockpile following the end of the Cold War. It is considered a “low- to intermediate-yield strategic and tactical nuclear weapon” and therefore extremely destabilizing.

First, confirms Angeli, the new B-61 bombs will replace its preceding model already present in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. Then, they will be deployed in the U.K., and “depending on how the situation evolves,” they will be proposed to Poland, Denmark and Norway. The Pentagon already committed $484 million to prepare their safe storage in these countries. The U.S. decision, notes Angeli, “adds up to the recent decision to create military bases in three Baltic states as well as in Poland, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia.”

In January, the National Nuclear Security Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy announced that large-scale production of the B-61-12 will begin in May. The program foresees the construction of 500 bombs at a cost of about $10 billion (each bomb costing twice as much as if it were built entirely of gold). The actual number, however, remains secret as is its geographical location is largely secret.

Taking up the same issue, on January 2022, Manlio Dinucci, writing in Italy’s Il Manifesto, reported that “It is not excluded that the new nuclear bombs can also be deployed in Asia and the Middle East against China and Iran.” Dinucci recalled the fact that the five nuclear weapons powers, which are also the permanent members of the UN Security Council—the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom—affirmed on Jan. 3, 2022 in a joint declaration that “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” and that they remained “committed to pursuing negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament. The U.S. should therefore commit not to deploy the new B-61-12 nuclear bombs in other countries, even better not to produce them at all,” concluded Dinucci.