Image by Hush Naidoo Jade.

Fears of Russia attack lead not to peace feelers but nuke counter-threats

Cambridge UK — I woke yesterday to a splendid day: bright sunshine, blue sky and a brisk wind carrying no hint of pollution. The bronchial infection that had plagued me for the past week seemed to be responding well to the antibiotic an NHS physician had prescribed and I was even starting to think I might bet able to resume my jogging routine.

Then I spotted a copy of the Sunday Times. It sported a banner headline that blew away all the my good feeling in an instant: “British Fighter Jets to Carry Nuclear Bombs” the boldface words screamed, followed by the subhed: “Ministers seek airborne tactical weapons in biggest defense expansion since Cold War.”

There are so many euphemisms, pieces of misinformation, false assumptions, ignored history and evidence of political insanity packed into those few lines of headline they could fill a feature story in the New Yorker or the London Review of Books or even to justify a book, but there’s no time for that.

This is potential nuclear war we’e talking about, not shoddy journalism.

Just by way of example, those “fighters” the British government plans to use to deliver nukes to targets in Russia won’t be British, they’ll be US-built, fifth-generation F35A Lightning fighter-bombers and the bombs they’ll be carrying, two at a time, are US-made B61-12 dial-a-size thermonuclear bombs. Each is capable of producing a nuclear blasts ranging from 0.3 kilotons to 50 kilotons, the latter option being equal to three or four Nagasaki-sized nukes. Each plane costs about £90 million, plus the cost of continuing upgrades, fixes and maintenance, while each B61-12 bomb goes for £22 million. When you add up the amount of money just the first 35 planes Britain would be require, the cost of the two bombs each plane can carry, plus the per-hour flight operating cost of £31,000, they’re talking about an initial start-op cost to get Britain’s nuclear force off the ground that would exceed £5 billion (and counting). That however, doesn’t include the need to construct secure bunkers for safely storing the weapons, upgrading the airbases for the fleet, and maintaining both the planes and their weapons, and then of course the cost of the ground crew, the maintenance eam and their training, the pilots and their training, etc.

Oh, and this is all because Whitehall wants to have two ways of attacking its enemies with nukes, not just one. It’s a pathtic effort to emulate the “nuclear triad” concept that the US tries to maintain, of land-based nuclear missiles, submarine-launched missiles and a fleet of strategic bombers. Since Britain’s bombers are obsolete, though,and developing a new bomber is a decade-long project at least, Starmer’s military planners are turning to mini-bombers in the form of the F-35A.

Meanwhile, to keep the sub-launched missiles delivery option viable will require the relacement of the current four aging Trident missle-launching subs. That cost was estimater in March 2024 to be £36.7 billion plus a contingeny of another £10 billion for cost over-runs. As well, PM Starmer wants to have UK-made “sovereign” warheads for all those massive Trident ICBM missiles, not US ones (perhaps worried Trump might, in a crunch go all TACO, and push a kill-switch on the US-made warheads). That project, including the cost of developing the capacity to make those warheads domestically, and then of constructing them, is estimated at £15 billion more.

It must be noted that Lockheed Martin’s F-35 in all of its three versions (for Army, RAF, and Navy/ Marines) has long been widely criticized in the US itself as a flying lemon. Designed to serve many roles and service requirements, like STOVL ability for the Navy and Marines and close support for the Army, catapult launch and cable cqtch for aircraft carrier use, the plane does none well, or at least as well as existing specially designed planes for each purpose. While faster than most other fighters designed specially for one mission, for instance, the F35A........

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