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The UK is buying 12 F-35As that can carry nuclear weapons, and it’s making it clear that it’s buying the American aircraft for that capability.
“The purchase represents the biggest strengthening of the UK’s nuclear posture in a generation,” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer‘s office wrote in a statement on Tuesday evening.
The move will bring back the Royal Air Force‘s ability to conduct nuclear strikes, a capability that the UK decommissioned in 1998 when it withdrew its own air-dropped nuclear bomb from service.
Since then, the UK’s only official method of launching a nuclear attack has been from its Vanguard-class submarines. Every other nuclear-armed nation has at least two of the three typical methods of launching an attack: by air, land, or sea.
The US, Russia, and China are known to possess all three, what’s known as the nuclear triad.
In his office’s statement, Starmer said his government was re-establishing the air-based leg of its nuclear forces amid an “era of radical uncertainty.”
“The UK’s commitment to NATO is unquestionable, as is the Alliance’s contribution to keeping the UK safe and secure, but we must all step up to protect the Euro-Atlantic area for generations to come,” he said.
Starmer’s office said the new fighters will be stationed at RAF Marham in eastern England.
The UK is already on schedule to receive 138 Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters, and the F-35As announced on Tuesday are coming from the next batch of this order.
British forces already have roughly three dozen of the fighter jets, though these are the F-35B, a variant that can land vertically and take off with an extremely short runway.
The F-35A, the baseline version of the aircraft, was the only variant to be certified to carry nuclear weapons.
In March 2024, the stealth fighter was certified to carry the B61-12, an American 800-pound nuclear bomb. The B61-12 is a gravity weapon, meaning it’s dropped from above and has no propulsion system.
Starmer’s office said it made its decision to purchase the F-35As after a review of UK defenses urged it to boost its deterrence posture.
“The Strategic Defence Review recognised that the UK is confronting a new era of threat, including rising nuclear risk,” the statement reads.
Global fears of a nuclear arms race
While the UK and France have their own nuclear programs, Western European nuclear deterrence relies heavily on the US through American missiles stationed on the continent.
NATO, which is gathering its leaders at a summit in the Hague on Tuesday and Wednesday, has also been pushing member states to build up the alliance’s fleet of dual-capable aircraft, or warplanes that can drop both conventional and nuclear bombs.
The UK’s decision comes amid fears of a full-blown nuclear arms race between the three largest nuclear powers, and as tensions among them continue to worsen.
The US and Russia, which own close to an estimated 83% of the world’s nuclear warheads, are both undertaking wide-scale modernizations of their nuclear weapons and launch systems.
China has not publicly admitted to an expansion, but international observers say that it’s rapidly building up its arsenal by at least 100 warheads a year from 2023 to 2025. By that rate, it could reach 1,550 warheads — the deployment limit kept by the US and Russia — by 2035.
The UK has an estimated 225 nuclear warheads, but has said it intends to increase its stockpile to 260. It’s also developing a new submarine, the Dreadnought, to replace its four Vanguard-class nuclear submarines.
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