Report Questions Necessity of Nuclear Weapons in Europe

WASHINGTON — Citing both costs and security concerns, a new report questions whether the US should continue to keep tactical nuclear weapons in Europe.

The report from the Stimson Center also argues that the US should curtail its planned refresh of the B61 nuclear weapon to only those needed to arm the new B-21 long range strike bombers, rather than procure enough weapons for use on fighter jets, in part because of the small likelihood that tactical nuclear weapons would ever be used in a conflict.

“We recommend that the US forgo the procurement of B61s intended for delivery by fighter aircraft and remove the weapons from Europe immediately,” the authors write. “This would save approximately $3.7 billion from FY 2017-2021 and just over $6 billion during the lifetime of the program, resources that could be used more productively to strengthen conventional forces.”
The US currently has four nuclear bomb variants, known as the B61-3, -4, -7, and -10 designs. The National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-autonomous office within the Department of Energy, intends to collapse those designs into one model, the B61-12. The NNSA was recently given clearance to move forward with the production engineering phase, with the first production unit of the weapon is planned for fiscal year 2020.

The Pentagon intends to certify the B61-12 for the F-35 joint strike fighter, as well as the F-15E, F-16 and the Tornado fighter used by European forces.

While it would be “preferable” to cancel the B61 upgrade program entirely, the authors of the Stimson report acknowledge that significant amounts of funding have already been cast on research and development, which means killing the program outright is likely a non-starter. And keeping enough B61 weapons for use on bombers would give the US the ability to still offer periodic deployments of bombers to Europe in order to reassure NATO allies.

Those political calculations also come into play with Stimson’s call to remove B61 weapons from European soil. There are around 180 B61s spread over six bases in Europe -- in Belgium, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Turkey – as a holdover from the Cold War. And those bases could be security risks.

In particular, the report calls out the dangers of keeping nuclear weapons at Incirlik Air Base, a Turkish installation near the Syrian border.

“During the failed coup in Turkey in July, power to the base was cut off and the Turkish government prohibited US aircraft from flying in or out. Eventually, the base commander was arrested and implicated in the coup planning,” the authors write. “Whether the US could have maintained control of the weapons in the event of a protracted civil conflict in Turkey is an unanswerable question.”