Campaigners Warn Against Bringing Back US Nukes to UK Soil

Disarmament campaigners warned Wednesday of "a further undermining of prospects for global peace" following reports suggesting an air force base in the U.K. is once again going to be storing U.S. nuclear weapons.

The development, said Kate Hudson, general secretary of the London-based Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, would again make Britain "a forward nuclear base for the U.S. in Europe."

Hudson's remark came after Hans Kristensen, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Nuclear Information Project, spotted a detail in the Biden administration's latest funding request for the Pentagon regarding upgrades at nuclear weapons storage locations.

Kristensen wrote in a blog post Monday that while "previous budget documents listed 'special weapons' storage sites in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey as receiving upgrades under a 13-year NATO investment program," the budget request for 2023 now includes the U.K. as well.

The specific site in question, he wrote, is believed to be the U.S. Air Base at RAF Lakenheath in southeast England, where the U.S. stored nuclear gravity bombs in dozens of underground vaults until 2008.

Lakenheath, Kristensen noted, "was not on the list of 'active sites' in the 2016 contract for the upgrade of the nuclear weapons storage site in Europe. The budget documents indicate the base has since been added to the list."

The U.K. addition, he wrote, "signals a change in the nuclear status of RAF Lakenheath," though "it is unclear if nuclear weapons have been returned to the base yet or NATO is upgrading the base to be capable of receiving nuclear weapons in the future if necessary."

"In recent years there have been rumors about nuclear exercises at the base," Kristensen wrote. He added:

The nuclear upgrade comes as RAF Lakenheath is preparing to become the first U.S. Air Force base in Europe equipped with the nuclear-capable F-35A Lightning. The first of the fifth-generation fighter-bombers arrived in December 2021. A total of 24 F-35As will form the 495th Fighter Squadron of the 48th Fighter Wing at the base.

CND's Hudson noted that her group campaigned against the "110 US/NATO free-fall B61 nuclear bombs" that had been hosted for five decades at Lakenheath up until 14 years ago and said the apparent return of atomic weaponry "will increase global tensions and put Britain on the front line in a NATO/Russia war."

"The U.S. is the only country to locate its nuclear weapons outside its own borders," said Hudson, "and this major increase in NATO's capacity to wage nuclear war in Europe is dangerously destabilizing."