Britain will not be able to deploy its new air-launched nuclear weapons without the United States’ say-so.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer confirmed this week that the UK is set to buy 12 F-35A fighter jets from the US as world leaders flocked to The Hague for a two-day NATO summit.
The £80million jets, a variant of the F-35Bs the UK already uses, can carry conventional weapons but can also be equipped with nuclear weapons – specifically the US B61-12 gravity bomb.
When the UK receives its jets and the bombs at the end of the decade, it will be the first time that Britain has boasted an air-launched tactical nuclear weapon since 1998, when Tony Blair’s Labour government shuttered the WE177 programme.
But while the Royal Air Force will own the jets and be able to operate them freely, nuclear non-proliferation controls dictate that the US will retain ownership of the nuclear weapons they come with.
That means that the UK cannot deliver a nuclear strike with a B61 bomb without explicit approval from Washington, raising concerns over Britain’s operational autonomy.
For a B61 to be deployed, the strike would require sign-off from NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group, the British Prime Minister, and the US President – a complex process that could limit response times in the event of a crisis.
Britain’s existing nuclear deterrent rests entirely on the Trident system, in which a submarine carrying dozens of strategic nuclear missiles is always at sea, ready to fire at a moment’s notice.
But last year, Trident misfired during a test – the second successive failure after a missile veered off course in 2016.
The B61 bomb differs from the Trident system in that it is a tactical nuclear weapon designed to be delivered on a battlefield, rather than fired vast distances to strike at a target thousands of miles away.
The weapons come in varying degrees of destructive power, from small nuclear blasts measuring 0.5 kilotons to 50 kilotons – more than three times the power of the Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, but considerably less than the 80-100 kilotons yielded by the Trident missiles.
GPS, laser guidance systems and steerable tail fins allow the B61 to lock on to its target and glide in with lethal precision.
Britain’s purchase of the nuclear-capable F-35A jets and associated equipment – the cost of which is said to amount to more than £1 billion – aligns Downing Street more closely with NATO allies France and the US, which maintain land, sea, and air-based nuclear capabilities.
The Government called it ‘the biggest strengthening of the UK’s nuclear posture in a generation’, while NATO boss Mark Rutte declared it ‘yet another robust British contribution to NATO’.
Britain plans to procure as many as 138 F-35s in the coming years – a move that Westminster says will support 20,000 jobs, with British military firms BAE Systems, Cobham and Rolls-Royce playing a role in their construction.
The jets will continue to be manufactured by Lockheed Martin in the US, but 15 per cent of the parts which go into them will be made in Britain.
At the NATO summit this week, Prime Minister Starmer vowed to increase Britain’s defence spending to 5% of GDP by 2035 in line with a new bloc-wide target.
The total includes 3.5% on defence and another 1.5% on broader security and resilience efforts.
Britain currently spends 2.3% of national income on defence, and says that will rise to 2.6% by 2027.
The purchase of F-35A jets follows a recent announcement that the UK will build up to 12 new nuclear-powered and conventionally armed attack submarines to replace the Royal Navy’s seven-strong fleet of Astute-class subs from the late 2030s onwards.
Both announcements come as part of an effort to bolster Britain’s military capabilities across the board as a chilling new report outlined the growing threats faced by the UK.
The National Security Strategy, published yesterday, warned that Britain must prepare for the prospect of a direct attack as the world enters a new age of warfare.
‘For the first time in many years, we have to actively prepare for the possibility of the UK homeland coming under direct threat, potentially in a wartime scenario,’ it said.
In a foreword to the document, Sir Keir wrote: ‘Russian aggression menaces our continent.
‘Strategic competition is intensifying. Extremist ideologies are on the rise.
‘Technology is transforming the nature of both war and domestic security. Hostile state activity takes place on British soil.
‘It is an era of radical uncertainty and we must navigate it with agility, speed and a clear-eyed sense of the national interest.
‘That is what keeping the British people safe demands.
In a statement to the House of Commons, Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden said the strategy would aim to deliver ‘three crucial things’.
The first of these is to ‘protect security at home’, by bolstering the borders and making the UK ‘more resilient to future threats’.
Ministers are stepping up calls for the whole of society to become more resilient and plan to carry out a cross-government exercise on how to deal with crises, such as a future pandemic, later this year.
The UK must also work to ‘promote strength abroad’ with allies in order to defend their ‘collective security’, Mr McFadden said.
The third step Mr McFadden set out was for the UK to increase its ‘sovereign and asymmetric capabilities’, including by rebuilding its defence industries and building ‘advantages in new frontier technologies’ like AI.