Britain Considers Restoring Second Arm of Nuclear Triad With Tactical Nukes and F-35A Stealth Fighters

The British Ministry of Defence is considering procuring fighter aircraft capable of delivering nuclear attacks, according to a report from the London-based Times. The planned procurement is expected to be the largest since the end of the Cold War, with the F-35A fifth generation fighter considered the leading candidate to provide an offensive nuclear capability. Defence Secretary John Healey and the chief of general staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, have reportedly advocated procurement of fighters for the purpose of launching tactical nuclear strikes using miniaturised low yield warheads.Prime Minister Keir Starmer is reported to have also supported these discussions, with talks with the Pentagon having already begun. The United Kingdom’s nuclear arsenal is currently entirely concentrated in its fleet of four Vanguard Class ballistic missile submarines, each of which carry 16 UGM-133A Trident II missiles for strategic nuclear attacks. This seriously limits the country’s flexibility in the event of a great power conflict with an adversary armed with weapons of mass destruction, as it has no proportional means of responding to tactical nuclear strikes or to asymmetrically counter superior enemy conventional forces.

The British Armed Forces currently deploy fourth generation Eurofighter and fifth generation F-35B tactical combat jets. Introducing the F-35A would provide only limited commonality with the F-35B, but would allow the country to build up its fleet of fifth generation fighters at a far lower cost, as the A variant is approximately 30 percent cheaper to procure and considerably less costly to operate, while having a superior combat potential and much higher flight performance including a significantly longer range and much larger weapons bays. There have long been significant calls from within the Royal Air Force to procure the F-35A, which would simultaneously provide an optimal nuclear-capable strike platform and address the issue of insufficient fighter numbers. It remains uncertain whether the United Kingdom would seek to enter a nuclear sharing agreement with the United States to utilise the country’s B61-12 nuclear warheads deployed on British territory, as has been done by Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Turkey. The alternative would be for the country to develop its first indigenous class of tactical nuclear bomb in over half a century, since the development of the WE.177 in the mid-1960s. Previously Israel was the only state that developed its own class of nuclear bomb for the F-35.