The Pentagon made the announcement during a normal briefing on Friday, one day before the president’s first-ever request for an annual defence budget was submitted to Congress on the next Monday in March.
As of October, a spokesman for the Department of Defense’s ( DOD ) F-35 Joint Program Office told Pentagon beat writers, that “certain” Air Force F-35As have been operationally certified to carry the B61-12 thermonuclear gravity bomb.
Although the revelation has n’t attracted much attention from the country’s basic internet, it has sparked significant discussion in the defense-tech sector. And it is evocating noisily throughout Europe, particularly at the Kremlin, where Vladimir Putin has openly discussed the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO )’s ) tactical nuclear weapons upgrade in Europe is a result of the F-35A nuclear certification and the introduction of the B61-12 bomb in response to Russian saber-rattling and advances in battlefield nuclear weapons.
While NATO’s U. S. -built F-16A/Bs and F-16C/Ds and United Kingdom-built PA-200 Tornadoes are also fighter jets authorized to carry nuclear weapons, the F-35A Lightning II is now the first “fifth-generation ” stealth fighter to be “dual-capable ” of carrying conventional and nuclear weapons, according to the Pentagon.
The F-35A will soon be among NATO’s major attack-strike planes. Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey are all stocking their heat troops with F-35s, with Germany directly doing so because it would be nuclear-capable.
The March 8 statement also confirmed the full-scale creation of the B61-12 weapon. Their forebears were housed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Turkey. According to some studies, they’ve been replacing them with new weapons since December 2022.
The Pentagon set a January 2024 date of two weeks before the nuclear certification in October. French government officials stated in a November X article that their F-35As had received “initial certification,” but the United States just made it known on March 8.
The news addressed simply “certain” U.S. countries because Pentagon policy forbids the release of information about NATO partner military capabilities. S. Air Force F-35As in Europe, with the U. S. Among those upgrading is likely the warrior wing at Lakenheath in the United Kingdom.
Major General Peter Merz, captain of the Swiss Air Force, gestures in front of a camera on March 24, 2022, at Emmen Air Base, Switzerland, during a demonstration of the F-35 A Lightning II warrior aircraft. ( Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images )
“A lot of this is just information warfare, SOP [standard operating procedure ] and optics that we got F-35As and allies who have F-35As in Europe, ” retired Army Col. According to John Mills, The Epoch Times.
Mr. Mills, a 33-year Army veteran and past Director for Cybersecurity Policy, Strategy, and International Affairs under the Secretary of Defense, said the F-35A “has always been about Europe. ”
“The concept is that the F-35s are now there, and they are nuclear qualified, and B61-12s are in store ready to go, ready to be used, if needed, out of Lakenheath, ” he said.
“Of course, ” he said. “ He’s the target. ”
“The F-35 has very good collection for a single-engine warrior. It is cunning, and so you may certainly acquire closer to Russian weather space before being properly targeted than you could, let’s say, with an F-15,” noting that with 600 to 700 F-35s in U. S. and allied heat troops, “we have plenty of them, and at any given time, some of them are definitely capable of flying. ”
Mr. Fredenburg admits: “I’m hardly a big fan of the F-35. ”
But little so that he had to calculate how important the F-35A certification is for those who have followed the aircraft’s checkered growth for the past 30 years. “ I don’t want to say it ’s insignificant. It does, I think, probably create some more volatility because nobody else has some stealth fighters, ” Mr. Fredenburg addressed The Epoch Times.
On August 25, 2023, during a joint exercise at a naval base in the Philippines, ( Top ) Australian F-35A lightning fighter jets flew past. ( Bottom ) Denmark’s Minister of Defense Troels Lund Poulsen ( R ) greets a F-35 pilot at the Skrydstrup base in Denmark, on Sept. 14, 2023. ( Ted Aljibe/AFP via Getty Images, Bo Amstrup/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images )
“I’d say it’d be more important if you were putting [a nuclear weapons ] on a program that was more reliable, that you could rely on. I suppose I may state that. ”
A Long, Haunted Story
“First of all, ” Mr. Fredenburg said, “you have to look at the history. From the very start, it was doomed. It was too large. There is no way to develop a powerful website that can support a large planes. The aircraft is the largest single-engine planes in the world. ”
When initially envisioned in the first 1990s, the F-35 was touted by Lockheed Martin as an all-purpose, next-generation cunning joint-force single-engine warrior that would remove up to 16 different types of war, including the Navy’s F-14, the Air Force’s F-16, and the Marine Corps ’ Harrier jump planes.
That was nearly two generations ago.
Design began in 1994. Difficulty of F-35-equipped squadrons were scheduled to be operational by 2010 at a cost of$ 233 billion after a number of delays.
“It did n’t even come close to that, ” Mr. Mills said.
By 2016, the project’s cost had doubled. Some claim that it is still overdue, billions over budget, and has had mixed results.
“ What they did is, you know how you ‘soup up ’ your car? Put nitrate or something similar in it, right? Mr. Fredenburg said. They did it like that, but you might be able to maneuver it a few times before it blows up.
“They ‘souped up ’ the F-22 engine and made it super, super hot to get the horsepower, that thrust, and there’s no way that engine was going to be durable.
“So, ” he continued, “it’s got an engine that can’t do the job. It won’t be reliable ever. Ever. ”
A U. S. A Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II all-weather stealth multirole combat aircraft flies over during the 2023 Dubai Airshow on November. 13, 2023. ( Giuseppe Cacace/AFP via Getty Images )
Mr. Mills claimed that the jet poses different issues than other fighters because its airframe is mostly made of epoxy plastics, which can cause toxic smoke if caught on fire, and because it is significantly louder than any other fighter.
“So the thing’s heavy, ” Mr. Fredenburg said. “It’s not very aerodynamic. It’s just not a good airframe. You could put a lot of electronic equipment on top of it. all the software-enabled features, but it ’s just never going to be a good plane. It’s always going to have heating issues.
“ I mean, they’re not even certified for full-rate production yet… and it ’s just mind-boggling how much that thing costs. ”
The Government Accountability Office ( GAO ) reported in April 2023 that since 2004, F-35 development has cost more than$ 1. 7 trillion, and noting as of 2018, that they cost about$ 44,000 per hour on average to operate, more than twice that of operating the Navy’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornets.
The New York Times editorial board, among others during the past decade, has called the F-35 a “boondoggle ” and “the most expensive weapons system in the history of mankind. ”
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It did n’t help when, in August, the Pentagon paused F-35 deliveries because it discovered a Chinese-made part was used in production.
The F-35 has been plagued by flaws in its stealth coating, difficult to find spare parts for their$ 12 million engines, and a communications system that some people believe is vulnerable to cyber-attacks, in addition to a jet tail section that restricts how long the aircraft can stay supersonic flight.
However, Lockheed Martin maintains that the advancements made over the past three decades have produced a fighter that will be able to carry out a variety of missions for decades to come.
By the late 2023, Lockheed Martin claimed to have delivered more than 965 F-35s to three U.S. countries. S. military services that have cumulatively conducted 430,000 sorties across 721,000 flight hours. Since F-35s began flying in 2006, it notes, there has been one pilot fatality and fewer than 10 confirmed destroyed aircraft.
Navy To Follow Suit
Mr. is trying to convince Russia that using a battlefield nuclear weapon guarantees a return volley, a tactical mutual assured destruction, while the deployment of nuclear-capable Air Force F-35As is primarily intended to strengthen NATO in Europe. According to Fredenburg, it also has significance for China, which is developing a stealth fighter with nuclear capability.
The Pentagon announcement that “all F-35As in the Air Force inventory are expected to be in a nuclear-certified configuration in the future, ” essentially heralded, he said, that “the F-35 is the first stealth fighter to carry a nuclear weapon, and we beat the Chinese to it. ”
A U. S. marine checks a F-35B fighter jet sitting on a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship, in Busan, South Korea, on March 23, 2023. ( Jung Yeon-Je- Pool/Getty Images )
The DOD did not mention the Marine Corps ’ F-35B version, which has a vertical liftoff capacity, nor the Navy’s F-35C model, which is fortified for carrier operations, but both are expected to have their F-35s nuclear capable—and to do so without public notice.
“It would make sense ” for the Navy to do so because dealing with China is its primary mission, Mr. Fredenburg said.
Mr. Mills would have liked to see a reference to the Pacific in the Pentagon.
“ What does it mean for the Pacific? I don’t know yet, ” he said. In addition, I do n’t understand why this administration does n’t do something that will help China in the western Pacific. ”
Mr. Mills said the Navy had to overcome Biden-administration objections in order to “reintroduce ” nuclear warheads on Tomahawk missiles.
Like the F-35As, the B61-12 bomb has a long production history. It is at least the sixth iteration of a relatively low-yield, semi-maneuverable, almost-glide weapon that began under the Obama administration.
Production is scheduled to continue through the end of fiscal year 2025 at a cost of$ 9 with the release of the first B61-12 in November 2021. 6 billion.
At a 360-kiloton blast equivalent, the Biden administration announced in October that it would develop the B61-13, which would be seven times more powerful than the 50-kiloton B61-12.
The B61-12 is “lower yield, but the idea is to trade off with accuracy; if you can hit closer to the target, you don’t need as powerful a bomb to take out the target, ” Mr. Fredenburg said.
( Top ) Gen. Roger Brady is shown B61 nuclear weapon disarming procedures on an inert training version at Volkel Air Base, The Netherlands, on June 11, 2008. ( Bottom ) Image of a B-61 thermonuclear weapon. In the back it is assembled, in the middle are its major subcomponents, in the front it is almost completely disassembled. ( Public Domain )
The B61-12, according to the Air Force, can glide the final 50 miles to a target after being launched from an F-35A.
So at least you can have a standoff range and get closer, Mr. Fredenburg said. “ In other words, from the time you drop it, it will glide another 50 miles. ”
Mr. Mills believes that the Pentagon overplays that role.
“It does n’t have the capacity to glide, ” he said. “ I don’t know if this is an intentional” exaggeration of the B61-12’s “glide capability. ”
“ I have never seen the B61-12 having wings for glide capability. It has a tail. It has fins. That’s two different things, ” he said.
“We can quibble and argue that [fins ] give it a little bit of a glide capability, but not like a wingtip. So those are totally different engineering components. I think they’re being clever with that. ”
The B61-12 is as much “a free-fall nuclear bomb” as its predecessors, and “you still effectively have to fly over, come very close, to the target. Which means that your pilot and aircraft are in danger, according to Mr. Mills said.
Mr. Fredenburg agreed, somewhat.
“It does n’t have wings, but it ’s got that thrust, that momentum for high altitude. They may have 15 miles of extra range so that, plus coming in stealthily, does make it more of a threat. ”
Both agreed the 30-year saga of the F-35, decades behind schedule, billions over budget, and never-ending complexities, is not the exception to the rule at the Pentagon, but the way business is done and has been done for more than 70 years.
“It’s not just this. This is merely the prototypical of the other issues. We just are not making things fast enough, ” Mr. Mills said.
“It’s not just that it ’s the biggest defense program ever in the history of the world, even with inflation adjusted, it ’s about opportunity cost, ” Mr. Fredenburg said, claiming the time, effort, and money put into the F-35 could have been better spent on other military programs.
“I’m a pro-defense guy, a peace-through-strength kind of guy, ” he said. “ I believe in the military, but I Consider that no other military in the world offers more value for our money than we do. ”
