The U.S. Is Set to Make Nuclear War More Likely
By Dave LINDORFF
The US is about to move towards a far more likely first usage of nuclear weapons, with word that the Flying force has “completed flight testing” of the cost-and-performance-plagued F35A Lightning fighter, all systems of which are being “upgraded” to carry atomic weapons.
What this suggests, as described in a new article in Popular Mechanics, is that the world’s most costly weapons program (at $1.7 trillion), a fifth-generation fighter, allegedly “unnoticeable” to radar (that actually can not fight and is not unnoticeable to innovative radars), now has a brand-new objective to validate its existence and continued production: dropping dial-able “tactical” nuclear weapons that can be as little as 0.3 kilotons or up to 50 kilotons in explosive power.
Now 0.3 kilotons is “just” the equivalent of 300 lots of dynamite, which apparently makes them “useable,” suggesting not holocaust-causing (that is assuming that some nation backing the targeted nation doesn’t choose to react in kind and we go up the escalation ladder rapidly to ever larger bombs. Meanwhile, called as much as its maximum 50-kiloton power each F35A bomb would be substantially more than two times as powerful as the a-bomb that leveled Nagasaki.
The Popular Mechanicsarticle, also released in Yahoo News, prices quote Pentagon sources as saying the brand-new F35A capability provides the United States flexibility to provide nukes to targets in a country threatening the United States, and also to recall them as much as the last second prior to dropping the weapon since the aircraft would be piloted. However this expected benefit of a manned delivery system being recallable is a fantasy.
As Daniel Ellsberg has exposed in information in his 2017 book The End ofthe world Maker, composed based upon his decades of deal with a top security clearance on behalf of the Secretary of Defense office investigating command-and-control procedures and practices of the nation’s nuclear forces, there is no chance to ensurethat a pilot purchased on a nuclear strike mission will receive– or think– any message or signal buying a cancellation of the attack order.
As Ellsberg describes, interaction systems consistently break down on an almost day-to-day basis at one of the US military’s hundreds of global bases and carrier battle groups. cutting of the link between Washington and bases remote military bases, because of equipment breakdowns, storms, solar flares, etc. Moreover, in a duration of global crisis, a pilot may mistrust even an order to abort an attack which, after all, won’t be a telephone call from the president, a Pentagon general, or perhaps a recognized base commander, but rather a brief coded signal. As Ellsberg notes in his scary book, the other flaw is that a pilot, when purchased on such a mission, might choose in the heat of the moment, to just continue with orders and drop his weapon no matter getting a cancellation order. Keep in mind, in times of crisis, countries might be utilizing jamming systems to knock out enemy military interactions, or could even be blinding interaction satellites.
Meanwhile the scenario presented in the article– a lone pilot being dispatched to provide one or two dial-able B61-12 thermonuclear weapons onto some command-and-control center or rocket introducing site, perhaps– is not really what the Pentagon strategists want for its F-35A airplanes.
Actually, hundreds of these Flying force variations of the F-35 have actually been getting so-called “block four’ modifications, with bulging farings changing their previously streamlined bodies, in order to permit the carrying of two lengthened Hydrogen bombs inside their fuselages, where they won’t present a larger radar image as bombs brought externally under wings would do. These re-configured planes, which also have software application upgrades to allow them to prime, unlock and launch their twin nukes, are being provided to forward bases near Russia and China within the relatively short range of the bomb-laden planes.
The idea (hopefully wishful thinking), is that such planes, equipped with their two nukes, could streak throughout a Russian and/or Chinese border at supersonic speed, flying low to the ground, to strike federal government buildings, military bases, and rocket silos in a surprise strike, leaving the target nation unable to retaliate.
For United States military policy makers, all the way back to the post-war late 1940s, through the 1950s and on, getting America’s nuclear-armed competitors in a preventive atomic blitz has long been a tactical dream, constantly postponed the good news is because of lingering worries among saner heads that such a criminal and genocidal attack would fail to avoid a counterattack.
Bernie Sanders, the independent self-described “socialist” senator from Vermont, now requires to lastly end his own dogged and negative support for the basing of 18 F-35A aircrafts at the Burlington International Airport, where pilots of the Vermont Air National Guard are now training for exactly the type of battle scenario described above.
Sanders has insisted that while he “opposes” the “inefficient” F35 program, it is a “done deal” and so he wants Vermont’s Air National Guard system to get a piece of the “advantages” of having it and the “jobs” it allegedly brings with it in his state. He has actually continued to dissemble, declaring that the Vermont F35As will not bring nuclear weapons or be used in nuclear war. In reality, his office was caught modifying a file from the Pentagon to conceal the reality that the Vermont Guard’an aircrafts would in fact absolutely be upgraded with the “block four” alterations so they can carry nukes just like all F-35As in the Air Force fleet.
Vermont’s aircrafts would not, and might not, fly from Burlington over the North Pole to deliver their bombs to Russian or Chinese targets, other than with several in-flight refueling sessions, and all the while flying at subsonic speeds to conserve fuel, obviating any opportunity of a “surprise” attack. But they could, if the pilots are trained (as they will be) in utilizing the updated planes to bring their nuclear cargo and to release them on targets, be triggered during a period of worldwide crisis. The plan would then be for US-based pilots to transport their F-35A airplanes to forward bases, where the nukes would be stockpiled. The airplanes and their pilots would then be prepositioned, to join a potential attack, or to produce a sense of looming danger that would, allegedly, lead the enemy– state Russia or China– to pull back, or alternatively to release their own attack initially.
With word the Air Force is prepared to begin full-scale updating of its F35A fleet to nuclear-capable bombers, Sen. Sanders needs to carry out a red-faced volte-face and require the instant removal of F35A jets from Vermont. He needs to likewise stop hypocritically supporting the further production and Block-Four updating of this airplane.
Let’s be clear: a nuclear-armed, radar-evading fighter-bomber fleet can not by any stretch be conceived of as a “vindictive” weapon. If Russia or China, the only countries that might even possibly consider releasing a first strike on the United States, were to do so, having a plane that might hit command-and-control centers, rocket silos and military bases in the attacking country would be useless. Firstly those aircrafts would have been currently blown to smithereens on the ground in the preliminary opponent attack. Second, if they somehow survived to take off, the nationwide political and military leaders of any country releasing such an attack would long because have actually relocated to protective hidden areas when having bought their attack, soldiers would have been moved off their undoubtedly targeted bases with their equipment, and missile silos would be empty holes, their rockets having currently been introduced. Moreover, opponent nations would be on high alert trying to find any incoming F35s or other bombers and would have their anti-aircraft rocket ranges prepared to fire, and their fighter defenses already in the air on full alert to tear down the greatly burdened and undoubtedly inadequately armed incoming US airplanes.
It’s all a huge lie in other words, for the Pentagon to claim these planes are making the world much safer by including a pilot.
As first-strike weapons the nuclear bomb-capable F35A simply increases the chance that a war will be begun by the US, if Pentagon strategists start thinking they have a window of opportunity to strike without fear of a considerable retaliation.
That leaves the other most likely threat too: That this nuclear-capable fighter could be used to provide a “small nuke” against some non-nuclear country– one of the many where US military forces are continuously being taken part in undeclared wars like Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, Niger, the Philippines, etc. The effects of such an use of a nuclear weapon against a non-nuclear country, by opening the door to extensive usage of nuclear weapons in essentially any armed dispute, might be as extensive as was the first such use against non-nuclear Japan by a cocky US in the subsiding days of World War II.
Those 2 battles of 2 non-military targets, eliminating two major Japanese cities, led straight to a multi-generational multi-trillion-dollar arms race in between the US and Soviet Union, and ultimately China too, and to a spread of nuclear weapons to seven more nations.
This most current escalation of nuclear weaponry, creating a fleet of over a thousand nuclear-carrying stealth fighter-bombers, will inevitably lead to similar planes being developed in Russia, China and in other places (China has actually already produced a really similar stealth fighter to the F-35, and Russia, which has an extremely advanced aircraft style ability, makes certain to do the same). The relentless efforts, at enormous cost. by the United States to come up with a feasible first-strike capability are also compelling the Russians and Chinese to react with alternative deterrent weapons, significantly hypersonic cruise missiles that can autonomously change direction and shift targets while flying at thousands of miles per hour, are not first-strike weapons, provided the relatively longer time it would take them to reach their targets.
For all the huffing and puffing of media scaremongers, the hypersonic rockets being tested by Russia and China are a defensive weapons created to make a country like the US that is openly looking for an offensive first-strike possibility, reconsider prior to releasing such a holocaust.
Deterrence is decidedly not what the F35A nuclear bomber upgrades have to do with. The best that can be hoped is that this bomber upgrade is simply the latest in a series of plans by the Pentagon, F35-maker Lockheed-Martin, and all the company’s Congressional backers accepting the business’s kickbacks, to keep this $1.7-trillion life of ease for this impressive boondoggle of an airplane streaming.