The Daily Telegraph published an article on Dec. 17 headlined “The Weapon That Triggered a New Nuclear Arms Race—Russia Is Winning,” by defense expert Francis Tusa. Tusa calls for Europe to significantly rearm, deploy tactical nuclear weapons to deter Russia, while giving its word of honor that it will not escalate into general nuclear war.
Tusa started out working at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) for Defense and Security Studies in 1987, where he set up its Middle East Defense program, and now is co-editor of Defence Eye news agency. He claims that Russia is thought to possess 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons, while the U.S. has only 200 in its arsenal.
Tusa first focuses on the U.S. B-61 nuclear bomb, a gravity bomb, with a variable yield from 0.3 to 340 kilotons. Tusa discloses that the U.S. is building a new tactical nuclear storage facility at Royal Air Force Lakenheath, in Suffolk, at a cost of several hundred million pounds, and that some of the tactical nuclear bombs stationed in the U.S. will be redeployed to RAF Lakenheath, when the new storage facility is finished.
