ICAN UK] Fwd: from Telegraph today 'How the Return on British Tactical Nuclear Weapons could Save Europe'

Dear all,

Here’s a Telegraph article – to underscore why we need to challenge the false facts and unreality in the UK about nuclear weapons:

This Telegraph article is flying a kite about UK developing a new nuclear programme of nuclear weapons for the defence of Europe, and — as non experts so often do, the writer misguidedly refers to smaller sized nukes as ’tactical’.   The Cold War division between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons was based on the range of delivery vehicles, not the size and explosive power of warheads.    Trident missiles are ‘strategic’ whether they launch 5 kt warheads or  400 kt (400,000 tonnes TNT explosive power).  The US B61 and its mod variants in European bases (and earmarked for Lakenheath by the Biden Administration, though Trump may cancel that now) are called ‘tactical’ by some pundits because of their relatively short range — the ‘dial-a-yield’  B61 warheads that US bombers like the F35 might carry could be as large as 340 kilotons — more than 22 times more explosive power than the Hiroshima bomb.

I will always remember the observation of a senior member of the Aldermaston delegation at a meeting in Westminster after he’d listened to politicians pontificating about the usability of so-called ‘tactical nukes’. He said, “There’s no such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon — any use of nuclear weapons would be strategic in intention, strategic in impact, and likely to start nuclear war, with very heavy casualties.’

Hope you can access this article,

rebecca