What to Do About Europe's Secret Nukes

An interesting article from Time Magazine.

Here's a snippet:

Is Italy capable of delivering a thermonuclear strike? Could the Belgians and the Dutch drop hydrogen bombs on enemy targets? And what about Germany — a country where fear of atomkraft is so great that the last government opposed all civilian nuclear power? Germany's air force couldn't possibly be training to deliver bombs 13 times more powerful than the one that destroyed Hiroshima, could it?

It is Europe's dirty secret that the list of nuclear-capable countries extends beyond those — Britain and France — who have built their own weapons. Nuclear bombs are stored on air-force bases in Italy, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands — and planes from each of those countries are capable of delivering them. The Federation of American Scientists believes that there are some 200 B61 thermonuclear gravity bombs scattered across these four countries. Under a NATO agreement struck during the Cold War, the bombs, which are technically owned by the U.S., can be transferred to the control of a host nation's air force in times of conflict. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dutch, Belgian, Italian and German pilots remain ready to engage in nuclear war.

These weapons are more than an anachronism or historical oddity. They are a violation of the spirit of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — the 1968 agreement governing nuclear weapons that acts as one of the linchpins of global security by providing a legal restraint on the nuclear ambitions of rogue states. Because "nuclear burden-sharing," as the dispersion of B61s in Europe is called, was set up before the NPT came into force, it is technically legal. But as signatories to the NPT, the four European countries and the U.S. have pledged "not to receive the transfer ... of nuclear weapons or control over such weapons directly, or indirectly." That, of course, is precisely what the long-standing NATO arrangement entails.

Read the rest of the story here.

So this is really interesting to me. I mean I was under the impression that these countries openly admitted to having nuclear weapons or just weapons of mass destruction in general.

Everybody has had the though of the Eiffel Tower opening up and nuclear silo being undernearth it lol.

In any case is there any weight to this story? And what to do about them if we KNOW they are there, yet the countries won't fess up and help other countries who are actively attempting to rid the world of such weaponss?

Any thoughts ATS?

~Keeper

I can sorta confirm this. I have a friend who was enlisted in the US Army, and stationed in Germany. He put together warheads of the "A" and "H" variety. He said that he put US war h eads on German missles during the 90s. During the gulf war they were ordered to "put their keys in!"
He said the way it works is that the heads are "loaned" to Germany, through the UN. You would just be shocked where some of the missile silos are.

reply to post by dashen


Yeah I am pretty sure I would be. In the most inconspicuous places I would assume.

In any case, thanks for the info. How does the UN "loan" a nuke to somebody?

~Keeper

Well, at least as far as my friend was involved was working under the US Army, on an american base in Germany, working jointly with the UN. The US "loans" the warheads to Germany, which in turn fixes it atop their missiles.

I knew the bombs were spread around in different countries - But I did not know that.....

the bombs, which are technically owned by the U.S., can be transferred to the control of a host nation's air force in times of conflict.

That leaves me wondering how hard a country would have to try to engineer a conflict that would warrant the transferral of a few of these weapons?

But would the Dutch or the Belgians actually know how to use the dam things?

Originally posted by dashen
Well, at least as far as my friend was involved was working under the US Army, on an american base in Germany, working jointly with the UN.

NOT the UN, but NATO! Who would trust the UN to be in charge of nukes??

Virtually any warplane can drop a nuke, there is nothing special about it.

Hell a hot air balloon could drop a nuke.

Get high. Arm it. Throw it out and pray

Pretty much all European countries could build a dirty bomb in like 10 hours.

1. Take nuclear waste
2. Put it in a missile
3. Launch
4. WW3

So yeah the explosion wouldn't be so fancy, but does that really matter? People would still die of radiation poisoning and the area where the missile hit would be a waste land for centuries to come..

[edit on 2-12-2009 by rhinoceros]

what to do?

ideally, they should be destroyed, all the other nukes and WMD should be destroyed, the plans should be burnt and the material should be encased in concrete and fired into the sun.

afterwards, all the guns should be collected, melted down and turned into shackles to bind any arsehole that presumes to ever build any of that crap ever again.

in the meantime, i'ld feel 100% safer knowing that holland has a nuke than i do knowing isreal has a crap load of them.

Originally posted by pieman
what to do?

ideally, they should be destroyed, all the other nukes and WMD should be destroyed, the plans should be burnt and the material should be encased in concrete and fired into the sun.

afterwards, all the guns should be collected, melted down and turned into shackles to bind any arsehole that presumes to ever build any of that crap ever again.

in the meantime, i'ld feel 100% safer knowing that holland has a nuke than i do knowing isreal has a crap load of them.

Well we are on the same wavelenght today my friend. I do like that idea of melting down the guns for shackles..

What poetic justice that would be eh?

And yes, Holland having a nuke is akin to Jamaica having a nuke, everybody is just too damn nice or too damn high to use them.

~Keeper