[…]
Asked […] if Estonia would be willing to host Britain’s future fleet of F-35A fighters, defence minister Hanno Pevkur replied, “I’m always open. The door is always open for allies.”
The comments follow the incursion of three Russian MiG-31s into Estonian skies last week. The aircraft, flying without transponders or flight plans, remained over the Gulf of Finland for twelve minutes before being escorted out by Italian F-35s from Ämari airbase.
[…]
Western leaders urged caution over escalating the stand-off. Mr Pevkur said NATO’s response should be “proportionate” and decided “case-by-case.” Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, struck a harder line, declaring: “We will shoot down any flying objects when they violate our territory and fly over Poland. There is absolutely no discussion over that.”
[…]
For Estonia, NATO’s smallest frontline state, the latest incursion [of Russian drones] was a stark reminder of its reliance on allied air power. “The question is not whether Russia will try again,” one official said, “but how we will respond.”
You can make that point by stationing troops and other equipment there. Deploying nuclear weapons for that purpose makes no sense.
Why not? It is probably the most valuable asset an army has and positioning it there shows the clear determination to defend the area at all costs.
Not really. It has no tactical value being there, since we’re not going to drop nukes on invading conventional forces. And while they are expensive for a single bomb, the plane that carries them still costs 4x as much. So what value are you talking about?
Their value is as strategic deterrent. And they can do that from almost anywhere.
Anyway … I’m not even sure why this is a story.
It seems this is just The Telegraph asking a silly hypothetical question that no one was actually considering in the first place.
This really seems like British for “what a silly question”. And they are right.
Valuable as in: no military will let it fall into enemy hands.
Right, because they would immediately evacuate the bombs if that was even a remote possibility. A highly portable asset like a bomb just doesn’t work very well as symbolic “line in the sand”.
If you actually want to show determination for defending a position you bring in hard-to-move assets. A battalion of tanks, air defense system, troops, infrastructure. Those you would actually have to defend.
Also, if Russia would somehow get a hold of a B61, the damage would mostly be in prestige to the US and maybe some minor technology they could reverse engineer. But it wouldn’t fundamentally change the balance of power, so not even that argument makes much sense.
Exactly.
But my point was that this wouldn’t even be that bad. It’s an unlikely scenario, but I could see the US just abandoning some nuclear bombs at the front in case of a sudden invasion. Russia having a few more American nukes doesn’t really shift the power balance. You could brush that under the rug.
On the other hand, imagine 5000 US troops stationed there, with heavy equipment with which they can’t just run away from a sudden invasion. So you either defend them or you have to deal with the political fallout of 5000 dead soldiers. Much harder to brush under the rug.