Last edited Tue Oct 15, 2024, 08:16 PM - Edit history (1)
We are reminding them that we have nukes too. It is not necessarily putting any actual bombs in country (yet). It is upgrading the airbase to handle aircraft that are nuclear capable, in this case F-15E Strike Eagles. F-16s are also capable of carrying nuclear free fall bombs.
I would image it would be building hardened aircraft shelters with "vaults" in them. Imagine the kind of security vault you would house a hyper-car in: A solid concrete enclosure in the floor of a garage with a platform underneath and a thick concrete cap on top of it and a lift inside it. Raise the lift, drive the car onto the platform, then lower the platform and the cap is flush with the garage floor. The car is hidden from view in a HIGHLY secure spot. In fact, for those who don't know what they are looking for, it would be easy to walk right across one without knowing what was under your feet.
A similar setup is used at USAF bases that host nuclear capable aircraft. The bombs aren't armed in the vaults, they are just stored there near the aircraft that would carry them. If the need ever arose, a weapons crew would bring an "arming package" (I wasn't a weapons troop, that's probably not what they called it) to the shelter and raising the vault, arming the weapon and setting to the desired yield. If the alert level was high enough, they would actually load the bomb on the aircraft.
The shelter would have security forces in a perimeter around it and more inside guarding the aircraft and bomb. I never saw the vault being accessed or the weapon being armed and loaded, I was never actually inside a shelter while that was going on. I saw the exterior security during exercises and knew enough to keep my distance.
Anyhoo, the upshot of all this isn't that we are moving nukes or nuke capable aircraft into Hungary, it is just reminding Putin that if he keeps up the using nukes talk, we will start upgrading our own nuclear potential in the area by upgrading the airbases near him to handle them. That will be an escalation in Putin's eyes. If the airbase is ready to go, the aircraft can fly in on short notice and the nukes themselves can be airlifted in on short notice. A mach 2 nuclear capable aircraft can be on the ground, armed and standing nuclear alert in a matter of hours after the order is given, once the facilities are ready to host them. Once the alert status is reached, from Hungary, those aircraft could be over Russian targets in minutes.
Remember, Putin's stated excuse for invading Ukraine was to put a buffer on Russia's western flank. This is reminding him that his continuing shenanigans in Ukraine is having the opposite effect.
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