No to British Nuke Jets – Stop nuclear expansion

Without any parliamentary debate, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced Britain’s purchase of 12 US F-35A nuclear-capable fighter jets at the NATO summit in June 2025. This decision marks a very significant expansion in the country’s nuclear capability, enabling Britain to launch nuclear weapons from both the sea and air.

Far from protecting the British population, buying these nuclear jets will increase the risk of nuclear war. It will subordinate Britain even further under US military command and breach international disarmament obligations.

The 12 F-35A fighter jets are just the first tranche of purchases: the government intends to buy a total of 75 F-35A nuclear-capable jets1 over the 40-year lifetime of the F-35 fighter jet programme – and costs are already spiralling.

Instead of further stoking nuclear dangers, this government needs to stop this reckless nuclear expansion, reverse its war drive and take action to tackle the real security issues we face from climate breakdown and rising social deprivation.

Increasing the risk of nuclear war

Across the world, nuclear weapons states, like Britain, are modernising and increasing their nuclear weapons. US President Donald Trump’s statement regarding re-starting explosive nuclear testing is the latest in a serious of very dangerous nuclear developments. The devastating war in Ukraine has created the most serious nuclear flashpoint in the world today. Russia has lowered its nuclear-use threshold and placed nuclear weapons outside its territory for the first time since the Cold War. The US has stationed new B61-12 nuclear weapons at NATO bases across Europe and now in Britain. This is the first increase2 in NATO nuclear bases since the end of the Cold War.

The British F-35s will be deployed under NATO’s nuclear Dual Capable Aircraft mission and will be able to deliver both conventional and US B61-12 nuclear bombs, now deployed to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk. The full destructive power of each B61-12 is more than three times that of the Hiroshima bomb, which killed around 200,000 people.

Yet, these bombs are often referred to as ‘battlefield’ nuclear weapons, to try and justify them being used against troops and conventional weapons to ‘widen [the] available options’.3 Modelling by Princeton University4 shows that the use of such ‘battlefield’ weapons would rapidly escalate into a wider nuclear confrontation, leading to casualties of 2.6 million people within a few hours – and many more afterwards, including through radiation and climate-related impacts.

Far from protecting the British population, these nuclear-capable jets increase the risk of nuclear war.

Tying Britain closer to Trump’s reckless war drive

Buying US F-35A nuclear capable fighter jets that launch US nuclear bombs, ties Britain even closer to the dangerous leadership of Donald Trump. This is because the fighter jets will be under the command of the US-led, nuclear alliance of NATO.

The US B61-12 nuclear bombs will also be under US control, meaning it will be the Pentagon determining when and where they are used. So, these jets have nothing to do with our security and everything to do with assisting Trump’s global war.

Blank cheque for nukes while public services crumble

Prime Minister Keir Starmer rushed through the fighter jets decision in order to announce it at the NATO summit. The government’s own Public Accounts Committee report5 exposes that, at the time of the announcement, the Ministry of Defence had little if any understanding of the implications of the nuclear mission – in terms of the scale of infrastructure, training, staffing and costs.

Whilst public services are crumbling and blighted with staff shortages, there is a ‘blank cheque’ approach to Britain’s nuclear weapons industry. Costs for the overall F-35 programme – which is a mix of both F-35A nuclear-capable and F-35B non-nuclear jets – was estimated by the MoD at £57 billion.

However, this did not include any of the far more costly sustainment expenditure such as personnel, infrastructure or fuel. The National Audit Office has reassessed costs at £71 billion. However, this does not include expenditure for NATO integration. Even greater costs could be incurred as a result of upgrades to the nuclear weapons shelters if US B61-12 nuclear bombs were stationed at RAF Marham.

The replacement of Britain’s Trident nuclear submarines – named Dreadnought – is estimated to cost at least £205 billion over their 30-year lifetime. The four new nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed submarines were supposed to be completed by 2024. However, that has now been pushed back to a vague ‘early 2030s’.

The programme has been repeatedly rated ‘unachievable’ by the government’s Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA), due to cost overruns and delays. In 2023, the ten-year forecast for all nuclear projects increased by £38.2 billion (an increase of 62% on the previous year6). So serious are the delays and overspends that the government has now decided to exempt the replacement of Trident from any IPA reports on grounds of national security.7

Therefore, whilst other government departments like health, are expected to find annual savings, the nuclear costs of the MoD continue to spiral.

Nuclear expansion breaches international law

Legal opinion by experts at the London School of Economics makes clear that buying these F-35A fighter jets puts Britain in breach of its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Chinkin and Arimatsu argue, ‘[t]he decision of the UK to purchase F-35A fighter jets rather than any other model is precisely because the aircraft can “deliver both conventional and nuclear weapons” and thereby enable the RAF to reacquire “a nuclear role for the first time since 1998.” Reinstating a nuclear role for the RAF represents a reversal of the UK’s long-term commitment to nuclear disarmament, including under the NPT.’

This is not the first time the British government has breached the NPT. It did so when it made the decision to replace its Trident nuclear submarines in 2016, and again in 2021 when it announced that it would be increasing its nuclear stockpile by 44% to 260 warheads.8

Chinkin and Arimatsu conclude: ‘…we consider the hypocrisy that allows it to pursue its own modernised nuclear policy while asserting the unsuitability of other states to pursue theirs to be indicative of double standards and a defense policy lacking in morality.’
It is, indeed, the height of nuclear hypocrisy that Britain persistently breaches the NPT, yet at the same time, justifies the use of its nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are in ‘material breach of those non-proliferation obligations’.9

Far from countering proliferation, these actions of nuclear weapons states like Britain, only increase the risk of non-nuclear weapons states seeking their own nuclear arsenals.

RAF Marham

These new 12 nuclear jets will be based at RAF Marham, in Norfolk, as part of Britain’s wider F-35 fighter jet programme. It is a British-run base with over 3600 Service Personnel, civil servants and contractors. The first tranche of the 12 F-35A fighter jets will be delivered to RAF Marham by 2029.

The base has a history of military interventions to support US-led wars. British crewed aircraft from the base were deployed in the Gulf War in 1991 to 1992 and in NATO’s bombing of Libya in 2011.

RAF Marham has also been used to support Israel’s genocide on the Palestinian people. Between October 2023 and September 2024, 14 shipments of F-35 fighter jet parts10 were transported from the base directly to Nevatim Airbase in Israel.

In 2024, the base’s F-35B 617 Squadron11 took part in the NATO exercise Steadfast Defender, NATO’s largest military exercise in Europe since the Cold War.

Driving climate breakdown

Millions of people across the world are losing their lives, homes and livelihoods to climate breakdown. Globally, militarism accounts for 5.5% of carbon emissions. The F-35A nuclear-capable jets burn over 80 litres of jet fuel per minute when flying in their least fuel-intensive mode, and far more when carrying out high-powered manoeuvres.

According to a Joint Intelligence Committee report (currently blocked by the government12) the destabilising impact of the climate and nature crises on national security is one of the biggest risks facing Britain. Far from making the world more secure, expanding Britain’s nuclear capability will contribute to climate breakdown and greater insecurity.

Diplomacy, disarmament – the real solutions to keeping us safe

At a time of increasing global tensions and the rising threat of nuclear weapons being used in war, instead of expanding its nuclear weapons, the British government should be abiding by its disarmament obligations and using its diplomatic influence to strengthen international arms control frameworks.

As powerfully argued in the Alternative Defence Review,13 supported by CND and the RMT trade union, nuclear weapons and war cannot solve the crises of climate breakdown and global poverty. On the contrary, they accelerate them.

As the ADR exposes, the huge increases in military spending will not kick-start the British economy or boost jobs, with much of the investment going to US arms companies and their shareholders. This spending is also coming at the expense of critical areas of our economy that actually can drive economic growth, like the sustainable energy sector, public transport and education – sectors that are socially necessary for our very survival as well as economic growth.

The passing of the ‘wages not weapons’ motion at the Trade Union Congress this year is a significant victory, overturning previous policy in support of increased military spending.

A powerful alliance of trade unions, MPs, political leaders, civil society organisations, students and anti-cuts campaigners, with the anti-war and peace movement, is coming together to reverse the government’s war drive and this new nuclear expansionism. A key part of this campaigning work is to create a public, democratic debate looking at the real security issues we face and the solutions to them: global cooperation, diplomacy and disarmament, investing in defence diversification, health, education and climate action.