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| The Grand Turk | |
| US gives Turkey 60 B61-12 nuclear bombs | |
| 2011-12-04 | |
| Turkey is sitting with 60 American nuclear warheads at its Incirlik base by the United States because the Turks refuse to allow the US to station the warplanes there that would be able to deliver them. The United States currently has 70 type B61-12 tactical nuclear bombs at its airbase in Incirlik in the southern province of Adana, according to daily Vatan. ... Between 10 and 20 of the 70 nuclear warheads at Incirlik were designed to be delivered to their targets by Turkish warplanes, according to the report. ... The US military needed a certain warplane type that is different than those stationed at the Incirlik airbase in order to deliver the remaining 50 warheads, the report by Norris and Kristensen said. The Turkish state, however, has declined to allow the US military to deploy the said aircraft at Incirlik. US warplanes would need to land at Incirlik from another location, equip the nuclear warheads and then fly to their targets, according to the report. Turkey's refusal to station nuclear-capable US warplanes on its soil prevented Incirlik from acquiring a "full NATO position" status. This was a unique case among NATO bases, the report said.
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| Posted by:tipper |
| #10 As we stumble into 2012, it becomes obvious to me (casual observer)just why they call it Hell. -rf- |
| Posted by: Grease Jith3343 2011-12-04 21:54 |
| #9 Iff the US' NATO Allies can nuke the then-Soviets + Warsaw Pact wid their air, why shouldn't NATO ally Turkey??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2011-12-04 18:25 |
| #8 ...Back in the Olden Time, most US nuclear weapons based overseas were under a 'dual-key' arrangement - it required a US officer and a host country officer to get them out of the mags and loaded. Now I'm not sure about the 'different aircraft type' part - the only tacair birds that we'd use for nukes would be the F-15E and just about any current model of the F-16. B-61s can be carried by anything currently in the inventory, so something doesn't sound quite right. What we may be looking at here is a garbled version of a problem we used to have with Spain: we can't operate anything in their country that's more advanced than what they're flying, which is why F-4s soldiered on at Torrejon AB long past the day they'd left US service just about everywhere else. Once we'd sold them F-18s, we could bring in F-16s to TAB. I didn't think that the Turks had a deal like that in their basing agreements, but you never know. Incirlik has no aircraft of its own; it's strictly a deployment base with a few C-17s and KCs hanging around on a regular basis. Mike Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2011-12-04 16:59 |
| #7 There is now way in hell we'd let another country control our nukes. No Way In Hell. |
| Posted by: Charles 2011-12-04 15:59 |
| #6 There as well, Bill. Looked kind of hairy for a while while that C-5 was departure-delayed, eh? Güle güle! |
| Posted by: Uncle Phester 2011-12-04 10:39 |
| #5 Uh-huh... Sounds like bullshit to me. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2011-12-04 10:26 |
| #4 Turkish planes carrying U.S. nukes to target? BS. |
| Posted by: Grunter 2011-12-04 10:08 |
| #3 The US should have quietly moved those out of there a long time ago. Replaced them with dummies that look the same, but are "placeholders". |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-12-04 09:15 |
| #2 Now, these are wonderful news. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2011-12-04 07:09 |
| #1 So they put them back at Incirlik? Back in the 70's, Greece and Turkey had a brief shoot out over Cyprus, as usual, but that's another story. I was company commander of a unit assigned to provide operational and tactical security to a special weapons platoon that was sent to Incirlik to evacuate tactial nukes from there to prevent the Turks from using them on the Greeks. As luck would have it, the Turks found out and dispatched an armored battalion to supervise our evacuation of the nukes. It was a fun day as I had a 90mm main gun trained on me the entire time I was moving about the compound supervising the loading and transport of the nukes. |
| Posted by: Bill Clinton 2011-12-04 02:34 |