Maintaining a nuclear presence in Europe is essential for the NATO alliance, said Mark Gunzinger, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “Our posture in Europe is critical to coherence of the alliance [and] is a tangible sign of our commitment to the alliance,” he said during Tuesday’s panel on extended deterrence at AFA’s Air & Space Conference in National Harbor, Md. Currently, the United States has a forward presence in Europe of tactical nukes and dual-role fighters capable of delivering them. Gunzinger said it’s “questionable at best” if relying on US strategic nukes based stateside would have the same deterrent effect for Europe. Further, it would be “very difficult” to regenerate that capability if it was withdrawn from Europe, he asserted. He also said the United States “might want to think about adopting the European model” of extended deterrence “to the Pacific.”
The United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force has unveiled a new electronic warfare drone designed to fly with fighter jets into contested airspace, including alongside its fleet of F-35s. RAF says it plans to develop models that draw on the U.S. Air Force’s approach of mating unmanned systems with crewed platforms.