[D]UCK!!!!!!
Nuclear weapons are coming to Vermont!
Right to Burlington. Peace-loving, healthy (11th healthiest in the country, says Wallethub), unpolluted (cleanest air of any city, says American Lung Association), educated, politically liberal Burlington is about to become Ground Zero in the impending nuclear war.
The city “would automatically become a target in the event of war … because nuclear weapons strategy is to target delivery vehicles (bombers, not the bombs).”
Those delivery vehicles – F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters – will be assigned to the 158th Fighter Wing of the Vermont Air National Guard, based at the Burlington Airport, scheduled to arrive in September.
So says Citizens Against Nuclear Bombers in Vermont (CANBVT), a new (and, it seems, hastily assembled) organization led by some prominent and impressive people: ice cream maven Ben Cohen, former State Sen. Peter Galbraith, writer Bill McKibben, and more.
Its web site went up early this month featuring a photo of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb struck in 1945. It warned that President Donald Trump “wants our Vermont National Guard to host USA’s newest nuclear bomber.”
In the face of this threat, CANBVT proposed action. The website announced that “there is a resolution in the State House to reject the basing of any part of a new nuclear weapons system in Vermont,” and claimed that “the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons starts in Vermont.”
Talk about delusions of grandeur. An uprising in l’il ole Vermont will abolish nuclear weapons?
Not hardly. Not to mention that when the website appeared no such resolution had been filed in the Legislature, and would not be for two weeks. Or that nuclear weapons are not coming to Burlington.
Not now. Not in the near future. Quite likely not ever. No need to duck after all.
As a VTDigger.org fact-check on April 10 made clear, the F-35s that will be assigned to the Vermont Guard will not be capable of carrying nuclear weapons. One day, some specially configured F-35s might be able to handle nukes, but there would be no point in stationing them here.
“If we were to use F-35s with nuclear weapons, they would be the ones based in Europe, where we have about 150 bombs in NATO countries,” said Lisbeth Gronlund, a senior scientist at the Global Security Program of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
That’s because in the unlikely event of nuclear war, that war would be with Russia, the only unfriendly country that has much of a nuclear arsenal. F-35s parked on European runways could reach Russia. There are U.S.-based bombers – the B-2, the B-52, the impending B-21 – that can deliver nuclear weapons to Russia (or China). The F-35 – a fighter jet – is not one of them.
“The F-35s don’t have enough range,” Gronlund said.
Dan Grazier, a defense researcher for the Project on Government Oversight, agreed.
“It would not make a whole lot sense to strap a nuclear bomb or two into a plane in the U.S.,” he said.
Besides, as Gronlund noted, “there is no facility for keeping nuclear weapons at the Air Force base there (in Burlington).”
One could be built. But not easily or quietly, and what would be the point? There is no a strategic point to having a U.S.-based F-35 with nuclear bombs. This whole “ban the nukes” campaign – prominent and impressive though some of its leaders may be – is a fraud.
Designed, no doubt, to do what many of the same people tried and failed to do before: keep the F-35s out of Burlington.
Maybe they should have succeeded. The years-long dispute over basing the F-35 in Burlington was corrupted by tribalism, with each tribe more intent on making points than in making sense. No wonder those in neither tribe (that would be most Vermonters) paid little attention.
But one needn’t have been in the anti-military, anti-establishment tribe to suspect that the F-35 could be the biggest federal boondoggle since the Tellico Dam destroyed a good trout stream, several working farms and some interesting prehistoric sites for no apparent purpose in Tennessee in the 1970s. The aircraft is “the most expensive weapon system in history,” according to the Project on Government oversight, and still isn’t ready for combat.
Just last week, the Government Accountability Office issued a report concluding that “F-35 aircraft performance is falling short of warfighter requirements—that is, aircraft cannot perform as many missions or fly as often as required.”
The F-35 is a mess. Whether it will ever be an effective weapon is open to question. That it is a noisy weapon is not. It is very loud, meaning that putting it in the most densely populated of the locations which could have been chosen is evidence of mind-boggling foolishness.
So all these individuals and organizations that fought bringing the F-35 to Burlington may well have had the better argument. They may have a good argument against Trump’s proposed trillion-dollar plus, 30-year plan to upgrade nuclear weapons (though it should be noted that Barack Obama had a similar proposal). But the worst way to mobilize political opposition is to start off with a claim that can’t be proved.
This claim has already fizzled. After a month of newspaper ads, a rally or two, and a bit of publicity, the reaction of the general public to this campaign has been … well, it hasn’t been. Vermonters appear to understand that nuclear bombs are not coming here and that nuclear strategy will not be determined here.
Furthermore, like most Americans, they probably understand a few things about nuclear war. First, if it happens, almost everything is a target or close to it. Second, while nuclear war is not impossible — Lisbeth Gronlund of the Union Scientists says there is the danger of “misunderstandings and things going wrong” which could lead to disaster — it is most unlikely.
That’s because the only credible nuclear war enemy is Russia, and there’s no reason for Russia to attack the United States. It can just keep stealing American elections.