In mid-April, we reported that "just as tensions over North Korea's nuclear program and potential US airstrikes run wild, the NNSA said that in conjunction with the US Air Force, it had completed the first qualification flight test of B61-12 gravity nuclear bomb on March 14 at the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada."
Four months later, and just as concerns over North Korea's provocative launches have send shockwaves across global markets - again - the US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced another successful flight test of B61-12 gravity nuclear bombs in Nevada. The second qualification flight test for the nuclear bomb was carried out by the NNSA and the US Air Force.
According to the NNSA press release, two B61-12 gravity bombs (without a nuclear warhead) were dropped from F-15 fighter jets on August 8 at Tonopah Test Range in Nevada, and were designed to test the "non-nuclear functions and the aircraft’s capability to deliver the weapon." These tests are part of a series over the next three years to qualify the B61-12 for service. As we noted at the time, the first qualification flight test occurred in March.
“The B61-12 life extension program is progressing on schedule to meet national security requirements,” said Phil Calbos, acting NNSA deputy administrator for Defense Programs. “These realistic flight qualification tests validate the design of the B61-12 when it comes to system performance.”
According to the editor-in-chief of National Defense magazine, Igor Korotchenko, the second test of the nuclear bomb could indicate that Washington is speeding up its rearmament program. "The fact of the test of this modification of the nuclear bomb indicates that the US continues an accelerated rearmament program of its tactical nuclear arsenal in Europe, as well as that both Washington and Brussels are considering the scenario of a limited nuclear war in Europe," he said.
Furthermore, as RT reminds us, the test comes two months after Politico reported that US senators were pushing legislation to compel President Donald Trump to take steps to develop new missiles which would be “the first steps to jettisoning what is known as the INF treaty.” Moscow said that such a move would be “ridiculous” and would damage America itself as well as its European allies. In July, Republican Senator Tom Cotton, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, suggested bypassing the milestone treaty that bans the testing, production and possession of land-based intermediate-range missiles by both Moscow and Washington. He urged the White House to “facilitate the transfer of cruise missile technology to our (American) allies,” explaining that “only the US and Russia have signed this treaty. No other country did.”
After the announcement of the plans to upgrade the B61 nuclear weapon, Russia expressed its concerns that the move could destabilize global security. “This means that the armaments threshold could in theory have been lowered, which of course will destabilize the situation to a certain extent,”said the deputy head of Russia’s Foreign Ministry, Sergey Ryabkov, in August 2016. The program, started under President Obama means that over the next 30 years Washington could spend up to $1 trillion to modernize the US nuclear arsenal. Shortly after his election, president Trump called for the US to “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability,” though he criticized the Obama administration’s costly modernization program during the election campaign.
Credit to Zero Hedge
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