US Nuclear Weapons Transferred To UK Soil For First Time Over 15 Years

In a huge development which is no doubt related to recent nuclear saber-rattling in the context of the Ukraine war, the US has likely stationed nuclear weapons in Britain for the first time in more than 15 years, according to The Telegraph and other British media reports.

„An American C-17 transport plane visited RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk on Thursday, making a transatlantic journey from Kirtland Air Force base in New Mexico, where the US Air Force (USAF) stores nuclear bombs,” The Telegraph writes Tuesday.

„Analysts said it was likely that the flight contained nuclear bombs, which were last stationed in the UK in 2008, before being removed under the Obama administration,” the report continues.

Illustrative: A US AIr Force C-17 Globemaster cargo transport plane, via Alamy/The Times

The British newspaper says that supporting evidence that this is the case includes previously revealed details of an upcoming „nuclear mission” at Lakenheath.

This mission was first made known in unclassified documents that The Telegraph says were likely published by the US government by mistake, or else it could have been an intentional leak in order to signal Russia.

The logistics of last Thursday’s rare US transatlantic flight from New Mexico also suggests a highly sensitive mission to transfer nuclear assets:

The airspace over the base was restricted on Thursday and the aircraft did not immediately return to the US, in what one analyst told The Times appeared to be a “one-way drop-off”.

The plane also refuelled over the east coast of the US which The Aviationist specialist news website said this was a clue that it was flying a priority mission.

Separately The Times had also reported the story, including the detail that the US military transport plane which flew to Lakenheath had flown from the US with its transponders on, allowing it to be tracked by foreign governments.

One analyst said, „Flying transpondered C-17s from hot storage in Kirtland to Lakenheath and then returning and not going to a storage facility tells me this is a one-way drop-off flight.”

„Sometimes these particular C-17 flights are flown without transponders. So, the fact that they transpondered, this suggests to me that this has got to be deliberate,” the analyst added.

This is your weekly reminder that there is no such thing as a „tactical” nuclear weapon.

Any use of a nuclear weapon is immediately at the Strategic level, and if used against a nuclear power, will result in a general nuclear exchange. https://t.co/vFJks9wBOa

— cdrsalamander (@cdrsalamander) July 20, 2025

Again, this seems some deliberative 'messaging’ to Moscow, coming as President Trump is seeking to pressure the Russian and Ukrainian sides to make progress at the negotiating table. Washington knows it has little leverage, given Kiev forces have remained on a backfoot, and Russia is making slow but steady progress in the east.

The Kremlin says that it is 'monitoring’ these reports. Recently Russia’s strategic doctrine has been updated, given President Putin a little broader interpretation concerning deployment of nuclear weapons. It is believed that Russian tactical nukes are also still on Belarusian soil, which has greatly alarmed Europe.