It's crazy to blow £2bn on these jets

Bernard Gray

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Omaha, Nebraska, is an almost anonymous city of half a million people deep in the American Midwest.

It's clean, quiet and crime is below the national average. It doesn't get into the news much, except perhaps once a year when its most famous resident, Warren Buffett, holds the AGM for his hugely successful investment firm.

It's also the place where they plan the end of the world.

Omaha is home to the US Strategic Command, the arm of the Pentagon responsible for thinking through and perhaps executing nuclear war. If a third world war did break out in Europe, the American general in charge of Nato's military machine would turn to StratCom for the nuclear war plan. It has been this way for decades now, but America's role had faded into obscurity since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not any more.

Last week, Keir Starmer announced that the UK would buy 12 American F-35A fighter jets capable of carrying US nuclear bombs and dropping them as part of any Nato nuclear campaign. To hear the prime minister tell it, this is a huge change. So it might come as something of a surprise to learn that Germany and Italy have been doing exactly this job for decades, with the same American weapons.

Since the 1960s, the US has wanted to ensure that European hands are dipped in the blood of any decision to use nuclear weapons defending Europe. It did not want to be accused of laying waste to our continent alone. At the same time, the US has never been of a mind to hand out nuclear weapons left, right and centre for Europeans to use as they please.

The solution has been a "dual key" approach. An American general has overall command of Nato forces, US generals in Omaha decide what