The US nuclear bomb B61 is covered with sticky tape? Was it a kind of incident? PHOTO

The US nuclear bomb B61 is covered with sticky tape? Was it a kind of incident? PHOTO

The Pentagon says a photo released by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) of apparent damage to a US nuclear bomb at a Dutch airbase shows a dummy weapon used for training emergency response teams.

FAS released a photo of a B61 bomb being inspected by US soldiers, two of whom are members of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit and one civilian.

It can be seen that the rear part of the bomb is distorted by the impact, and the other part is missing. There is pink sticky tape covering an apparent hole.

This image is part of a presentation to students held last year at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico, and the photo was located at Volkel Air Force Base in the Netherlands, one of six bases in five European countries that store a total of 100 nuclear weapons of B61 nuclear gravity bombs as part of the US agreement, "The Guardian" writes. A FAS blog by Hans Kristensen, the director of the FAS nuclear information project, said it was unclear whether it was a real bomb or a training model. The US air force in Europe and LANL would not comment on the photograph, but on Monday, after publication of Kristensen’s blog, the Pentagon said it was a dummy weapon being used as part of a training drill.

“At every military facility, we have a response team that has to train together, and that is what this was, and the photo was put in a recruitment manual,” Oscar Seára, a Pentagon spokesperson, said.

A spokesperson for the US air force in Europe would not comment directly on the photograph, but said: “The US maintains the highest level of standards for personnel and equipment supporting the strategic arsenal, which includes routine training, maintenance and security activities, to safeguard America’s critical capabilities.

“It is US policy [that] we can neither confirm nor deny the presence or absence of nuclear weapons at any general or specific location, including specific exercise or real-world operations.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory said in an emailed statement: “No additional information is available for that photo.”

The B61 bomb is the only tactical nuclear weapon left in the US arsenal, and 100 of them are stored in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Turkey. The bombs remain US property, but aircrews from six other Nato allies (the five hosts plus Greece) are trained to put them on planes and fly them. In the event of hostilities, it would require the agreement of the US, the Nato nuclear planning group and, by dint of the history of the arrangement, the UK prime minister, for the weapons to be transferred to allied planes. Such nuclear-sharing operations are practised each year in Nato’s Steadfast Noon exercise, most recently in November, and since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Poland has asked to be part of the arrangement.

Arms control advocates have long argued that the B61 is militarily obsolete and should be withdrawn from Europe as an easy step towards disarmament. The Obama administration contemplated its withdrawal, but met with resistance from some European allies, who saw it as symbolic of the US nuclear umbrella protecting them, and the idea was dropped altogether following Russia's seizure of Crimea in 2014.