NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte announced on Thursday that the defense alliance’s annual military exercises with nuclear weapons will take place on Monday.
“It is critical that we test our defenses,” he said, and that the alliance’s adversaries “know that NATO is ready and able to respond to any threat.”
The new NATO chief was visiting British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in London when he made the announcement. He also met there with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
According to Rutte, the exercise called ‘Steadfast Noon’ involves more than sixty aircraft and mainly takes place in the airspace of Great Britain, the North Sea, Belgium and the Netherlands.
The Secretary-General praised Britain for the contribution its armed forces are making to the alliance’s nuclear deterrent.
NATO has not released details about the exercise and the scenario associated with it.
According to military experts, the maneuvers are used to practice how to safely transport American nuclear weapons on European soil from underground storage sites to the aircraft and mount them under the fighter jets. Training flights then take place without the bombs.
NATO’s nuclear weapons sharing agreement stipulates that US nuclear weapons must be stationed in Europe and can be dropped from partner states’ aircraft in an emergency.
Although not yet officially confirmed, US nuclear weapons are known to be stockpiled in northern Italy, Turkey, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.