My first assignment was the F-111E at RAF Upper Heyford at the height of the Cold War.
Back then, we were not allowed to reveal our mission: To deliver what we 'cannot confirm or deny the existence' of certain 'items'. Get my drift?
We also had something called 'Victor Alert' jets.
https://www.acc.af.mil/News/Feature...3/30-years-past-20th-fw-role-in-victor-alert/
Yrs later, after the Soviet Union ignobly and spectacularly collapsed, it came out that a Soviet electronics engineer named Adolph Tolkachev have been a CIA asset during the Cold War. In the yrs of working for US, he confirmed that the Soviets leadership were practically terrified of the F-111s at Upper Heyford and Lakenheath. The word 'terrified' was not hyperbolic, according to Tolkachev. The Soviets had no viable air defense against the F-111 from Warsaw Pact targets all the way to Moscow.
NONE.
At the flightline, there was a secured area that contained a dozen HAS. They were VA shelters. Each shelter had one jet and each jet carried two B61s. Inside each shelter was a 'no lone' zone, meaning your entire body has to be visible to another person at all time, and lethal force by the SP was allowed. So it was always a pair of person going in/out of the shelters.
I had to be on station for one yr before I was allowed to VA status. Anyone who is assigned to VA status has to be on duty and in uniform at all time. VA crews must be within 30 minutes of the flightline. If they do not want to eat at the VA small kitchen, they can go to the base main chow hall but must be able to return within 30 minutes. Same for the base gym or the BX shop. If the person, there were women as well, have a 'significant other', going home is not an option. Eat and sleep by your assigned VA jet for a couple weeks.
A lot of people here talks about 'nukes' casually and I feel pity for them. They are keyboard warriors in the truest sense of the word. The first time I saw a B61, it was a deeply moving experience for me. Here I am, touching a true nuclear weapon with my right hand. Not a practice bomb, but the real thing. And I held in my left hand a navigation cartridge that had coordinates unknown to me. Only when the INS was fully powered up, aligned, and the cartridge inserted would an aircrew know where they were going to deliver that pair of nuclear bombs.
Make no mistake about this news item. The Orange One maybe a blowhard buffoon, but in spite of his ignorance, he is correct. No country -- including nuclear armed Russia and China -- want to face an unrestrained US. For any country in the ME, ten days to Stone Age status is generous. And their leaderships knows it.
