Donald Trump has had enough.
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un has bullied the world with his rogue nuclear program.
Now Trump just gave an order for the nuclear arsenal that is very bad news for North Korea.
The U.S. military is preparing to put its nuclear bombers on 24-hour alert.
They have not adopted this posture since the Cold War.
Defenseone.com reports:
“The U.S. Air Force is preparing to put nuclear-armed bombers back on 24-hour ready alert, a status not seen since the Cold War ended in 1991.
That means the long-dormant concrete pads at the ends of this base’s 11,000-foot runway — dubbed the “Christmas tree” for their angular markings — could once again find several B-52s parked on them, laden with nuclear weapons and set to take off at a moment’s notice.
“This is yet one more step in ensuring that we’re prepared,” Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, said in an interview during his six-day tour of Barksdale and other U.S. Air Force bases that support the nuclear mission. “I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure we’re prepared going forward.”
Goldfein and other senior defense officials stressed that the alert order had not been given, but that preparations were under way in anticipation that it might come. That decision would be made by Gen. John Hyten, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, or Gen. Lori Robinson, the head of U.S. Northern Command. STRATCOM is in charge of the military’s nuclear forces and NORTHCOM is in charge of defending North America.
Putting the B-52s back on alert is just one of many decisions facing the Air Force as the U.S. military responds to a changing geopolitical environment that includes North Korea’s rapidly advancing nuclear arsenal, President Trump’s confrontational approach to Pyongyang, and Russia’s increasingly potent and active armed forces.”
This news broke shortly after North Korea threatened the United States with an “unimaginable attack” ahead of U.S.-South Korea military drills.
Pyongyang views the drills as a precursor to an invasion and routinely conducts missile tests or other provocations in response.
The pending order to place America’s nuclear bombers on high alert is the Trump administration’s latest effort at deterrence.
The administration would like to force North Korea to the negotiating table and resolve the crisis peacefully.
Will this new tactic succeed?
It’s difficult to say.
North Korean officials have declared they will not negotiate until they have missiles that can strike the east coast of the United States.
And no one wants another war on the Korean Peninsula.
But North Korea is used to past U.S. Presidents who ignored their weapons program and the danger it posed.
That is not the case with Donald Trump.
We will keep you updated on any new developments in this story.
