General Caine Tightens the Noose on Putin’s Nuclear Bluster

Ouch!

7:00 AM local time. July 15, 2025.

One week after President Trump humiliated the Pentagon by overturning its decision to pause military aid to Ukraine — and just three days after he assured Chancellor Merz that he was ready to sell Patriot air defense systems to Europe — a C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft, flight number RCH4574, lifted off from its base at Lewis–McChord in Washington State.

Its first destination: Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico — the hub of U.S. Air Force nuclear operations, and home to the largest nuclear weapons storage facility in the world. The Kirtland Underground Munitions Maintenance and Storage Complex houses a vast portion of America’s nuclear arsenal, including gravity bombs and warheads.

Open-source investigators, including the highly reliable Nukewatch UK, confirm that “the aircraft almost certainly loaded up with a cargo of anything up to 20 newly manufactured B61–12 nuclear weapons — a new, modernized version of the U.S. Air Force’s principal nuclear gravity bomb, offering greater accuracy than older variants of the weapon.”

The following day, on July 16, the C-17 took off, crossed the Atlantic, and was refueled mid-flight by tanker aircrafts. It reached the Royal Air Force base at Lakenheath in the United Kingdom the next day. On the day of arrival, security at Lakenheath was so intense that a strict ‘no-fly’ restriction was enforced over a…