Germany’s Luftwaffe will deploy three Tornado fighter aircraft to Aviano Air Base in northern Italy for NATO’s annual Steadfast Noon nuclear exercise, which begins on 13 October. The jets, from Tactical Air Wing 33 at Büchel, will join forces from 17 NATO countries in a drill hosted by Italy and scheduled to run for about a week and a half.
Steadfast Noon rehearses the alliance’s ability to defend NATO territory under its nuclear-sharing arrangement, including coordination between participating forces and procedures for handling and delivering nuclear weapons. The exercise will use only inert practice bombs; no live nuclear weapons are involved.
NATO has not disclosed the detailed scenario or operational procedures. The alliance has described this year’s activity as comparable in scale with last year’s exercise, which involved about 2,000 personnel and more than 70 aircraft.
Germany does not possess nuclear weapons, but aircraft assigned to NATO nuclear sharing could, in an extreme contingency, deliver US B61 bombs stored in Europe. The presence of such weapons at Büchel has not been officially confirmed. NATO describes the exercise as routine and not directed against any specific country, although its timing is being viewed in the context of heightened concern over Russia.