Nuclear Sharing

Nuclear sharing is a Cold War–era policy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) through which the United States forward-deploys tactical nuclear weapons—currently B61 gravity bombs—on the territory of several non-nuclear-weapon allies. In peacetime the warheads remain under exclusive U.S. custody and protected by Permissive Action Links, but in the event of general war NATO's Nuclear Planning Group could authorize their release, after which host-nation dual-capable aircraft (DCA) would deliver them.

The publicly acknowledged host states are Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Türkiye. Participating air forces train with aircraft such as the F-16, Panavia Tornado, and increasingly the F-35A, which is being certified to carry the modernized B61-12. Non-host allies also contribute through SNOWCAT (Support of Nuclear Operations With Conventional Air Tactics) missions.

The arrangement is politically contentious. Critics, including many non-aligned states and disarmament NGOs, argue that transferring control of nuclear weapons to a non-nuclear state in wartime would violate Articles I and II of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which prohibit nuclear-weapon states from transferring such weapons and non-nuclear-weapon states from receiving them. The United States and NATO counter that the NPT does not apply in a situation of general war when the treaty itself would no longer govern, and that interpretive understandings recorded during the NPT's 1968 negotiation preserved existing sharing arrangements.

The topic returned to prominence after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine and Moscow's 2023 announcement that it would station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus—an arrangement the Kremlin explicitly compared to NATO nuclear sharing. Debates in Poland and South Korea about hosting U.S. weapons, and Germany's 2022 decision to procure F-35As to maintain its DCA role, have kept the policy at the center of extended-deterrence discussions.