I was told they don’t have the triggers for them.
RE: I was told they don’t have the triggers for them.
Well, what’s the point of having them then?
“Even if you believe the United States should keep tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, is Turkey a safe place to do so?”
I suspect they are no longer in Turkey. If they are it is an error. Even if Turkey does not know the codes and triggers for the weapons a nation with sophisticated engineers, which Turkey does have, could make them operational. They would need to confiscate them from our forces. If such were to be attempted, a rather large bang would happen. We would deliver the large bang. I hope those weapons are no longer in Turkey. They are really not needed. Only a couple of our boomer submarines can annihilate all nations of threat. We have many boomer subs.
Our defense is composed of the triad of Missile, Aircraft, and subs for retaliatory nuclear strike. The logic is any of the triad can take the enemy out and even after a first strike against us can not take it all out. Those subs lurk in the deep of the arctic and Pacific and Atlantic to unleash nuclear hell if needed. They are the ultimate weapon of retaliatory destruction.
Each boomer has the capability of 192 MIRVed warheads dependent on treaty rules with the Soviets. Just one boomer can reduce any nation to a non functional nation in ruins. As mentioned we have many boomers. Each of those warheads are about 250 kilotons. Nagasaki was only 20 kilotons.
In the past we had weapons of many megatons. These are now archaic now. A properly dispersed array of smaller weapons will inflict far more damage than one big bomb. It is a function of distance from the bomb and the area of targets. If one looks at the area of a circle it expands greatly by radius, thus a few bombs of lesser yield are much better than one big bomb.