Lets start with the name. NATO exercises follow a standardised naming convention. https://t.co/uTFNgMuTSO In this, every Steadfast exercise stands for SHAPE, and "Noon" tells you its nuclear. Its worth pointing out that even the codename of this exercise used to be secret.

So we know its a nuclear exercise being held by SHAPE. But what is it actually doing? Specifically, it practices the release procedures for allies in the NATO nuclear sharing agreement to have American B-61 bombs stationed in Europe released to them. https://t.co/FF7bseT6b3

These weapons, spread across bases in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Turkiye, and likely soon the UK, are always under the control of US Air Force personnel. In theory, they could be carried by allied aircraft in the event of nuclear use being authorised....

...by the Nuclear Planning Group in coordination with the United States, specifically the White House, in that only the US president has the formal authority to authorise the release and use of American nuclear weapons.

This type of exercise has been going on for a long time, throughout the Cold War. However, there were some differences. First, simulated nuclear strikes were a staple of both NATO and Warsaw Pact exercise scenarios. Up until at least 1975, every NATO exercise...

...featured general nuclear use, initiated by NATO, against Warsaw Pact forces. By 1981, these exercises featured only "selective" use, and was almost always done on allied territory to stop an advance. All the way in 1989 NATO simulated nuclear strikes inside Turkiye!

Intriguingly, there have been open questions both during and since the Cold War on two major points: 1) does the US really have solid civilian control over these weapons and 2) does US planning differ significantly from NATO thinking on nuclear use?

In short, part of my broader doctoral research on NATO, building on the great works of Francis Gavin and Frank Miller, answers that: 1) No the US did not, and 2) Yes it very much did Frank Miller wrote, and other sources have substantiated like Daniel Ellsberg's memoirs....

That the military planners at the Pentagon, particularly the JCS and Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff, resisted assertions of civilian control over planning and even release procedures. https://t.co/FdqMgqLkpx https://t.co/9iBjIzZCXQ

Both Miller and Gavin have shown that, from Eisenhower through to at least the first Bush administration, the JSTPS and SAC kept civilians in the dark about whether presidential guidance actually made it into plans (it did not). US plans did not reflect flexible response at all!

In relation to NATO, my research found two things: 1) A Carter administration document showing SecDef Brown's knowledge that US plans and NATO plans differed to a significant degree and...

2) SecGen Dirk Stikker had begun at least in 1983 to "question our continued public assertions concerning the absolute nature of NATO's political control over the employment of nuclear weapons."

Taken together with much other evidence, which you can find here, https://t.co/Rk8GFb3eSk, There are a lot of questions still out there. If the US was not actually planning for flexible response, what it did it mean that NATO was?

Did the Pentagon create a Cold War risk that left NATO allies exposed to nuclear blackmail or overconfident in US assurances? Interesting stuff to keep working on.

So what might all this mean for Steadfast Noon today? The main historical takeaway is that, while annual and routine exercise, there is a LOT going on behind the scenes that not even all practitioners are aware of. Nuclear history is never reassuring....nor should it be...