President Donald Trump is often far too trusting of the KGB Red Banner Institute-trained manipulator, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Still, no one can legitimately accuse Trump of being foolish in the face of Putin’s nuclear weapons threat to the United States.

Flight tracking websites show that at least two aircraft transited this month from a nuclear weapons storage base in New Mexico to the Royal Air Force Lakenheath base in England. The aircraft were carrying B61-12 nuclear bombs. RAF Lakenheath is owned by the RAF but operated by the U.S. Air Force. It hosts two USAF F-15E squadrons and two F-35A fighter squadrons. All these aircraft can employ the B61-12. The transport aircraft kept their transponders activated to show their route, indicating that the Defense Department sought to send a message to Russia with these deliveries.

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This weapons deployment was necessary as global nuclear threats rise.

Today, Russia has more than 4,300 nuclear warheads in service or reserve. China has around 600 warheads but is rapidly expanding its stockpile. North Korea has around 50 warheads. The U.S. has around 3,700 warheads. But while numbers matter, the centerpiece of effective nuclear deterrence is the ability to deter and defeat an adversary across the spectrum of prospective threats. The B61-12 addresses the specific threat of a Russian nuclear weapons attack against U.S. or allied targets in Europe using a small-yield nuclear weapon.

This isn’t the first time Trump has strengthened the U.S.’s nuclear deterrence against Russia. During his first term, Trump abandoned former President Barack Obama’s appeasement-minded approach by authorizing the Navy’s deployment of a new nuclear warhead, the W76-2, on its nuclear ballistic missile submarines. These weapons have a small yield of 5-7 kilotons and are designed for missions that do not necessitate the use of larger yield strategic nuclear weapons.

Trump’s forceful stance here is overdue.

Like Obama, former President Joe Biden was overly deferential to Putin’s nuclear force posture. Biden slow-rolled the delivery of certain weapons to Ukraine in deference to Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons if Biden did so. And as vice president, Biden suggested that he would never use nuclear weapons in a first-strike capacity. That rhetoric represented a dangerous triumph of virtue signaling over harder realities, as in Ukraine. Both Russia and China are developing nuclear forces that threaten to militarily outmatch and politically outmaneuver the U.S. Consider Russia’s development of a nuclear weapons system designed to destroy U.S. satellite constellations, for example.

Trump’s B61-12 deployment wasn’t about brinkmanship. Rather, it was about making U.S. adversaries aware that the U.S. is ready to defend itself across the spectrum of nuclear warfare.

The B61-12 is a tactical gravity bomb designed for battlefield operations short of full-scale nuclear war. The weapon has small warhead yields ranging from 0.3 kilotons to 50 kilotons. To put that in perspective, alongside the aforementioned W76-2, the Navy’s ballistic missile submarines carry W76-1 and W88 nuclear warheads with respective yields of up to 100 kilotons and 475 kilotons. Air Force-operated land-based LGM-30 Minuteman warheads have yields upward of 300 kilotons.

Why does the B61-12’s deployment to the United Kingdom matter?

First, putting nuclear weapons in the hands of four highly trained fighter squadrons at RAF Lakenheath increases the U.S. military’s readiness. As the U.S.’s closest ally, the U.K. would also be far less likely than other allies to deny or obstruct the U.S.’s use of nuclear weapons in a crisis.

Second, it better addresses possible scenarios in which Russia might employ low-yield tactical nuclear weapons during a conflict. Absent NATO’s readily deployable low-yield nuclear weapons, the alliance risks being unable to either effectively deter or adequately respond to a limited Russian nuclear attack. That deterrence mission failure would then pose a significant risk of splitting NATO unity during war by dividing allies between countries that wished to respond to a Russian tactical nuclear attack with a larger high-yield strategic nuclear attack, and countries that feared that such a response would risk nuclear holocaust. Russia wants to believe it could use a tactical nuclear weapons attack to escalate a conflict so that NATO de-escalates into a Moscow-favorable ceasefire. But by matching Russia at every level, Trump can deny Putin his nuclear freedom of action.

Notably, the Defense Department has moved nuclear weapons to the U.K. at this very moment. After all, Trump recently increased the provision of advanced weapons to Ukraine. Trump has further threatened Putin with powerful new sanctions on his critical energy export industry if Putin does not agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine by the end of next week. Putin has often responded to similar actions with nuclear threats.

At the strategic level, then, these deployments signify that Trump won’t easily blink in the face of future nuclear blackmail. At the tactical level, this lets Russia know that if it ever employs a tactical nuclear weapon against NATO, it will quickly find a U.S. tactical nuclear weapon landing on a Russian stronghold such as its Kaliningrad military exclave. The overriding objective here is to remind Putin that it is Russia, not the U.S., that will suffer the outsize loss in any nuclear confrontation.

Contrary to Putin’s claims of nuclear supremacy over the U.S., there is a high likelihood that the U.S. would triumph over Russia in a full-scale nuclear war. This is primarily because the Navy’s ballistic missile force and the Air Force’s stealth fighter and bomber forces are superior to their Russian equivalents. Where U.S. attack submarines track Russian ballistic missile submarines with high effectiveness, Russian attack submarines struggle to accomplish the same mission in reverse. The U.S.’s B-2 bombers are also far more advanced than their aged and much-depleted Russian counterparts.

Yes, Russia has made advances in hypersonic vehicles designed to carry nuclear warheads at speeds and on courses that make missile defenses impotent. Still, these systems do not fundamentally alter the balance of offensive power. The U.S. is also deploying hypersonic systems and, as noted, Russian nuclear delivery platforms are far more vulnerable to the U.S. military than vice versa. And we can’t fixate only on weapons in the public domain. Withholding some details for national security reasons, the Washington Examiner understands that the U.S. made classified advances in deployed hypersonic vehicle technology at least 20 years ago. So, while the Kremlin and its state media apparatchiks regularly screech that they own the nuclear game, Putin remains deterred by U.S. nuclear forces. Trump is making sure it always stays that way.

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NATO’s two other nuclear allies are stepping up to support its bolstered deterrence posture. Last year, France conducted a public nuclear strike exercise and emphasized its willingness to protect Europe with its independent nuclear deterrence. The U.K. has also purchased nuclear-capable F-35A fighter jets, such as those at RAF Lakenheath, so it has aircraft for nuclear missions. This will complement the U.K. ballistic missile submarine force.

Trump’s statements on Russia and toward Putin are often somewhat deluded. But here, at least, he deserves credit for putting U.S. and allied security interests first.