Thanks for your interest, Sandiego89
I would wonder if the B61 is viable for release from US stores, or are you thinking UK built under licence? I am aware of the unique relationship between the USA and UK, and the previously "shared" programs and the physics pacakges on the Trident, but I wonder if the political climate would be there for such sharing, and for the return to air dropped weapons.
The NPT rules out the transfer of weapons, so the warheads would be built at AWE. No obvious problem with the purchase of non-nuclear US components, but that would await an official request.
If your paper is addressing cost savings as a major factor, perhaps you should address RAF carriage of air dropped stores as well, unless you want this to be a UK Navy show only. RAF has more recent experience with such weapons.
Quite right, it would be an RAF/FAA show - all F-35 orders would become F-35Cs (nb, significant unit cost and through life savings, ignoring the superior performance of the C) and nuclear IOC would be RAF from Marham, before nuclear IOC from carriers after reconstruction to take EMALS and traps.
Tomahawk may be worth talking about as well (SSN launched).
We've looked at Tomahawk and it presents both a nuclear signalling problem (ie, if you're XYZ country of interest, how do you tell then difference in the warhead) and with the USN retiring Tomahawk-N (itself a Block I design, IIRC) there's no obvious synergies with the US. B61-12, however, will become the NATO DCA weapon, and the US standard free-fall weapon (some B61-11s will remain for the B-2 force).
Cheers,
TTr