Trident

[Bletchleyite]

They would suffer in the same way as my wife and children and I wouldn't have a problem with that. I would be looking for vengeance.

What, against people who didn't have any part in the decision?

An interesting definition of vengeance.

 

[ainsworth74]

It's not really independent though.

Depends on what you mean by independent.

Is it operationally independent? Absolutely. The Prime Minister could decide tomorrow that they've had quite enough of Belgium and their silly waffles and chocolates thank you very much and obliterate them and there is nothing that could be done to stop that (though you'd hope the Chief of the Defence Staff would refuse the order as clearly insane).

Is it completely independent? No not really. We are reliant on the US to a great degree to supply us with the missiles and if they decided to cancel our present agreement then within a short period of time (probably a few months out to a year or so) the deterrent would become inoperable unless we were willing to invest the treasure to either develop the ability to maintain the missile on hand or to procure another system (I suspect the French wouldn't object to us joining their programme).

It may be a deterrent to Russia, but all you need to do is let Russia THINK you have nukes- you don't actually need to have them...

Like a poster above, I do think we should have just said we're doing it and then spent the money on something else. Just make sure that Putin and Co think we have WMDs and can launch in 45 seconds... Maybe creating a dossier for them.

How do you know that's not exactly what we are doing? The current Vanguard submarines could be carrying anything and once they vanish beneath the waves doing anything and going anywhere! We'd hardly broadcast far and wide if we were just pretending would we!?

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

If we compare Trident with HS2....

I think, looking at a comparative matter to strike fear is not HS2, but our very own Class 142 units....

 

[miami]

Why bother? Can you really conjure up a scenario where the US would attack us?

I can't conjure up a situation where any sane person would attack us with nuclear weapons, nor can I conjure up a situation where any insane person would not attack us with nuclear weapons because we may fire back.

The most likely use of nuclear warheads would be in some form of asteroid deflection, however Trident missiles, and Thatcher-class submarines, won't help there.

Besides the real threat is the French.

And how would refugees manage to make it all the way to Russia, let alone China?

You may note that refugees reach europe from Africa and the Middle East. After a nuclear attack - when UK citizens survive (which they will) - the best hope for those people is to
1) keep the damage to the planet to a minimum to maximise survival chances
2) keep the infrastructure of the planet well enough to hope they can be fed, have medical care, and keep law and order
3) Don't be in a situation where British citizens can be blamed by survivors for causing the mess, or causing it to be worse

Whether we have the capability, those aims are best met by not launching.

At any point there are 6 or 7 million British citizens abroad. The PM has a responsibility to those people, who will still be alive after a nuclear attack on the UK. In no way can launching a nuclear missile help any British citizen, either the survivors on the mainland or those abroad. Would British citizens on holiday in Japan thank us if we launched a post-strike retaliatory attack on Beijing, and the fallout hit Japan? Would British ctizens in New Zealand thank us for contributing to the end of the world? Or would our citizens face a lynching? Those on business in Canada may not appreciate a global famine causing them to starve to death.
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I think, looking at a comparative matter to strike fear is not HS2, but our very own Class 142 units....

Didn't we send some to Iran, and then ended up with 30 years of animosity?

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Didn't we send some to Iran, and then ended up with 30 years of animosity?

Actually I believe the 141s were a sort-of Olive Branch. Not sure they were taken as such though!

 

[Railops]

No we should not renew trident. Why have we been given this false dichotomy between unilateral disarmament and blowing huge sums of public funds on a now virtually useless sledgehammer nutcracker is beyond me. Our main defence threat is the Islamic far right. But they operate in geographically dispersed cells. You can't nuke Isis, so no help against that. Yes we have a resurgent Russia, but it's not the power it used to be and I doubt we're their enemy number one, more like joint fifth. North Korea's weapons tend to go plop in the ocean and could maybe reach bits of China or the western extremities of Hawaii at the best. Iran hasn't developed anything weaponisable yet and we could renew faster than they could invent. We have semi-reliable nuclear armed allies such as the USA and France.

You have a remarkable skill in being able to accurately predict the military capabilities of the entire world in 20-50 years time which is the timescale we're talking about.
Most analysts would be very happy if they could accurately forecast what the strength of the worlds armed forces might be in 5 years.
Your ability to see into the future is truly breathtaking.

 

[Muttley]

The missiles do indeed come from a pool in the USA but as there is always one Vanguard submarine at sea with a complement of Trident missiles, this has very little effect on operations.

Not anymore. Our 24/7 coverage stopped a couple of years ago as a cost cutting measure.

 

[Johnuk123]

Not anymore. Our 24/7 coverage stopped a couple of years ago as a cost cutting measure.

Can you point to proof of that ?

 

[me123]

I disagree with Trident and I am disappointed, but not remotely surprised, that we are renewing it.

The doctrine of mutually assured destruction alongside the global political situation (including our place in the world) means that we aren't going to use it until such a point that our own demise is inevitable. Supporters will say that this protects us, but forget that any nation using such force would face a huge global backlash in retaliation - we don't need Trident, our allies are our Trident. That is one of the main reasons why we simply don't need them.

Besides, no-one is going to attack us with nuclear missiles. No-one has any interest in attacking us. At the moment, the biggest threat comes from Daesh who are not even remotely close to developing nuclear capabilities. As for threats from Russia, get real. Relations with Russia may be poor but Putin is not going to nuke the West. I'm yet to be convinced that North Korea's nuclear capabilities are anything more than a masquerade, but even if they aren't, again NK would be foolish to use them.

If we did launch a nuclear missile, we'd all be dead anyway (because, as I've said above, we're highly unlikely to use it until one was on its way here). So what is the point in destroying even more of the world? Paulweaver has pointed out that our countrymen and indeed international friends overseas wouldn't think much of us for making things worse for them.

Multilateral disarmament is of course the best way to proceed in this debate, but why wait until that's going to happen. Someone needs to take the first step and I think we've missed that opportunity. I think we should have voted against replacing Trident and voted to abolish the nuclear deterrent. We should then have used this to encourage other nations to abandon their nuclear programme, and perhaps have made the world as a whole a better place. We'd have saved billions of pounds that we could invest in the people of our country. We wouldn't be any less safe.

 

[kegdr]

Not anymore. Our 24/7 coverage stopped a couple of years ago as a cost cutting measure.

The UK's nuclear deterrent strategy is one of continuous at sea deterrent. 24/7 coverage is still in force.

 

[WelshBluebird]

If anyone hasn't seen Mhairi Black's speech from yesterday, I would suggest you watch it online.
Summed up the points against renewing Trident very well.

Basically the 3 big threats we face are terrorism, global warming and cyber attacks.
For two of those things weapons of any kind are not relevant. And for one of them, the threat we face is organised and spread out in such a way that even if they did somehow managed to get hold of nukes and attack us, who the hell would we fire ours to? Iraq, Syria, ourselves (since most terrorists are home grown)?

If someone attacks you, then defending yourself is a reasonable thing to do.

Except what RichmondCommu has been suggesting isn't defending yourself. It is simply vengeance / revenge. There is a massive difference.

In the future if I ever have kids, of course I will teach them to defend themselves and hit back if needed. But I certainly won't be teaching them to enact revenge in a violent way.

 

[asylumxl]

News such as this is always welcome news in Barrow-in-Furness.

I am all for the retention of our nuclear deterrent.

I'm guessing you also have some shares in your portfolio from the various companies involved in the programme :P.

 

[mikeg]

I'm guessing you also have some shares in your portfolio from the various companies involved in the programme :P.

Lol! Also just because it creates jobs and supports livelihoods doesn't mean it's good on the whole. I'm sure investment banking, tobacco and even recreational drugs support many livelihoods whilst ruining many others. The solution is to rebalance towards things with fewer negative externalities. That energy coast project the Tories cancelled/scaled down would also have been a job-creator in the area and is one area of nuclear which I strongly favour.
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You have a remarkable skill in being able to accurately predict the military capabilities of the entire world in 20-50 years time which is the timescale we're talking about.
Most analysts would be very happy if they could accurately forecast what the strength of the worlds armed forces might be in 5 years.
Your ability to see into the future is truly breathtaking.

No, I don't and I don't claim to. But often the best way is to look at the situation now from which the future will derive. The trend has thus far been away from state warfare and towards guerilla warfare and terrorism. This shows little sign of abating. Of course we could just base everything on highly unlikely tail risks but given that we don't do it elsewhere (I see no similar money being spent to abate a supervolcano, for example) let's go on probability. Of course the future is never certain, but sometimes it's rational to take risk, especially when the outcome of not taking risk has pretty much always proven to be the worst result.

 

[GrimsbyPacer]

Surely if World War 3 was to break out (which is a possibillity in the future) it would make us a target.

Here's a hypothetical scenario...
It's 2020 and President Trump's wig fall onto the big red button, a few mins later all big Russian cities are about to be hit and the Russians fire back...
Would they nuke the other nuclear NATO allies, probably, would they nuke a non nuclear nation like Germany, probably not.

If a nuclear war does happen (god forbid!), the nuclear countries are going to be the targets so this puts the UK at more risk than neighbouring Ireland.

And in cases where a non-nuclear country attacks the UK, say Spain invading Gibraltar, Cyprus invading Akrotiri, Ireland invading Northern Ireland, or Holland invading Norfolk etc etc...
What would killing millions of innocents in the most painful way achieve?
Probably the whole world viewing us are an evil rogue state that's as bad as Nazi Germany.

There is not one case where nukes makes us more safe, they are the only thing that can destroy humanity in the short turn and all need scrapping.
Would Russia really want to nuke a nuclear free area they want to invade?
No as they'd have the radiation problem and no one wants the radiation.

The money saved could buy conventional military stuff which can actually be used.

 

[Phil.]

The thing with a Nuclear deterrent is that even if you have it, you hope you never need it. If ever you do need it, the world is ending as we know it anyway. Therefore, why bother? It is no deterrent to the likes of Da'ish, so won't help in that fight. It may be a deterrent to Russia, but all you need to do is let Russia THINK you have nukes- you don't actually need to have them...

So why not spend the money on something worthwhile, just tell Putin & co that you're building a few nuclear submarines...

You underestimate how good Russian intelligence is aided and abetted by CND nutters here. If we sent a boat to sea without it's buckets of sunshine Ivan would soon know.

 

[JamesRowden]

Why bother? The best bet for the citizens of the UK if a nuclear strike occurs is to hope the country attacking (China, Russia, US?) will be strong enough to cope with the British refugees.

Returning fire would show that our nuclear deterrent is not a bluff and that if the enemy want mutually assured destruction they can have it.
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The nuclear deterrent isn't just about deterring nuclear attacks either.

 

[Phil.]

Surely if World War 3 was to break out (which is a possibillity in the future) it would make us a target.

Here's a hypothetical scenario...
It's 2020 and President Trump's wig fall onto the big red button, a few mins later all big Russian cities are about to be hit and the Russians fire back...
Would they nuke the other nuclear NATO allies, probably, would they nuke a non nuclear nation like Germany, probably not.

If a nuclear war does happen (god forbid!), the nuclear countries are going to be the targets so this puts the UK at more risk than neighbouring Ireland.

And in cases where a non-nuclear country attacks the UK, say Spain invading Gibraltar, Cyprus invading Akrotiri, Ireland invading Northern Ireland, or Holland invading Norfolk etc etc...
What would killing millions of innocents in the most painful way achieve?
Probably the whole world viewing us are an evil rogue state that's as bad as Nazi Germany.

There is not one case where nukes makes us more safe, they are the only thing that can destroy humanity in the short turn and all need scrapping.
Would Russia really want to nuke a nuclear free area they want to invade?
No as they'd have the radiation problem and no one wants the radiation.

The money saved could buy conventional military stuff which can actually be used.

There is no big red button for a President - or a Prime Minister for that matter - to press. I said in an earlier post, the only thing that stopped Ivan rolling over the plains of Germany and on to us was the tactical weapons that R.A.F.G. had at it's disposal with a willingness to use them. Would Russia want to invade a nuked area? No, for the same reason that 2,000 years ago the Romans salted the earth and poisoned the wells of their foes. It effectively neutralises them. The leftists in the CND are naïve enough to believe that if we get rid of our weapons potential enemies will get rid of theirs. This is the real world, it don't work like that. Russia is building it's arsenal to unprecedented levels whilst we're running ours down. In 1960 the Royal Navy had more Destroyers than they have capital ships today. The Royal Air Force had more Hunters than front line aircraft today. They have to put training aircraft up for a fly-past nowadays.

 

[90019]

The thing with a Nuclear deterrent is that even if you have it, you hope you never need it. If ever you do need it, the world is ending as we know it anyway. Therefore, why bother? It is no deterrent to the likes of Da'ish, so won't help in that fight. It may be a deterrent to Russia, but all you need to do is let Russia THINK you have nukes- you don't actually need to have them...

But if you wanted to fool the Russians into thinking we have them, you'd have to make everyone else think that, too.
So how do you know we haven't already done so.

 

[Railops]

I do think we should have just said we're doing it and then spent the money on something else.

Brilliant observation, I wonder why nobody has ever thought of that very clever and intelligent idea before.

 

[jon0844]

Brilliant observation, I wonder why nobody has ever thought of that very clever and intelligent idea before.

Because it didn't work out so well for Saddam?

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[Johnuk123]

Because it didn't work out so well for Saddam?

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Correct, it didn't.

 

[Railops]

Because it didn't work out so well for Saddam?

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Trying to hide a few barrels of nerve gas and chemicals is not on the same scale as trying to dupe the whole world you're a nuclear power when the weapons are really made of cardboard.

 

[TheKnightWho]

They would suffer in the same way as my wife and children and I wouldn't have a problem with that. I would be looking for vengeance.

Vengeance against innocent Russians?

 

[Gutfright]

Can we be certain that Russian and Chinese intelligence don't already know exactly where our nuclear subs are at any given moment? If they do they could easily take them out before nuking Milton Keynes or wherever off the map.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I'm guessing you also have some shares in your portfolio from the various companies involved in the programme :P.

Having just researched matters after viewing your posting, I hold no shares whatsoever in any of those companies to which you allude. Not because I once admired the ethical stance of the Co-operative Bank on such matters prior to the stupidity of a top official, but because I pay my brokers to look at the best international markets in which to invest.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Surely if World War 3 was to break out (which is a possibillity in the future) it would make us a target.

Here's a hypothetical scenario...
It's 2020 and President Trump's wig fall onto the big red button, a few mins later all big Russian cities are about to be hit and the Russians fire back...
Would they nuke the other nuclear NATO allies, probably, would they nuke a non nuclear nation like Germany, probably not.

If a nuclear war does happen (god forbid!), the nuclear countries are going to be the targets so this puts the UK at more risk than neighbouring Ireland.

Have you ever watched the film....Dr.Strangelove?

 

[Phil.]

Can we be certain that Russian and Chinese intelligence don't already know exactly where our nuclear subs are at any given moment? If they do they could easily take them out before nuking Milton Keynes or wherever off the map.

A little while ago there was a programme on the idiot box - I seem to recall it was titled, "The Silent War" - about the cold war submarine service. Several U.S. and Russian serving and retired officers were interviewed. All of them came up with the same answer. We could find the U.S. and Russian boats but they could never work out where ours were. The most telling one was the R.N. officer calmly explaining how he was photographing the latest Russian warships on exercise in the Baltic without them having a clue that his boat was there.
They truly are the "Silent Service" and without them you just might be learning to speak Russian at school.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

A little while ago there was a programme on the idiot box - I seem to recall it was titled, "The Silent War" - about the cold war submarine service. Several U.S. and Russian serving and retired officers were interviewed. All of them came up with the same answer. We could find the U.S. and Russian boats but they could never work out where ours were. The most telling one was the R.N. officer calmly explaining how he was photographing the latest Russian warships on exercise in the Baltic without them having a clue that his boat was there.
They truly are the "Silent Service" and without them you just might be learning to speak Russian at school.

Maybe we never really had nuclear subs all along...

 

[fowler9]

No one apart from an absolute nutter is going to use them and an absolute nutter is not going to be put off with us having them. Nothing apart from a massive Nuclear attack is going to wipe out NATO and if there is a massive nuclear attack then the people people who launched it will be buggered to purely by the global fallout.

It is utterly pointless and as for revenge.... Wipe out the planet to get your own back. Sounds like something off Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy.

 

[Harbornite]

No one apart from an absolute nutter is going to use them and an absolute nutter is not going to be put off with us having them. Nothing apart from a massive Nuclear attack is going to wipe out NATO and if there is a massive nuclear attack then the people people who launched it will be buggered to purely by the global fallout.

It is utterly pointless and as for revenge.... Wipe out the planet to get your own back. Sounds like something off Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy.

The risk of such a war is low due to these deterrents.

 

[Arglwydd Golau]

The risk of such a war is low due to these deterrents.

Not quite sure what you mean there...if there were no nuclear weapons there would be no risk at all of such a war. There were many proxy wars during the Cold War.