Slowburn
If there was ever a boat (or ship) and class suitable for the name "Vengeance" a nuclear deterrent is it.
Nostromo47
Isn't the Cold War over with the need to provide an aggressive deterrent? What is this push to spend billions to develop and deploy the latest and the greatest killing machines by rich nations? The US, Russia and China are developing the next generation bomber and fifth generation fighters at enormous expense. Destabilizing Starwars projects continue producing only ineffectual results. Hypersonics is the new frontier for manned and unmanned ISR and strike aircraft. If the British need to stimulate their economy by expanding technologically, why don't they spend money on a space program and just maintain their current submarine force as it is? It's hard to imagine that their security needs would be compromised by taking that route instead.
Nelson Hyde Chick
It is sad and pathetic how much money goes into crap like this that if we are lucky will ever need, and if used will destroy everything anyway.
Mel Tisdale
Unless there is a fundamental change in the arrangements, the U.K. does not own any Trident nuclear missiles, it leases them, with the very real possibility that the lease agreement can be cancelled at short notice.
One has to acknowledge that one Trident D5 missile has the capability to take the U.S.A. back to the Dark Ages. A submarineful can take it back to the Stone Age. They are not going to let the U.K. have that competence without retaining control over it, something that will be obvious to any potential foe the U.K. might face. It follows, therefore, that the U.K. is very unlikely be allowed by the U.S.A. to use its Trident missiles because that would automatically make the U.S.A. a target for giving its permission to use them.
Over and above the obvious, we have to recognise that with miniscule C.E.P.s and MIRV technology, Trident D5 is not designed to provide a deterrent at all, it is designed to destroy the deterrence ability of any foe by destroying their command, control, communication and intelligence facilities, no matter what the U.K. government might have to say on the matter. That makes the only 'defence' possible 'launch on warning'. Let's just hope that Microsoft doesn't have any input into such a system. "Oops!" won't cut it, I'm afraid.
The U.K., along with the other nuclear armed states, has missed a glorious opportunity to make the world a much safer place by not banning MIRV delivery systems. That is something we may live (or die) to regret as the peace that broke out in the late 80s slowly disappears from sight.
Removing MIRV should preferably be accompanied by a minimum CEP of 400 meters (as with Trident C4), but monitoring compliance is an obvious problem. The best option for the U.K. would be hunter-killer subs equipped with U.K. designed and built long-range nuclear armed cruise missiles capable of delivering a retaliation for any nuclear attack.
Having said all that, a nuclear attack on any nation today will most likely come in the form of an Hiroshima sized device packed into a briefcase or the boot of a car. (Try putting the bits back together in order to get fingerprints, the way they did with the Lockerbie bomb!)
We live in the 21st century, it is about time our politicians grew up and found something safer to play with and consigned those from a different era to the waste bin where they belong.
JAT
Amen to all the above comments. this is a wast of money and just makes the world LESS safe. I suppose the politicians just don't want to admit that Britannia no longer rules the waves... JAT
Slowburn
@ Nostromo47 That bit about Russia and the PRC explain why Great Britain needs the deterrent.
@ Mel Tisdale For there to be a ban you have to be able to enforce it. Also MIRVed warheads just reduce the number of launchers making an unintentional launch less likely.
What "magic" device makes a Missile on Royal Navy Boat be under the control of any third party. There is no reason to believe that the missiles could not be aimed at targets in the USofA.
I think the Brits made a mistake in not developing their own ICBM because the difference between an ICBM and an orbital launcher is the payload.
nutcase
FYI Mel Tisdale the lease terms are public knowledge and clearly state that the UK may use the missiles at her independent discretion. The UK government did not follow the United States who installed devices making it impossible for a submarine commander to launch a nuclear missile without a launch code from the president. It is possible for a British Naval Officer to launch an unauthorised nuclear attack. His US equivalent has no such power. Finally, the Trident-II D5 has "sufficient payload and accuracy to be considered a First Strike Weapon" Let's be honest, we're talking aggression here, not deterrence.
Mel Tisdale
@ slowburn and nutcase
I don't know what specific mechanism prohibits the U.K.'s use of Trident, but one that comes to mind is for the missiles to require a component of the GPS signal to include a flight permission code, without which the missile would not fire up or continue if had fired up.
"Let's be honest, we're talking aggression here, not deterrence."
Exactly the point I was making. Gorbachev just arrived in time to stop the carnage. The West was about to deploy Trident D5 in sufficient numbers to be able to launch a pre-emptive first-strike and the USSR was playing catch-up. If neither side had launched such a strike we would have had the equivalent of two warring neighbours facing each other with snipers' rifles, compared to the blunderbusses they had been used to (Polaris, Poseidon etc.). the earlier weapons were a deterrent. Trident D5 is an anti-deterrent. How long do you think that the West would have waited before taking the advantage they had. You might remember the bellicose nature of the rhetoric of the time. One thing we can be sure of is that whichever side fired first would be able to claim all kinds of intelligence that said the other side were going to attack. That other side would be too busy burying its dead to put any defence, and they would not have been believed.
As for monitoring compliance with a MIRV ban, it is easy to count warhead during the inspections that would have been part of any treaty negotiation. CEP compliance would be another matter entirely.
On a visit to NATO headquarters in 1990 a NATO official admitted that they were so concerned about the "destabilisation" that was going to result from the deployment of Trident, they "were having meetings at the highest level to discuss the matter." Remember this was at a time when peace had broken out. Indeed, the day after our visit, Werner, the then Secretary General, was due to meet Gorbachev, something that would have been unthinkable a year or so earlier. It they were worried I think we had a right to be too, but all we got from the politicians and the media was that it was a deterrent and essential. If only!
I would have supported (but not very enthusiastically) Trident C4, perhaps with extended range to give more deep water available for patrols. (Submarines do not disappear when they submerge, far from it.)
nutcase
GPS is always assumed to be unavailable during a nuclear conflict and no decent ICBM designer would dare to rely on it.
The Trident II D5 like all ICBMs uses inertial guidance with star-fix assistance.
Edgar Castelo
...And this, while Old, World War II Hero Britons die on Hospital Corridors! And you get 5 years jail-time for having a Swiss Army knife in your pocket. Mister Bean School of Governance!