>It’s not healthy to dwell too long on the actual practicalities of nuclear deterrence, but just imagine the following scenario for a moment: London, Birmingham and Manchester have fallen, the British state reduced to radioactive rubble. There is no more military command; even Radio 4 is silent. Thousands of miles away, somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, the letters of last resort — sealed instructions from the late British prime minister that until now were locked in a safe — have been opened for the very first time: “Retaliate.”
>The commander of HMS Vanguard puts away the letters, and instructs his crew: “Missiles for strategic launch”. Checks are completed, the final order is given, the red trigger is pressed: nuclear missiles are on their way to Moscow.
>That, at least, is what you — and Vladimir Putin — are meant to think could theoretically happen. But deterrence is based on fear, and news of a dysfunctional missile test-firing threatened to blow a hole in our nuclear insurance policy.
>A test strike from HMS Vanguard — fresh from a seven-year refit and with defence secretary Grant Shapps on board — was meant to send an unarmed Trident missile more than 3,000 miles over the Atlantic. Yet instead of reaching Mach 18 (about 13,800mph), the rocket failed to ignite, “plopping” back into the sea just a few yards away.
>Publicly, Shapps blamed an “anomaly” and said he retained “absolute confidence” in Trident (despite its last British test in 2016 also failing, when a missile veered off course towards the US and had to self-destruct). Yet this latest ill-fated test, which happened weeks ago but was only leaked last week, suggests all is not well within the Defence Nuclear Enterprise, the umbrella organisation responsible for Britain’s “continuous at sea” deterrent, which has been permanently engaged since 1969.
>There are plenty of indications, however, that Britain’s nuclear programme is increasingly unaffordable and unfit for purpose. Our Vanguard-class nuclear submarines, of which there are four, were built in the late 1980s and early 1990s and are long past their intended use date, meaning costs have spiralled. Their replacements, the Dreadnought class, will not arrive until the 2030s.
>The National Audit Office suggests the nuclear deterrent will end up costing £117.8 billion in the decade to 2033, some £7.9 billion over budget. Because the nuclear budget is ring-fenced, everything else in the military budget — replacing the rest of the creaking navy fleet, for example — will suffer.
>A government defence source says ministers had given the first sea lord, Admiral Sir Ben Key, a simple brief with respect to the navy: “Get what you have working.” The source adds: “A deterrent that doesn’t work isn’t a deterrent. It has to be seen to work. At the moment it isn’t seen to work.”
>It’s worth a reminder of how Britain came to have a nuclear deterrent. The British bomb was conceived in the aftermath of the Second World War, amid deep anxiety about our standing in the world.
>In 1952, Britain became the world’s third nuclear country, after the US and Russia, but the programme was always viewed as interdependent with America’s bomb, according to Sir Lawrence Freedman, author of the seminal 1981 work The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy.
>The rationale behind our programme, he says, was twofold: privately, there was a “fear the Americans might leave us”, but publicly, a third country having nuclear weapons introduces a “second centre of decision-making”, strengthening America’s hand.
>While we in effect borrow our Trident missiles from the US, countries cannot share nuclear weapons, so each must manufacture its own warhead. In theory, Britain has the ability to launch its own nuclear war. In reality, it is difficult to imagine it doing so without American consent.
>The bomb that the US dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, had a yield of about 15 kilotons — 15,000 tons of TNT. If dropped on the Houses of Parliament, the entire parliamentary estate — and half of the River Thames — would be vaporised.
But Britain’s present nuclear warheads have yields of about 100 kilotons. If dropped in the same place, all Westminster would be vaporised, with third-degree burns three miles away in Paddington, and broken windows as far as Greenwich, some six miles away.
>The biggest warhead in the US arsenal, meanwhile, is a 1.2 megaton warhead, some 12 times stronger still. Its use would kill more than a million people. America has thousands of warheads, partly as a display of power, and partly to ensure that it has second and third strike capability — to keep firing even if it is hit.
>This is also part of what makes Trident an effective deterrent — it cannot be struck first. Of the nine nuclear powers, Britain is the only one to have a submarine-only delivery, and as a result, its nuclear arsenal is always invisible. No British nuclear submarine has been detected while on patrol, save for an embarrassing 2009 collision between HMS Vanguard and Le Triomphant of the French navy.
>Trident and its predecessor Polaris have been a relatively low-cost way of keeping Britain at the diplomatic top table for more than five decades. The UK remains a permanent member of the UN security council and a key decision-maker in Nato. Yet the argument now, amid recent Trident dysfunction, is that we no longer have the wealth, will and organisational capacity to sustain this apocalyptic weapon.
>Yet most experts point out that, given the geopolitical turbulence, there is a strong case for investing more not less in Britain’s offensive capabilities. Although not explicitly about nuclear weapons, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago has a “nuclear shadow” over it, says Freedman. Russia’s nuclear capacity has been an important factor in America’s decision-making in how heavily to arm Ukraine. And, of course, Ukraine gave up its own nuclear warheads in 1994. They had been left there after the collapse of the USSR.
>China, which is threatening Taiwan, is ramping up its nuclear arsenal, and the Pentagon estimates that it will possess more than 1,000 operational warheads by the end of the decade, rising to 1,500 by 2035. In Russia, Putin has made a big show of developing devastating underwater nuclear weapons that could destroy US cities through nuclear tsunamis.
>It was these mounting threats from “nuclear-armed states” that led Boris Johnson to break with the post-Cold War trend in 2021, pledging that our nuclear arsenal would rise for the first time in decades, albeit modestly, to 260 warheads. Public opinion supports this: polling by YouGov suggests 61 per cent would keep Britain’s nuclear deterrent in some form when Trident needs renewing, up from 55 per cent in late 2021.
>But, as the defence source pointed out, it does have to work. James Heappey, minister for armed forces, is said to have expressed consternation at the military’s submissions to Nato offering resources and support which, in reality, Britain did not have the capacity to provide.
>As has so often been the case, Britain will come under pressure from America to raise its military spending and strengthen its side of the special relationship bargain. This will involve properly maintaining our nuclear capabilities to play their intended role: as a useful option for the US.
>But with the possibility of a second Donald Trump presidency looming, the other role of our nuclear deterrence is being considered too. Trump is talking seriously about a withdrawal from Nato, and America’s isolationist tendency is growing in force. There is the possibility, and of course it is always the distant possibilities that nuclear planning is for, that Britain and France may have to play a more primary role in protecting Europe’s eastern flank.
>“With a single submarine each, France and Britain still have the potential to inflict massive damage on Russia,” says Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director-general of the Royal United Services Institute, the UK’s leading defence think tank. “It would be an important part of that discussion — but only if you get to that worst-case scenario.”
>The UK military alone may be incapable of policing the world, but as a deterrent, Trident remains a powerful weapon in world affairs. We just need to prove that it works.
This country want the nuclear deterrent so it can act like it’s a big dog at the table when it really it’s a failing state in the eyes of many
Anyone with half a brain could have told folks that Trident was vital for UK national security. All the talk of getting rid of it was by utopian fools
>London, Birmingham, and Manchester have fallen, the British state is reduced to radioactive rubble.
How would they notice? There is not much difference after 14 years of Tory rule.
Yeah not something to be concerned about I think – the yanks have fired Trident successfully between our two recent tests. Sure as shit Russia doesn’t expect them to all fail.
I wonder what’s in store for the vanguard load outs in the new world. If we see a return to American isolationism and decide we need to get the continent under an anglo-french nuclear umbrella to replace the American one I would expect that we’ll need to stay carrying more missile and warheads to give us a bit more flexibility in response.
So, we can (probably) destroy the rest of the world.
But the most likely nuclear threat right now would be of a _limited_ WMD attack, one of the scenarios that has been suggested is an air burst over the North Sea mostly for EMP effect. Something like that could take out most of our infrastructure, without killing all the politicians. Most would consider total nuclear Armageddon as an overreaction, and I’m pretty sure our current crop of politicians would, so what _proportionate_ response does trident offer?
“will have to properly maintain our nuclear capabilities to play [our] intended role”?
The missile was launched, it left the sub. The failure was the missile that WE didn’t even make!!! We pay billions to the US to make what are relatively primitive ballistic missiles THAT HAVE FAILED TWICE IN A ROW!!!!
The percieved enemy has hyper sonic missiles folks.
Ignore the missile flop… ermm that deterrent isn’t much of one if they dont even work ffs!
Just like our new aircraft carriers that both have had leaky propeller shafts and months in port for repairs, royal navy ships not being sent on deployment because they haven’t got the manpower and IFV programs either being cancelled due to budget issues or new platforms under performing and being massively over budget.
Then to top it off a massive sexual harrassment and suicide scandal in the Army in recent years… and they wonder why recruitment is an issue… you can’t even treat your own recruits with basic human decency.
And the whole host of other failures in recent decades.
You can’t ignore we are a second class military power trying to act like we are still a first rate force.
It’s embarrassing tbh and the whole world just laughs at us.
Time is of the essence, as they say. I wonder, do we have some bad actors on the inside of this project ? If the starved North Koreans can launch missiles why can’t the Brits ?
10 comments
>It’s not healthy to dwell too long on the actual practicalities of nuclear deterrence, but just imagine the following scenario for a moment: London, Birmingham and Manchester have fallen, the British state reduced to radioactive rubble. There is no more military command; even Radio 4 is silent. Thousands of miles away, somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, the letters of last resort — sealed instructions from the late British prime minister that until now were locked in a safe — have been opened for the very first time: “Retaliate.”
>The commander of HMS Vanguard puts away the letters, and instructs his crew: “Missiles for strategic launch”. Checks are completed, the final order is given, the red trigger is pressed: nuclear missiles are on their way to Moscow.
>That, at least, is what you — and Vladimir Putin — are meant to think could theoretically happen. But deterrence is based on fear, and news of a dysfunctional missile test-firing threatened to blow a hole in our nuclear insurance policy.
>A test strike from HMS Vanguard — fresh from a seven-year refit and with defence secretary Grant Shapps on board — was meant to send an unarmed Trident missile more than 3,000 miles over the Atlantic. Yet instead of reaching Mach 18 (about 13,800mph), the rocket failed to ignite, “plopping” back into the sea just a few yards away.
>Publicly, Shapps blamed an “anomaly” and said he retained “absolute confidence” in Trident (despite its last British test in 2016 also failing, when a missile veered off course towards the US and had to self-destruct). Yet this latest ill-fated test, which happened weeks ago but was only leaked last week, suggests all is not well within the Defence Nuclear Enterprise, the umbrella organisation responsible for Britain’s “continuous at sea” deterrent, which has been permanently engaged since 1969.
>There are plenty of indications, however, that Britain’s nuclear programme is increasingly unaffordable and unfit for purpose. Our Vanguard-class nuclear submarines, of which there are four, were built in the late 1980s and early 1990s and are long past their intended use date, meaning costs have spiralled. Their replacements, the Dreadnought class, will not arrive until the 2030s.
>The National Audit Office suggests the nuclear deterrent will end up costing £117.8 billion in the decade to 2033, some £7.9 billion over budget. Because the nuclear budget is ring-fenced, everything else in the military budget — replacing the rest of the creaking navy fleet, for example — will suffer.
>A government defence source says ministers had given the first sea lord, Admiral Sir Ben Key, a simple brief with respect to the navy: “Get what you have working.” The source adds: “A deterrent that doesn’t work isn’t a deterrent. It has to be seen to work. At the moment it isn’t seen to work.”
>It’s worth a reminder of how Britain came to have a nuclear deterrent. The British bomb was conceived in the aftermath of the Second World War, amid deep anxiety about our standing in the world.
>In 1952, Britain became the world’s third nuclear country, after the US and Russia, but the programme was always viewed as interdependent with America’s bomb, according to Sir Lawrence Freedman, author of the seminal 1981 work The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy.
>The rationale behind our programme, he says, was twofold: privately, there was a “fear the Americans might leave us”, but publicly, a third country having nuclear weapons introduces a “second centre of decision-making”, strengthening America’s hand.
>While we in effect borrow our Trident missiles from the US, countries cannot share nuclear weapons, so each must manufacture its own warhead. In theory, Britain has the ability to launch its own nuclear war. In reality, it is difficult to imagine it doing so without American consent.
>The bomb that the US dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, had a yield of about 15 kilotons — 15,000 tons of TNT. If dropped on the Houses of Parliament, the entire parliamentary estate — and half of the River Thames — would be vaporised.
But Britain’s present nuclear warheads have yields of about 100 kilotons. If dropped in the same place, all Westminster would be vaporised, with third-degree burns three miles away in Paddington, and broken windows as far as Greenwich, some six miles away.
>The biggest warhead in the US arsenal, meanwhile, is a 1.2 megaton warhead, some 12 times stronger still. Its use would kill more than a million people. America has thousands of warheads, partly as a display of power, and partly to ensure that it has second and third strike capability — to keep firing even if it is hit.
>This is also part of what makes Trident an effective deterrent — it cannot be struck first. Of the nine nuclear powers, Britain is the only one to have a submarine-only delivery, and as a result, its nuclear arsenal is always invisible. No British nuclear submarine has been detected while on patrol, save for an embarrassing 2009 collision between HMS Vanguard and Le Triomphant of the French navy.
>Trident and its predecessor Polaris have been a relatively low-cost way of keeping Britain at the diplomatic top table for more than five decades. The UK remains a permanent member of the UN security council and a key decision-maker in Nato. Yet the argument now, amid recent Trident dysfunction, is that we no longer have the wealth, will and organisational capacity to sustain this apocalyptic weapon.
>Yet most experts point out that, given the geopolitical turbulence, there is a strong case for investing more not less in Britain’s offensive capabilities. Although not explicitly about nuclear weapons, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago has a “nuclear shadow” over it, says Freedman. Russia’s nuclear capacity has been an important factor in America’s decision-making in how heavily to arm Ukraine. And, of course, Ukraine gave up its own nuclear warheads in 1994. They had been left there after the collapse of the USSR.
>China, which is threatening Taiwan, is ramping up its nuclear arsenal, and the Pentagon estimates that it will possess more than 1,000 operational warheads by the end of the decade, rising to 1,500 by 2035. In Russia, Putin has made a big show of developing devastating underwater nuclear weapons that could destroy US cities through nuclear tsunamis.
>It was these mounting threats from “nuclear-armed states” that led Boris Johnson to break with the post-Cold War trend in 2021, pledging that our nuclear arsenal would rise for the first time in decades, albeit modestly, to 260 warheads. Public opinion supports this: polling by YouGov suggests 61 per cent would keep Britain’s nuclear deterrent in some form when Trident needs renewing, up from 55 per cent in late 2021.
>But, as the defence source pointed out, it does have to work. James Heappey, minister for armed forces, is said to have expressed consternation at the military’s submissions to Nato offering resources and support which, in reality, Britain did not have the capacity to provide.
>As has so often been the case, Britain will come under pressure from America to raise its military spending and strengthen its side of the special relationship bargain. This will involve properly maintaining our nuclear capabilities to play their intended role: as a useful option for the US.
>But with the possibility of a second Donald Trump presidency looming, the other role of our nuclear deterrence is being considered too. Trump is talking seriously about a withdrawal from Nato, and America’s isolationist tendency is growing in force. There is the possibility, and of course it is always the distant possibilities that nuclear planning is for, that Britain and France may have to play a more primary role in protecting Europe’s eastern flank.
>“With a single submarine each, France and Britain still have the potential to inflict massive damage on Russia,” says Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director-general of the Royal United Services Institute, the UK’s leading defence think tank. “It would be an important part of that discussion — but only if you get to that worst-case scenario.”
>The UK military alone may be incapable of policing the world, but as a deterrent, Trident remains a powerful weapon in world affairs. We just need to prove that it works.
This country want the nuclear deterrent so it can act like it’s a big dog at the table when it really it’s a failing state in the eyes of many
Anyone with half a brain could have told folks that Trident was vital for UK national security. All the talk of getting rid of it was by utopian fools
>London, Birmingham, and Manchester have fallen, the British state is reduced to radioactive rubble.
How would they notice? There is not much difference after 14 years of Tory rule.
Yeah not something to be concerned about I think – the yanks have fired Trident successfully between our two recent tests. Sure as shit Russia doesn’t expect them to all fail.
I wonder what’s in store for the vanguard load outs in the new world. If we see a return to American isolationism and decide we need to get the continent under an anglo-french nuclear umbrella to replace the American one I would expect that we’ll need to stay carrying more missile and warheads to give us a bit more flexibility in response.
So, we can (probably) destroy the rest of the world.
But the most likely nuclear threat right now would be of a _limited_ WMD attack, one of the scenarios that has been suggested is an air burst over the North Sea mostly for EMP effect. Something like that could take out most of our infrastructure, without killing all the politicians. Most would consider total nuclear Armageddon as an overreaction, and I’m pretty sure our current crop of politicians would, so what _proportionate_ response does trident offer?
“will have to properly maintain our nuclear capabilities to play [our] intended role”?
The missile was launched, it left the sub. The failure was the missile that WE didn’t even make!!! We pay billions to the US to make what are relatively primitive ballistic missiles THAT HAVE FAILED TWICE IN A ROW!!!!
The percieved enemy has hyper sonic missiles folks.
Ignore the missile flop… ermm that deterrent isn’t much of one if they dont even work ffs!
Just like our new aircraft carriers that both have had leaky propeller shafts and months in port for repairs, royal navy ships not being sent on deployment because they haven’t got the manpower and IFV programs either being cancelled due to budget issues or new platforms under performing and being massively over budget.
Then to top it off a massive sexual harrassment and suicide scandal in the Army in recent years… and they wonder why recruitment is an issue… you can’t even treat your own recruits with basic human decency.
And the whole host of other failures in recent decades.
You can’t ignore we are a second class military power trying to act like we are still a first rate force.
It’s embarrassing tbh and the whole world just laughs at us.
Time is of the essence, as they say. I wonder, do we have some bad actors on the inside of this project ? If the starved North Koreans can launch missiles why can’t the Brits ?