cjp
Junior Member
More at the BBC and the report itself. Not sure if the report will be taken down or not.
SNP will have a field day with this.
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[Royal] Navy probes leaked Trident safety claims
- Thread starter cjp
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More at the BBC and the report itself. Not sure if the report will be taken down or not.
SNP will have a field day with this.
EdibleExplosives
Member
Please get this shit away from my country, thanks.
If their safety programs aboard their tridents are anything close to the safety program aboard our tridents (which I suspect they are), then this is probably a bunch of BS by a sailor that just wants out of the military.
Edit: The report mentions that he think missiles couldn't be launched safely. How would he know? He's an engineer which means he works on the reactor. He's not allowed to even be present when the missile tubes are open. Only missile techs can cross the security zone around a missile with any access to it open. Food hygiene? It's a sub. The food is either in the fridge or in dry storage or being cooked. The cooking spaces are inspected in a twice weekly basis at least for cleanliness and I can assure you, you would eat off the floor in the cooking space which is the size of a small apartment kitchen so it's not hard to keep clean.
Edit: The report mentions that he think missiles couldn't be launched safely. How would he know? He's an engineer which means he works on the reactor. He's not allowed to even be present when the missile tubes are open. Only missile techs can cross the security zone around a missile with any access to it open. Food hygiene? It's a sub. The food is either in the fridge or in dry storage or being cooked. The cooking spaces are inspected in a twice weekly basis at least for cleanliness and I can assure you, you would eat off the floor in the cooking space which is the size of a small apartment kitchen so it's not hard to keep clean.
You've got to remember that the first two of the Vanguard fleet are already over the subs original intended lifetime.
They were designed with a 20 year lifespan. The first launched in 92 the second in 93. They're now looking to extend their service to near 35 years. The record length of service for a RN nuclear sub was 33 years for one of the swiftsure class, but that sub class essentially started to fall apart (Sovereign, Sceptre and Superb all suffered from various incidents including reactor leaks towards the end)
They were designed with a 20 year lifespan. The first launched in 92 the second in 93. They're now looking to extend their service to near 35 years. The record length of service for a RN nuclear sub was 33 years for one of the swiftsure class, but that sub class essentially started to fall apart (Sovereign, Sceptre and Superb all suffered from various incidents including reactor leaks towards the end)
cjp
Junior Member
I really recommend reading all of the actual report. He explains that basically no procedures are correctly followed.
In regards to not launching safely:
Missile tubes:
Food hygiene:
Rubbish King
The gift that keeps on giving
I live in a navy town and there was a guy only the other night saying that he worked on one and it was being repaired in a place that I think even if a lie shouldn't be repeated
There's an almost indescribable gulf between asking for spare parts to be able to launch nukes that will last you a few months and outright asking another country to launch them on you behalf. The first option doesn't result in the US becoming targets themselves which means that the threshold for that action is infinitely lower. This all basically comes back to one key question: does the UK want or need an independent nuclear deterrence? If the answer is in fact yes then Tridents or any other SLBM is the only way to do it considering how geographically small the UK is and how short the response time is to the only potential attacker - Russia.
I can't help but suspect, although I have no proof of it obviously, that the problem with the Tridents and the US missile bunkers comes back to the same problem that many nations have with their nuclear power plants: because they are so demonized no politician is going to campaign for the increased funding needed to make them better and safer, which results in the paradoxical situation that they are made more dangerous. For the people in favor of increased nuclear safety, defunding existing systems out of disgust should be the one thing they shouldn't be doing.
EDIT: vvvvvvvvvvv Case in point.
Considering the replacement programme should have started years ago but was delayed because of dithering liberals and that the navy is painfully underfunded so struggles with adequate crewing and and repairs thanks again to dithering liberals it's no great shock that things are in a poor state. That's even if any of this is true.
All the more reason to scrap our nuclear weapons programmes then.
CharmingCharlie
Member
Yup pretty much my take on the UK having nukes. As a deterrent they are pretty fucking useless and they only exist to allow the UK to go "oi I am a big boy with big boys toys".
We waste billions on this white elephant meanwhile there were over 1 million visits to food banks last year and our NHS has an 8 billion black hole in it's budget.
Now even with the countless billions we waste on the nuclear deterrent it looks like there are significant safety and security failings which will require no doubt more money poured into it to fix them. Seriously just dump Trident already.
No doubt the guy that leaked this stuff will be branded a "terrorist" and an "enemy of the state" and GCHQ will use all resources at their disposal to hunt him down.
The liberals are dithering because we have absolutely no need for a nuclear program in the UK.
How are they useless as a deterrent exactly? The 4 Vanguards carry 48 Trident IIs with 8 warheads each for a total of almost 200 megatons and can reach any nuclear power in the world short of China if launched from as far away as just off the coast of the UK. That's one hell of a deterrence.
Unless you mean that the UK doesn't have a nuclear threat to deter against, which I would disagree with.
Don't we? The world is in a fucking shocking state and wishy-washy ideology and dreaming isn't going to do anything about it.
CharmingCharlie
Member
I find it hard to believe that at any point in modern history the USSR or Russia has gone "ohhh better not invade the UK they have 48 missiles, those 48 missiles just totally like deter us from doing anything bad and naughty to the UK". If the worst came to the worst and there was a nuclear war our 48 missiles would be the equivalent to a gnat biting a fat mans arse.
So no I don't think it acts as a deterrent in anyway whatsoever and all Trident is is a "ohhh the UK can play with the big boys". Now I don't have a problem with that, if some insecure dickhead needs nukes to make them feel big and powerful then good luck to them. What I do have a problem with is when we destroy the fabric of our society, take benefits off the poor and disabled, force people into an existence of begging and trying to survive on 3 food vouchers every 6 months yet we still managed to find billions for weapons that do nothing and if we ever got to use them we would be all fucked anyway.
You do realise that's about 400 warheads, each big enough to scoop the middle out of Moscow. Hiroshima was 15kt for references sake, a single Trident is around 450kt and there are ~400 of them.
I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure 48 missiles is more than enough to turn a significant chunk of the world to ash.
CharmingCharlie
Member
You realise Russia has THOUSANDS of warheads and their yields are measured in MEGATONS not Kilotons. If unleashed on the UK they could probably melt this entire little Island into a pile of slag that would slowly sink into the pitiful North Sea.
As I have said at no point can I see Russia ever having thought to themselves "Ohhhh the UK has Nukes better watch ourselves with them". Russia could easily "survive" a nuclear attack from the UK on the other hand some bacterial remnants of the UK might just have a slight chance of surviving a nuclear attack on the UK from Russia.
I browsed that. First of all, you can't fucking climb inside of a missile. You cant. You can climb inside of an empty missile tube, but you can't climb inside of a missile.
Firefighting gear being stowed improperly? Bullshit. Every piece of gear has a very specific place on a submarine. Every submariner qualifications depend on knowing every specific place that every piece of firefighting gear is. Let's just assume that some of the extinguishers are stowed improperly. When the sub goes to sea and submerges to go on patrol a submarine does something called angles and dangles in which a sub will take extreme angles (30 degrees) up and down to ensure that everything is stowed properly or people can die from falling gear. That's how every submarine works since WW2.
They did a great job deterring Argentina in the 80s.
During the UK election I repeatedly asked posters to explain what possible scenario could there be where there is a threat existential enough to the UK that it needed a nuclear response instead of a conventional one, and yet had as abandoned by all our allies. The best I got was one with Napoleon II and another with the US invading. Then some fake info on it being necessary for a seat on the UN security council.
They are technologically and politically obsolete. There's a reason why Spain, Italy, etc, etc manage to not be invaded on a daily basis just fine without a nuclear arsenal.
Its 48 warheads and has been reduced to a maximum of 40 warheads in the 2010 review. The subs can each carry 16 missiles but only carry 8.
With all respect, in that case I don't think you understand what the deterrence is for. It's not to scare off an invasion, it's to prevent you from becoming an easy target for a first strike. Because a target you are: NATO airbases and ports in the UK have been priority Russian targets since the beginning of the Cold War in every scenario involving a war with NATO. An independent deterrent is in place to make it much more unlikely that the attack will be conducted with nuclear weapons as opposed to conventional ones.
One case in point: the USSR battle plan "Seven Days to the River Rhine". This is an example of the Russian concept of a "limited" nuclear war. Targets were restricted to nations without nuclear weapons of their own: Austria (which for the matter was neutral, not that it actually mattered), Italy, West Germany and Denmark. Total death-toll in the tens of millions with obliterated cities including Vienna, Munich and Verona. Conspicuously absent from that list: France and the UK, the latter of which would only have been attacked with conventional weapons in order to keep the war "limited".
I'm not British so I won't butt in on what decision is best for the UK. Wanting to remove the Tridents and using their funding for civilian purposes is a perfectly legitimate opinion. But I do think people need to be aware that the Tridents are not for show. Removing them will result in a greater risk of the UK being hit with a preemptive nuclear strike in a NATO-Russian war, something that has sadly become much more possible in the last year.
Russia could not "survive" a nuclear strike from the UK. Those Tridents are enough to wipe out every larger city in Russia with enough to spare for some medium-sized cities. And the options for Russia aren't just to launch everything. They could nuke a handful of targets in the UK and explain very clearly to the United States that they are satisfied with this and that any retaliation from the US would trigger MAD and turn both the US and Russia into glass. Because that's actually an option for nuclear powers. Nuclear deterrence can be used offensively because no US president in their right mind would actually retaliate in such a scenario.
It doesn't matter if Putin has 100,000,000 nukes each with gigaton warheads, as long as we have enough to cease Russia as a civilisation (a single trident can kill about 7 million and remove 8 Russian cities from existence so that's a yes) then the principal of mutually assured destruction holds.
That's missiles not warheads, each trident missile can contain upto 12 warheads under the current set-up, either way it's enough to end Russia as a functioning country.
In that case you weren't asking the right people. The most plausible scenario is that a NATO-Russian conflict - such as an invasion of the Baltic states not resulting in NATO backing down which was what Russia expected - escalating out of control. When that happens Russia will have two options: attempt to fight NATO conventionally (and lose) or try to "de-escalate" with nuclear weapons by knocking out vital NATO facilities and troop concentrations in Europe in the hope that this will force NATO to the negotiating table before MAD is triggered. This is no longer an impossible scenario. The difference for the UK in that scenario could be between being hit with cruise missiles or nuclear missiles.
Depending on how power hungry, paranoid or deluded the Russian leadership is it might even be a outright plausible scenario within the next 10 years, not just the most plausible theoretical one.
Prinz Eugn
Member
Take every UK nuclear warhead and translate that into a Russian city destroyed. Someone just mentioned 40 warheads per sub, which for the top 40 most populous Russian cities equals about 45 million people. Russia has a population of around 143 million for reference. So about a third of the population either dead or irradiated, and probably homeless either way, added to all the government, industry, and cultural sites within those cities obliterated...
What would be left wouldn't be Russia.
Actually since the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, each sub only has 40 warheads on it. 8 missiles sharing 40 warheads. It's thought that two of the missiles are set for sub strategic use (i.e smaller number of warheads, perhaps one with smaller yields) as the SDSR noted this ability.
As per the SDSR UK itself doesn't have "more than 120 operationally available warheads" from a total of around 180 nevermind the 384 from 48 x 8 calculation above. Our agreement with the US was for 58 missiles, we've used 8 in test firings so we have 'access' to 50 from the US stockpile. It's thought we only have around 20 in the UK at any one time.
There's only ever one loaded sub in the water. Another sub is on operational readiness so could potentially be used in a first strike situation, but in a retaliation there's 'only' 40 warheads that can be used. Even the on patrol sub would take days to fire in response.
http://www.york.ac.uk/media/politics/documents/research/MPs.pdf is a very good primer on the current state of Trident.
The proposed Trident replacement doesn't make any sense on a number of fronts. 1 the subs are going to be bigger (and far more expensive: From £1.5b per Vanguard to at between £5bn and £8.5bn per future SSBN) yet we've continually reduced number of missiles and warheads on the Vanguards which would suggest as they're a single mission sub that future system should be smaller .
The missiles are already a point of contention. The Trident II D5's are being extended by the US until 2042 (remember the missile is already a 1970's design. Assuming no delays in launch (which is extremely optimistic given BAE's track record: the Astute's slipped by 47 months and the ongoing political passing the buck has delayed the main gate) the Trident replacement won't be launched until at least 2028. That only assumes an operational lifespan of 14 years before the missile system is obsoleted and needs replaced. At point at which we'll be totally reliant on A) continual agreement with the US for new missiles and B) the US producing new missiles which will fit the current system. 14 years is too short for the capital investment but too long into the lifecycle of the sub to look to replace the missile system as the first of the class will only have between 6 and 11 years left.
Meanwhile France manages to have a fully independent system (with both SSBM and air launched capabilities) with 300 warheads for less than the total cost of Trident. Of course part of the reason for this is that they A) have a proper domestic nuclear progam and B) they can leverage the Ariane technology from their space program.
RubberJohnny
Banned
Trident exists to allow the US to get around the START treaty, our nukes even have their permissive action links on them. We should scrap the whole thing.
I don't think the permissive action link is true. The UK warheads are built in the UK at Aldermaston (only the missiles are imported) and can be launched at the sole discretion of the Sub Commander (with his weapons officer and the deputy commanders agreement) as per the letter of last resort.
Certainly in 2007 the defense review indicated that there was no Permissive Action Link on any UK nuclear device.
The WE177's were famously armed with a bicycle cylinder key.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/7097101.stm
I admittedly wasn't up to date on the specifics of the UK stockpile, thanks for the detailed info. I have however been vaguely aware that the current setup isn't optimal for the reasons you mention, but that's a far cry from it supposedly being no deterrence at all which was what the discussion ended up as and what difference a deterrence makes.
But I assume only one sub on patrol is peacetime protocol? No matter how quickly relations between NATO and Russia can degrade I think it's a given that an attack wouldn't come out of the blue and that the UK would have enough of a warning to get as many of the Vanguards on station as possible. Even a worst case scenario of a surprise Russian attack in eastern Europe followed by escalation in a matter of days should leave time for that.
And?
Only two subs are ever in an operational state (one of those on standby, one on patrol) One of the 4 subs is always being refitted, with the other undergoing sea trials following it's previous refit (which normally means a trip to the US to return missiles or get new ones)
We don't have enough missiles in the UK to arm more than two subs. We only have access to 50 at most any even then we don't have enough warheads to fully arm more than 20 ( which is the number we're thought to keep 8 on the operational sub, 8 on the standby and 4 spares) and that's with even the 40 non operational reserve warheads being included, in reality we could fully arm* 15 missiles with our 120 operational warheads (which isn't even a full Vanguard load (16 missiles)
Trident is essentially a me-too cold war system. The US would launch and we'd join in a futile me-too attack as the Russian missiles rained down on all of us. It's a bare minimum deterrent to allow us to stay in the nuclear club. Of all the nuclear powers only North Korea is thought to have less warheads.
*the UK definition of a fully armed Trident missile is 8 warheads, the missile itself can take 12, so we could fully fully arm 10 missiles. That's still a lot of bang and obviously is a deterrent but compared to the big boys it's not much, your average Ohio class has more operational missiles and warheads (24 x 12) than the entire UK deterrent and they have 4 in the sea at anyone time.
Or Russian submarines prowling UK waters...
Or Russian warships in the English channel...
Or Russian diplomats threatening to nuke Denmark...
Even a me-too minimal deterrence could be enough to deter a limited strike, as I mentioned above. Especially with Russia's recent ventures into "nuclear de-escalation" which depends on the enemy not to retaliate at all.
Meanwhile we don't have
any maritime surveillance planes to patrol UK waters for Russian subs (thanks BAE)
enough surface vessels to response to any Russian surface vessels in UK waters in a timely fashion
Hell the flagship of the Royal Navy is now an amphibious landing platform HMS Bulwark (Albion class) instead of an actual warship
Ville Pukema
Member
If you're american can your safety programs on tridesnts are anything like safety and technical stuff on your missile silos you're fucked.
The Oliver "daily show" guy did awesome show about those. lolSo I heard. The situation is similar over here in Sweden too - we invested our heli capability in the Eurocopter project which is turning into our mini-F35 at this point. The helicopters are delayed to hell and back (we had to lease some Blackhawks from the Yanks to prevent our airborne rangers from having to learn to fly in order to continue calling themselves airborne) but we inexplicably decided to decommission our older ASW helicopters according to the original schedule. We barely managed to hunt that submarine outside of Stockholm last fall with what we have and the Navy has been clear on the fact that they can now only hunt one sub at a time - if the Russians decide to send one to Stockholm and one to our navy base at Karlskrona we would have to choose. Insanity.
Pity the Cold War only went into half-time, and the Russians are back for round two now. But the Western European politicians are still in line at the hot dog stand it seems...
ClosingADoor
Member
I'm not from the UK, but I do feel Europe should have its own nuclear ability. A shared program is never going to be possible, so that leaves individual countries. The only ones being able to afford that are France, the UK and Germany. Germany is out still due to their history.
You can't rely on the US forever to have your back when shit really goes down and having those weapons is a damn good way to insure your safety.
You can't rely on the US forever to have your back when shit really goes down and having those weapons is a damn good way to insure your safety.
UK doesn't need nukes. Honestly they don't need anything more than militias. In today's tightly woven economic world no one is going to attack and any foreign operations are to support the US' blunders. Scrap trident, scrap all military aircraft, tanks, just about all equipment.
ClosingADoor
Member
Ukraine and Russia had a lot of trade and economic ties. Giving up those nukes didn't work out to well for them at the moment.
Just scrapping large parts of the military is very shortsighted. You can't just make that equipment appear again when you need it.
If you're american can your safety programs on tridesnts are anything like safety and technical stuff on your missile silos you're fucked.
I was stationed on a Trident submarine. I felt safer being on my sub than at my home in Washington.
Ukraine is vastly different from the UK. You would have the entire EU shut down all economic activity with Russia. Additionally its an island with a population that has zero sympathy towards Russia...so annexation wouldn't be an option. Again, UK should de-militarize. They can get by quite nicely with an armed militia.
uncleniccius
Member
It's me being pedantic, and somewhat off topic, but the one million using food banks is bull shit. It's actually half of that - everyone was counted twice in that figure.
With regards to trident we should work to have something with other EU powers imo. We need defence, but it can go over the top easily.
CharmingCharlie
Member
I can be even more pedantic I said "1 million VISITS" ;-) so not 1 million users and I would hardly call half of 1 million "bull shit" that is still a huge number of people.
We are constantly told day in day out we can't afford welfare, we can't afford to fund the NHS, we can't afford child benefit, we can't afford social housing, we can't afford proper equipment for our army, we can't afford a proper navy, If we can't afford those things then we sure as hell can't afford those fucking paper weight monstrosities.
One day Britain will ditch it's "nuclear deterrent" we as a nation cannot support the cost of it all we are doing right now is delaying the inevitable. I am no "Kumba ya ma lord" Greenpeace hippy type that believes in "make love not war". If we could afford these things I wouldn't give a shit about their existence, but obviously we can't.
Nuclear weapons stopped the US And Soviet Union from going to war - because the result of such a war would always be mutual self destructive and thus not in both sides interests. It matters little if Russia has more warheads - the result will be the same. And you don't even need too many warheads to take out entire nations. Each of those missiles has 8x the destructive power of the nuke that destroyed Hiroshima. Millions of people can be killed in mere seconds if they were ever launched.
Because Spain, Italy, etc, etc are members of NATO. Nuclear weapons lead to a swift end to WW2 and there hasn't been a major war since because of them.
Do you think if You could magic all of the nuclear warheads away today that there would be a world war any time soon?
Star Falcon
Member
In this day and age i would not be comfortable if Britain scrapped having a nuclear deterrent altogether. That said, Trident is old and this report only re-enforces the need for a kick up the arse. Where funding for that is going to come from i have no idea...
Sir_Crocodile
Member
I still think we should buy into the french solution rather then continuing with trident
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