Originally Posted by
PTR 175
I could be adding 2 and 2 and getting 5 anyhow here goes. Several years ago the French tested a warhead in French Polynesia atmospherically in breach of the rules. Everybody was in uproar about this but the UK was surprisingly quiet. Now is it possible that the bucket of sunshine was a joint UK/French job ? The reason I say this is both the French and UK have potentially a similar platform to put this on.
You are.
The tests you refer to are nigh on twenty years ago and were underground, not atmospheric. They were done to generate data prior to French ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and in terms of warhead development, probably track better with the TN75 warhead for their SLBM force.
Their air-delivered buckets of sunshine tend to be on the end of an ASMP-A, which is a rather different weapon to Scalp.