I would sugest before this project goes ahead the finance should be identified and ring fenced as should the CVF finance. It should not become another blank cheque handed to British Aerospace.

Could not agree more! I take it your not a share holder?

Jacko,

I cannot seem to work out which side of the fence you are sitting on. You seem to be argueing for and against. There has been some good discussion on this thread as well as some that bring nothing to the table. Trident and it's replacement are the cheap option. We already have the technology and expertise. Yes, it would be nice to have a variety of option but that would bump the price up considerably. £22 Billion for a system with a 20-30 year lifespan is good value.

Some who have posted on here seem to have forgotten the Cuban Missile Crisis, which happened during my lifetime. Such a situation could happen again. There are some of here with a good grasp of world affairs and some who have been reading The Sun/Daily Mail too much. There will always be asymetric threats. The IRA were not countered with Nuclear weapons and neither will Al Quida(sp?) be. Consider the scenario of a nuclear capable Iran, threatening it's neighbours and cutting off all access to the Gulf. Ten years ago. Consider the situation of India and Pakistan, I would contend that the only reason these countries are at relative peace (bar the minor skirmish) is because they both know that each has the bomb. Remember also, that it was the first use by the USA that stopped a despotic regime, bent on domination of the Pacific Rim and subjugation of it's neighbours.

Trident/Astute is cheap, unlike Scotland which cost the tax paying English majority, £25 Billion a year....for what?????

Trident/Astute is cheap, unlike Scotland which cost the tax paying English majority, £25 Billion a year....for what?????
Widger are you sure about that last set of figures? where does your gas and oil come from?
Where has the anti Scot bash come from? we were talking bout nuclear weapons a minute ago.

£25 Billion for Scotland seems cheap considering that they put hundreds of Billions into the economy..........

Am I right in thinking that (post devolution) Scottish and Welsh spending is all lumped together, therefore what about the figure for England? I fear that people have fallen into the trap of comparing apples and pineapples, which is what the UK hating Euo lefties want.

Widger I think you'll find Jacko is saying "RAF projects good, non RAF projects bad"

"deploy a squadron of nuke capable typhoons"

imagine a crisis in N Korea/Iran/China,

Do you honestly think the RAF would be capable/allowed to deploy them in time to be useful and in a suitable condition to be useful??

I think not!!:ugh:

Toddbabe,

Our Gas comes from either the English Part of the North Sea, or from Russia under the English part of the North Sea. The oil comes from a variety of places via the Sea! A small amount comes from Scotland. Mind you, the way things are going, the Scottish Navy and Air Force will probably be bigger than the English one!

:ok: :E :ok:

Widger,

Sorry for the confusion.

I do believe that the UK should maintain some form of nuclear deterrent, so I disagree with those who would abandon it altogether.

I do not believe that a full, strategic deterrent in the form now being proposed, is necessary, desirable or affordable.

I believe that Trident always represented over-kill, because it was predicated on the need to penetrate Moscow ABM defences that were in reality, fragile compared to what we planned against.

I lack sufficient knowledge and expertise to reach a definitive conclusion, but my provisional judegement would be that a cheaper, less capable deterrent would be more useful and more affordable in the post Cold War world.

I do not see a need for the UK to be able to 'take out' Moscow autonomously (the justification for Polaris over V-Force/Blue Steel, and later for Chevaline, and then for Trident), as long as we can do enough damage to Russia (or any other threat nation) to deter it. In the case of Russia, the ability to destroy St Petersburg, Murmansk, Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh and Saratove (say) would be more than enough, in my view.

I would have thought that nuclear forces that included a nuclear version of TLAM and an extended range version of Storm Shadow would tick all of the boxes I'd want ticking.

An air launched option (especially if we were looking at something in the HyFly class further down the line) would provide so many carrier options that the enemy's thinking would be made far more complicated. Are those Nimrods/Typhoons/JCA's nuclear capable? It would even offer a really compelling case for CV(F) in my view.

WEBF

What I'm saying is

Bloated, prohibitively expensive Cold War systems bad, lighter, leaner, more affordable, more flexible systems good.

If I were anti-RN, I'd hardly be emphasising the usefulness of a TLAM based element to the deterrent, would I?

And an affordable air launched nuclear deterrent would give the CVF a justification it doesn't yet have.

Lazer hound - we design our own warheads, and fit them to a US designed missile. The boffins at aldermaston design all brit warheads.

Jacko, all this argument is all fine and well, but at least with trident/replacement ICBM the bad guy (whoever that may be) is unlikely to feel sufficiently confident about his/her ability to stop it getting through. Who's to say someone slightly cocky with a modern, double digit SAM capability wouldn't decide to try it on, on the off chance that (due to defence cutbacks) the three TLAM-Ns we can afford would be taken out before they reached their targets?

Jacko
As I read your comments here and in posts over the years I detect a mindset that would concern me if I was a Brit. Your logic seems to believe that the UK will only be a part of some greater sum, not the integral force in of itself. That seems to point towards a constant partner(s) in any given conflict. I don't agree that will always happen to the degree you believe.

Knowitall,

Two points to raise about your question.

1) I do not see the profiligate use of nuclear weapons on other non-nuclear powers. How do they survive? The Korean War is prime example of a conflict that according to the planning documents of the US/UK should have seen the use of nukes (at least in the tactical environ)

2) Look at Japan and Germany, similar standing in world excepting SC seat and SSBN capability yet they are still happily going about their business. Take this a stage further, Japan is the only country to have had nukes used upon it in anger yet they have steadfastly eschewed the nuke option (well at least publicly).

Cheers

BHR

BHR
In light of events of the NK nuke test there is a rumble (albeit not at the levels to give the green light) for a nuclear capability for Japan.

I believe that the only legitimate role for the armed services is the defence of the UK, including overseas interests that our vital to the survival of our nation. This excludes foreign adventures that amount to neo-imperialism (eg Iraq and Afghanistan and certainly Darfur, which is being talked up by bleeding hearts at Auntie Beeb).

Threats are unpredictable over the timescale for the development of modern weapons, so we need the full spectrum relevant to the defence of the UK. This includes a strategic deterrent to discourage certain foreign states from assisting (with funds and technology) terrorist organisations from attacking the UK. If we suspect such activity we should be blunt (through diplomatic channels) along the lines: "if you continue to support organisation "X" and a terrorist outrage against the UK results, your cities A,B and C will be eliminated". (The Soviets, I believe, found such arguments persuasive against Iran in 1978).

So we need a strategic nuclear system as invulnerable as possible to terrorist attack. To me, as a former airman, that means the system should have a submarine platform. Will it have to penetrate highly capable defence systems deployed in depth? Almost certainly not. Would a cruise missile therefore do the job? Almost certainly. Would such a system afford the flexibility of a conventional warhead option? Yes. Would it be cheaper than a ballistic missile? Almost certainly. So to me the optimum would be a cruise missile system with conventional or nuclear warheads. They could be launched (probably only in the conventional mode) from aircraft if the situation required urgent action the other side of the world and HMS Daisy was having her bottom scraped in Pompey. (Presuming the Scots would have kicked her out of Faslane by then).

Of course you do realize one of the main reasons for the Fleet replacement? .... :confused:

the "White fellas" are nocking the $$$ out of the existing Hulls .... :{

http://i12.tinypic.com/47dn1q9.jpg

I'll get me coat ...... :)

If anyone's interested in why not aircraft, have a look at Appendix B (P.35) in this pdf and you can see the assumptions for rejecting the strategic bomber platform. I'll allow others to assess whether or not this means that the MoD didn't bother thinking things through or has decided to fob the public off with the slightly simplistic rationale that appears in the document...

Is developing a UK TLAM-N even feasible given SALT/START?

As a veteran of East Timor and Sierra Leone most of the **** that the Government gets us into tends toward the rather unsavoury. Rather than the Nukes let's have a resurgence of those good old traditional standbys Chemical and Biological.

Oh, hang on. Piles of rotting corpses and dead kids don't make good TV, could lose votes. The end results are the same we but can't have the folks at home seeing what it's like up close, not in High Definition on 42" Plasma, not at meal times... God help us if they invent Smell-o-vision.

Back to the death from submerged-launch crematoria idea! Great Britain really is a global player!

I never really took me coat off...

WC,

AFAIK the Japanese have for many years now had the know how if not the desire to build nukes.

There would be a certain spin-up to any weapons programme but it would be in terms of less than 5 years (unless a crash program was initiated for any reason) not the longer term programs as seen in the "Axis of Evil" states.

Cheers

BHR

Arch,

Thanks for posting that.

It was one exceptionally scary document.

From stupid phrases such as "the SSBN is invulnerable." Really? I have to say I did not realise that our SSBNs were that well built. Why do we not make all our ships that way? It would save a hell of a lot of money of defensive armaments.

The other thing that actually did scare me is the statement "Any state that we can hold responsible for assisting a nuclear attack on our vital interests can expect that this would lead to a proportionate response." This puts an awful load on our intelligence services and our politicos if someone detonates a suitcase of sunshine in Central London. How does one define "hold responsible"? In the same way we defined Iraq as having WMDs on 45 min readiness. Or in the same way as Saddam Hussien had links to Osama Bin Laden?

Worse still some cheesed off Russian or Chinese general has a pop at Big Ben with an ICBM are we going to nuke Moscow or Bejing?

It returns me to the statement I made earlier. Why are we in the UK more likely to be such targets than any number of other Western "democracies" that are non-nuclear capable?

To put another way why not see if there is a way in which we can reduce the likelihood of some nutter sending us a nuke in the post because we might run out of bombs before they do!

Cheers

BHR