Trident. Yes or No
 

Various retired Heads of Sheds have called for the scrapping of the UK Trident System.

Thoughts?

A straight forward Yes or No will suffice.

Unless you wish to expand on your answer...............................

Been round and round this many times on this forum, just do a search on Trident.

Or do you think a press release by 2-3 senile old duffers in the HOL will seriously drastically change anyone's opinion? :hmm:

I didn't know any were still flying!:eek: The 727 sold more I believe and there are still some flying.













:}:p;)

Damn, you beat me to it. I was going to add that there's already a thread on old 3-engined airliners.....:E

I should really learn. Ask a silly question.....................:ugh:


Regards to all. :O:O

The Americans have control over whether the missiles are launched.

This means that they are not our missiles.

We are paying the US to let us run one of their weapon systems.

So what else is new........?

Sorry taxi, couldn't resist.

If we were to have a (non-nuke) deterent, what would it be? SLBM/cruise but with a fuel-air/thermobaric payload?? Given the increase in int, imagery & targetting accuracy do we need to drop a big bnag in the next county when we can drop a smaller bnag in their mess tins? Collaterol an' a' tha'.

Don't worry Greenflash, my shoulders are broad etc

No, I was just musing if the billions earmarked for Trident could be used more where it was needed.

I believe the 'bucket of golden sunshine' threat is well past it's sell-by date to use as a deterrent.

To me, the threat of a bucketload of well-armed, well trained, well equipped guys coming over the horizon would be more of a deterrent. I just wondered what could the Trident cash be used, militarily, for instead.

What's the point in having a deterrent that

a. We won't use come what may.
b. The Spams won't let us use anyway.

Never forget that there are other countries - some less savoury than yours that own the bucket of sunshine, others almost own it, some are trying to get it, some would dearly like it, and the odd occasional appearance on a wish list. If you have it, don't give it up!......

Costly? - yes,....... effective? - you will never really know. :8



....again, just a though (as usual)

A A Gruntpuddock wrote

Why do you think that?

'Operational independence'

House of Commons - Defence - Eighth Report

It is not what we think that counts. Our elected (by whom?) leaders hold delusions of grandeur and want to strut the World stages so we have to be a nuclear power.

Will the next government hold the same desire for power?

Scrap Trident then what?
 

So if we scrap the Trident and/or the replacement for Trident, do you really think all that cash will be spent expanding the current armed forces? Methinks the government will use the money elsewhere, and we'll end up even more stretched and no longer a nuclear power.

Or I am being cynical......again?

And would we know if Trident was scrapped given the "neither confirm or deny" line that is trotted out . After all the moon landings never happened ....:E

As long as people think we have them, and that we would be prepared to use them, then the "deterrent" would work. Unless some nutter calls our bluff. Make a big show of sailing the subs out of wherever, sit off the coast of Scotland for 4 months, come home ... repeat etc.

Conspiracy theories. Gotta love em!

Gents (and ladies).

Having a big bucket of sunshine sitting waiting is necessary, maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow......

maybe 50 years from now some nutter with a missing suitcase nuke is musing over a target list and does he pick:

A, countries with sunshine capability to return the favour with interest.

B, countries without sunshine that cannot strike back

or C, decides that taking such a big step is a step too far.

Yes we need Trident and its replacement. And yes we need a properly funded and equipped military. On a slight thread drift I are seeing lots more comments from the locals to pull out of the sandpits.....

How do we explain to them we either fight them over there or over here..?

Seems to me the spin doctors and treasury are orchestrating (sp) a rather god job of divide and conquer with the services. Don't let it happen to you, go on Hug a Crab

Realistically its had its day. It served its purpose for the enemy it was intended to deter. However, good as it would be to ringfence the money saved for conventional defence procurement, it aint gonna happen! It will just get sucked out into the maelstrom of government book balancing - and that goes for whichever political party is in power.

Cornish

I take your point and, while not advocating getting rid of the sunshine option, what if afore-mentioned nutter doesn't have a country which we could convert to a glass car park? What if said nutter is stateless loner, driven by a grudge, an ideology, or who is a psyco or a criminal???? Who could we then threaten to turn into heat and light? It's a ferkin complicated world nowadays and it keeps getting more complicateder (pardon?)

Which is why i keep thinking Israel ought to be compromising: they are surrounded with nutters sans suitcase at present.

Any how, GF beat me to it- we don't face the MAD scenario anymore do we?

Can't anything deliver a nuke?

We could have lots of anythings for a Trident sub's cost.

CG

Now we know deterence worked don't we? But did the bomb actually work? If we didn't land on the moon, how do we know all those underground bursts weren't massive civil engineering projects designed to look as if they worked?

Now we don't do live testing at all do we even need to make real physics packages? Just pretend that we do.:E

Secret decommissioning is a non-starter. Mounting a continuous deception campaign would costs just as much as keeping/replacing the deterrent - but we'd have no retaliatory capability. Now that really would be a waste of money.

Look what happened to Saddam - binned his WMD programme but continued to pretend that he hadn't. His bluff was so convincing that not enough people believed him when he finally saw the writing on the wall and came clean.

Quote:
Quote:
What if said nutter is stateless loner, driven by a grudge, an ideology, or who is a psyco


Stateless nutters can't manufacture atomic bombs.

Which is why i keep thinking Israel ought to be compromising: they are surrounded with nutters sans suitcase at present.

Peace in our time, yes.