Personally I think that the present Trident systems should be updated. We certainly dont need bigger subs with more missiles than we already have.

As to the regardless of provocation politicians would counter that they would only be used in the worst case scenario, IE someone nuked our cities. This is MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) in a nutshell, nobody wants to use it which is why the status quo is regarded as the best option. It is also the reason why the US and Russia didnt go directly against each other during the Cold War. Despite putting a brave face on it no sane politician wants his voters and taxpayers as corpses in the street.

So its there, but nobody is willing to use it. So why have it? Simply because of its bargaining chip power. If you have it then it doesnt matter what size your opponents are, if you use it they are going to suffer massive casualties to civilians and infrastructure. That gives what you say a lot more power.

Unfortunately what people forget is that with this power comes a massive slab of raw responsibility, which no politician actually fancies eating. Nuclear weapons might be the ultimate weapon but youre permanently damned if you use them.

The other side is whether you have them or not there will always be other countries, especially dictatorships, who want to get them. Had Saddam gotten them then the second gulf war might have had an entirely different scale of ending. You cant stop loony dictators or mad mullahs firing missiles easily but having a response ready will deter anyone even half sane from firing them at you.

I personally would prefer that no country had nuclear weapons, that they hadnt been invented. Unfortunately in that case there would almost inevitably have been far more war than there was.

the problem with extending the life of the current warheads is the shelf life of said warheads.


The nuclear component will last for a long time, but the conventional explosive triggers have now existed for quite some time under moderate radiation. Research into the effects of long term irradiation on conventional explosives is sketchy but what there is suggests that it tends to accelerate aging effects, and it is known that old explosives tend to become more unstable and unpredicatable.

You therefore have two separate risks with an old nuke:

1. The trigger explosive goes off unexpectedly. Since its actually relatively hard to make an H bomb go boom this would probably be a non-nuclear explosion, or at least drastically reduced yield, but it would be quite a dirty explosion not to mention what would happen to any submarine carrying the bomb at the time.

2. The unthinkable happens, you actually have to fire the darned thing, and your trigger doesnt detonate properly which means your nuke fizzles. Now not only are you a country who has used nukes in anger with intent to kill millions, but youre a failure to boot.

From what I’ve read it’s not so much about renewing the Trident missile system itself, instead it’s the construction of new submarines to carry on using that system. The reason being that the current Subs are scheduled to leave service by 2020/2025, so starting the paper work now is essential if we want a replacement by then.

It would cost us a lot of money to develop our own system from scratch, so sticking with Trident is the cheaper option. Another option would be to do a deal with the French to use their system, but then we would be trading in a better system for a less capable one..

The missiles themselves are held in a joint US/UK missile pool, so we don’t even have to maintain them ourselves. Instead when we need new missiles for our subs we just go to the US swap out the old missiles in exchange for newly refurbished ones. This throws up an oddity in that a missile that was on a US SSBN one year, could be on a UK SSBN another, something that is unheard of anywhere else in the world.

Get rid of it, we dont need it. America has nukes, so does France. Thats enough for the west.

Germany, Norway, Sweden, Italy, etc do not have them. They know its a waste of money.

I say spend the money on healthcare or reducing taxes.

Get rid of it, we dont need it. America has nukes, so does France. Thats enough for the west.

Germany, Norway, Sweden, Italy, etc do not have them. They know its a waste of money.

I say spend the money on healthcare or reducing taxes.

thing is, the money isnt wasted is it ?

it goes into the navy, who then spend it on wages and supplies etc.... so most of it will come back in tax anyway ?

Dont be silly Pete. If you think France are our nme youre mental.

Knight, the money is wasted because were spending it on arms which are not used. We could be spending it on health which would be used. Your logic about tax is irrelevant - think about this. We employ one solider $20k or we employ one nurse $20k. Soldier provides security (watching a weapon all day) nurse provides health care.

Which is better?

The simple fact is - if the world is going to go mental and blow up, then USA has enough to blow the world up 100x over. So we dont need them.

PLUS I think scrapping them would send a HUGE signal to the world that Britain is for peace and for the future. I think the goodwill generated would be a massive boost to the UKs image and thus our exports. Were all better off all around.

But whats your reason for a huge mistake ?

Im curious - who do you think is going to invade the UK that would be deterred by our possession of nuclear weapons ?