The labour Leader thread...

[FoxEye]

Does Britain need its own nuclear weapons tho? NATO has nuclear sharing, which Germany and Italy have signed up to.

I'm really not convinced that deterrence principle relies on a small country such as the UK having its own nukes. When the US has about 1,000 times more nuclear weapons than we do anyhow.

 

[Stolly]

Does Britain need its own nuclear weapons tho? NATO has nuclear sharing, which Germany and Italy have signed up to.

I'm really not convinced that deterrence principle relies on a small country such as the UK having its own nukes. When the US has about 1,000 times more nuclear weapons than we do anyhow.

I hope not a single person who thinks we should place ourselves at the mercy of a benevolent United States has ever had a single Anti-American thought in their lives.

 

[scorza]

Before someone inevitably suggests we scrap Trident in favour of nuclear armed cruise missiles...

Cruise missiles are nothing more than small unmanned aircraft that can and do get shot down by peasants with rifles, plus they are relatively slow. It would take well over an hour for one to get to, say, Tehran when launched from the Gulf. Not that we'd be able to do that. Plenty of time for our theoretical mad mullah to get out of harms way after doing whatever he did to incur our displeasure.

We could have aircraft launched nukes as an alternative, I know they're not as good as a submarine but it'd be awesome to have a modern replacement for the Vulcan.

 

[Stolly]

We could have aircraft launched nukes as an alternative, I know they're not as good as a submarine but it'd be awesome to have a modern replacement for the Vulcan.

They have airbases that need to be expensively defended, they take a long time to get anywhere and can get shot down, they care about the weather to a certain degree and the missiles themselves would probably share some of those problems.

The only countries on earth with a realistic chance of sinking an operational SSBN are Russia, the US and France only one of which would conceivably even want to.

 

[Zethor]

I hope not a single person who thinks we should place ourselves at the mercy of a benevolent United States has ever had a single Anti-American thought in their lives.

We've been at the mercy of the benevolent US for 75 years and it has been a peaceful, prosperous existance. The US and its Western allies are interdependent, they share the same culture, ideologies and interests. The idea that the US could 'turn' on the UK or France or any other advanced democracy is laughable. It's basically fantasy and the nuclear weapons protect us from unicorns.

 

[Rroff]

Does Britain need its own nuclear weapons tho? NATO has nuclear sharing, which Germany and Italy have signed up to.

I'm really not convinced that deterrence principle relies on a small country such as the UK having its own nukes. When the US has about 1,000 times more nuclear weapons than we do anyhow.

Its a tricky one - personally I prefer we were self reliant rather than having to gamble on long term relations... one thing you can pretty much bet on is that if things really hit the fan continental Europe would turtle up and not that likely to stick their necks out on our account (they don't really like us much but a useful ally to cooperate with given our military, commerce, etc. punch).

Another aspect that would have to be taken into account in long term defence planning is that the US is overdue a large scale natural disaster - an event or events at the upper end of the scale for those would likely lead to the US concentrating its efforts on recovery at home (possibly even withdrawing from the world stage almost entirely) leaving us on our own as far as that goes for awhile (the chances of that coinciding with us dealing with belligerence from another entity are pretty small but not something any military planner worth their stuff can ignore).

We could have aircraft launched nukes as an alternative, I know they're not as good as a submarine but it'd be awesome to have a modern replacement for the Vulcan.

Awesome but sadly not cost effective for the same level of capability as trident, etc. can provide.

 

[Deleted member 66701]

For those that are defending maintaining a nuclear weapon deterrent, is one of your arguments that it stops our enemies even contemplating invading us let alone actually doing it, for fear of a nuclear reprisal?

 

[Rroff]

For those that are defending maintaining a nuclear weapon deterrent, is one of your arguments that it stops our enemies even contemplating invading us let alone actually doing it, for fear of a nuclear reprisal?

I'm betting you hope someone steps right into that one :S

Just because you can cite specific situations where nuclear weapons aren't effective doesn't mean they are overall ineffective.

 

[Deleted member 66701]

I'm betting you hope someone steps right into that one :S

That obvious?

 

[elmarko]

/Facepalm

The reason we downsized to just the subs is because the cost of keeping nuclear bombers in the air 24/7 is ruinous, land based is pointless for a country this tiny because a first strike would wipe out any response, and sea surface is too easy to find/destroy.

With the subs an enemy could obliterate the entire UK and they would still be obliterated in response by subs they cannot locate.

Who said bombers?, you are away the military conducted a serious review & silo based blue steak missiles were considered amongst the overs (it was also significantly cheaper).

They believed the capabilities were better for trident (which they are) but are also significantly more expensive. I'm not claiming the deterrent is identical, just sufficient. A multi nuclear strike against numerous targets & the enemy hoping they hit everything at once without the chance of retaliation is highly unlikely.

http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN06526#fullreport
https://www.york.ac.uk/media/politics/documents/research/MPs.pdf - While it's easy to make stupid & snide /facepalm/goodlord style remarks, if you take the time to read the actual documents there are many arguments for & against.

Silo based ICBM are not some stupid idea, the US military also maintains a number across various air force bases & hidden complexes. Renewing trident like it or not can be seen as a violation of our commitments to the nuclear none proliferation treaty, one which we are signatories of.

 

[Rroff]

Silo based ICBM are not some stupid idea, the US military also maintains a number across various air force bases & hidden complexes. Renewing trident like it or not can be seen as a violation of our commitments to the nuclear none proliferation treaty, one which we are signatories to.

They are really only effective as part of a substantial triad implementation though and more effective for a country with a large landmass and not so suited to the UK.

 

[elmarko]

They are really only effective as part of a substantial triad implementation though and more effective for a country with a large landmass and not so suited to the UK.

I agree it lacks perfect suitability for a high level counter-strike, but with nuclear weapons you don't need a perfect capability to deter a strike.

Would we nuke a nation who had the capability of defence?, or course not - regardless as to how water-tight that defence was it may still result in utter annihilation. It remains a deterrent against conventional warfare to nations who lack a nuclear power (but really, that's the same as now - as if Russia did invade in theory, we wouldn't use nuclear weapons then either.

Then we have to consider that even if nation X nuked every single city in the UK - the resulting fire & ash would cause a high level of global damage (ash/soot levels resulting in huge damage to food production worldwide). It's pretty much impossible to nuke another nation without causing global escalation making the 'concern about retaliation' somewhat meaningless.

I'm struggling to find a scenario where a potential attack would actually be deterred. The only nations or groups stupid enough would be a terrorist deployed device (making a counter-strike impossible & our deterrent pointless) or one done by a theocratic/totalitarian nut-job in a bunker who didn't care about the retaliation (again making the prospect of a deterrent pointless).

If we get nuked in the UK then I can pretty much 100% guarantee it would be by a factor able to hide it's origin (proxy) or detonated domestically after being smuggled in. Neither of these cases we have any protection for anyway. If somebody wanted to nuke the UK they would smuggle in a device on a boat & blow it off the coast of a major city, or launch it from a mobile launcher (for example, Russia has a large number of these you can stick on the back of any large ship & launch from that).

 

[RoboCod]

Then we have to consider that even if nation X nuked every single city in the UK - the resulting fire & ash would cause a high level of global damage (ash/soot levels resulting in huge damage to food production worldwide). It's pretty much impossible to nuke another nation without causing global escalation making the 'concern about retaliation' somewhat meaningless.

This is merely conjecture. No one knows what would happen exactly. Given the sheer number of nuclear tests that have been conducted in the open atmosphere alone, and not including sub-surface tests, I think it's safe to say the world isn't collapsing under a toxic nuclear cloud right now.

 

[Rroff]

I'm struggling to find a scenario where a potential attack would actually be deterred. The only nations or groups stupid enough would be a terrorist deployed device (making a counter-strike impossible & our deterrent pointless) or one done by a theocratic/totalitarian nut-job in a bunker who didn't care about the retaliation (again making the prospect of a deterrent pointless).

In the short term geopolitical landscape yes nukes aren't particularly relevant - however if there is one thing history has reinforced many times over it is that we should not bet on that continuing indefinitely and that divesting yourself of your most powerful weapons whether the goal is peace or war tends not to have a happy ending.

This is merely conjecture. No one knows what would happen exactly. Given the sheer number of nuclear tests that have been conducted in the open atmosphere alone, and not including sub-surface tests, I think it's safe to say the world isn't collapsing under a toxic nuclear cloud right now.

Yeah - Russia for instance has tested several very big nukes - IIRC a few of the big bombs they tested in combination are about the equivalent of our entire current arsenal - plus current generation nuclear weapons generally are a lot "cleaner" than the big dirty less sophisticated nukes of the past.

 

[Danthus]

Why such a focus on Trident?

 

[Schlong&Stable]

Why such a focus on Trident?

Because it's a massive issue if the leader of the opposition wants to abandon national security.

 

[Rroff]

Why such a focus on Trident?

Corbyn said he wanted to see the renewal of trident/replacement scrapped without offering anything more than basically "I don't like weapons of mass destruction" as an argument let alone any suggestion of an alternative. Something of such an impact to our national security needs much more of a debate and reasoned argument if you are going to suggest it than that.

Which then goes on to my other post - he seems to be just saying what he thinks people want to hear without necessarily any intention of doing anything about it while at the same time bleating on about "new/changed/real" politics and it all just ends up ringing hollow.

 

[itchy]

He is a ****ing nut job period.

I cannot believe he is head of the Liebour party????

He is an extreme Marxist and he can get the **** out of my life asap.

 

[McPhee]

I don't really understand the cost argument versus other solutions. The cost of replacing Trident versus the cost of keeping Trident, sure. The saving from scrapping Trident, again, that makes a kind of sense. But replacing it with an alternative? Nope. Not getting that one. The savings aren't significant, yet the effectiveness of the solution is significantly diminished.

 

[McPhee]

He is a ****ing nut job period.

I cannot believe he is head of the Liebour party????

He is an extreme Marxist and he can get the **** out of my life asap.

You're an idiot if you think the guy is a Marxist. There's a long distance between what Corbyn and McDonnell are talking about, and Marxism. Neither seem particularly interested in Marxism or Communism these days - they are economic and social systems that have been demonstrated to fail.