Poll: Poll: UK General Election 2017 - Mk II

[MissChief]

You have no idea how many the UK has.

It is a defensive tool. Invade our land you get it back. You are describing it being used as an offensive tool. Conventional forces fulfill this. If we invaded Russia we would expect to be nuked. If they put boots on our land they would get it.

A few dozen at most. While we do have at least one submarine at sea at all times most of our warheads are in storage or tied up at the dockside while the ships undergo maintenance. I'm not even sure if we have aircraft launched nuclear weapons any more.

This would suggest just over two hundred but we rely heavily on the US to maintain them. Less than twenty are at sea at any one time. For a country as large as Russia, a drop in the ocean.

 

[h4rm0ny]

Russia storms France and Germany with thousands of tanks, occupies Western Europe, USA is in Political turmoil and has abandoned NATO allies, Russia starts amassing an invasion force in France, we have the option of using tactical nuclear weapons to strike the amassing force before they attack us. I mean that's off the top of my head.

No. If the Russians try anything, it will be salami tactics.

EDIT: Ninja'd. But no, Crimea is not really the same. The occupied an area that historically was Russian and whom most of the population want to be part of Russia more than they want to be part of Ukraine. They're not doing it as step one of trying to take German, France and then Picadilly.

 

[delta0]

A few dozen at most. While we do have at least one submarine at sea at all times most of our warheads are in storage or tied up at the dockside while the ships undergo maintenance. I'm not even sure if we have aircraft launched nuclear weapons any more.

The information isn't public so any numbers are guessing.

 

[HardwareGeek]

You have no idea how many the UK has.

It is a defensive tool. Invade our land you get it back. You are describing it being used as an offensive tool. Conventional forces fulfill this. If we invaded Russia we would expect to be nuked. If they put boots on our land they would get it.

I was disagreeing with Roar saying it would be wrong to do this, not advocating it

i believe we have about max 48/60 (if all missile are nuclear tipped not a mix of non nuke, trident has multiple warheads per missile etc) per sub and only about 260 total including ones out of service for maintenance and small warheads vs Russia and USA which had/have approx 1200-1500 each with larger payloads

 

[Roar87]

Nukes are a deterrent, in this case the nukes have already failed to stop a conventional war but are still deterring against Russia nuking the west....Your solution would be to nuke allied countries in western europe to wipe out the Russian occupying forces? in the process killing all the civilian populations and any remaining allied military that could form a resistance to the occupation and guarantee that Russia would respond with an all out nuclear strike against the UK?

Bearing in mind that without the USA we don't have enough warheads to finish the job.

Like another guy said, you aren't actually aware of how modern nuclear weapons work yet you're here trying to intelligently debate them, they can be configured in the hundreds of kilo ton range and be highly effective on military targets without the nuclear fallout of older and larger devices.

The scary thing is Corbyns knowledge on the subject is probably similar to people debating here. Corbyn is more dangerous than Trump.

 

[Rroff]

I was disagreeing with Roar saying it would be wrong to do this, not advocating it

i believe we have about max 48/60 (if all missile are nuclear tipped not a mix of non nuke, trident has multiple warheads per missile etc) per sub and only about 260 total including ones out of service for maintenance and small warheads vs Russia and USA which had/have approx 1200-1500 each with larger payloads

It'll be interesting to see what happens and kind of concerning once Russia has the S-500 platform up and working in numbers - in theory it can stop some of our nukes but is relatively easy to saturate its counter-abilities so we'd have to start sending subs out with a proper compliment as an effective deterrent rather than the partial loads they supposedly do now.

 

[MissChief]

Like another guy said, you aren't actually aware of how modern nuclear weapons work yet you're here trying to intelligently debate them, they can be configured in the hundreds of kilo ton range and be highly effective on military targets without the nuclear fallout of older and larger devices.

The scary thing is Corbyns knowledge on the subject is probably similar to people debating here. Corbyn is more dangerous than Trump.

I'm sure that were he elected PM then there would be a great many briefings about such things, including operational readiness. All things as leader of the opposition he doesn't currently need to know.

 

[HardwareGeek]

Like another guy said, you aren't actually aware of how modern nuclear weapons work yet you're here trying to intelligently debate them, they can be configured in the hundreds of kilo ton range and be highly effective on military targets without the nuclear fallout of older and larger devices.

The scary thing is Corbyns knowledge on the subject is probably similar to people debating here. Corbyn is more dangerous than Trump.

If you only wanted a few 100kt tactical nuke it might be best to use a large conventional bombs or thermobaric to avoid creating a 'nuclear' war?

 

[Roar87]

No. If the Russians try anything, it will be salami tactics.

EDIT: Ninja'd. But no, Crimea is not really the same. The occupied an area that historically was Russian and whom most of the population want to be part of Russia more than they want to be part of Ukraine. They're not doing it as step one of trying to take German, France and then Picadilly.

I know Putin isn't the next Hitler, historically Russia has been the victim of invasions from Europe. How ever if they feel threatened (from things like NATO massing troops and armour in Eastern Europe) they could just roll through the forces we have in place.

 

[Rroff]

If you only wanted a few 100kt tactical nuke it might be best to use a large conventional bombs or thermobaric to avoid creating a 'nuclear' war?

We don't ourselves have anything even close as a conventional bomb to doing that job - even something like a MOAB is right at the bottom of what would be required.

 

[Roar87]

I'm sure that were he elected PM then there would be a great many briefings about such things, including operational readiness. All things as leader of the opposition he doesn't currently need to know.

Or we could just put someone in charge who understands what the hell they're doing

 

[Roar87]

If you only wanted a few 100kt tactical nuke it might be best to use a large conventional bombs or thermobaric to avoid creating a 'nuclear' war?

We completely lack that capability, we don't have any heavy bombers like America and Russia have, or the numbers of cruise missiles you'd need.

 

[Uther]

Or we could just put someone in charge who understands what the hell they're doing

Do you think that is May? She doesn't come across as particularly competent to me.

 

[Rroff]

I know Putin isn't the next Hitler, historically Russia has been the victim of invasions from Europe. How ever if they feel threatened (from things like NATO massing troops and armour in Eastern Europe) they could just roll through the forces we have in place.

I'm not sure what Putin is doing - while he doesn't seem to have actual plans for any kind of offensive war at the same time he is playing out a long game of strengthening Russia's position - if you've paid attention to some of his recent moves they aren't as innocent as they seem - most of them are straight out of the play book for the "tournament of shadows" - I suspect many didn't even notice the significance of the recent agreement with Turkey for the S-400 platform for instance.

 

[IronWarrior]

The information isn't public so any numbers are guessing.

Our Nuclear weapons are equipped on our Vanguard-class submarines with each one having 16 tubes that can carry 8 warheads each.

Simple maths means that a single Vanguard can be equipped with 128 Tridents and we have four submarines, public knowledge is that there is always one deployed somewhere in the world.

This is all public knowledge.

 

[Roar87]

Do you think that is May? She doesn't come across as particularly competent to me.

Why? Because she has to answer awkward questions from people who have no idea what they're talking about and don't understand the reality of budgets and economics. I can't wait for people to vote themselves into redundancy when the economy tanks from a few years of being the United Socialist Kingdom

 

[vincent1989]

Can we really rely on our allies to have our backs in times of a serious threat though?

Aren't we reliant on our allies for trident though? Operationally independent it may be but Whitehall itself has admitted that we are dependent on the US for maintenance and storage and are tied to their political opinion if we want to retain it.

 

[stewski]

Or we could just put someone in charge who understands what the hell they're doing

A guy with a stick analogy in mind?
Riiiiiight.

Discussing the tactical defence capabilities of the UK against an unlikely Russian invasion whilst ignoring the obvious problem of proliferation (which is and has occurred) is pretty much idiocy!

 

[Rroff]

Aren't we reliant on our allies for trident though? Operationally independent it may be but Whitehall itself has admitted that we are dependent on the US for maintenance and storage and are tied to their political opinion if we want to retain it.

We are still able to use it autonomously and have our own stocks (out of rotation) and so on, if the US did pull out we'd still have it there active long enough to put our own replacement together for the program.

 

[HardwareGeek]

A Land invasion of the UK would be almost impossible unless our navy and air forces were already decimated, operation sea lion etc, even more difficult now than it would have been in WW2, picking off transport ships crossing the channel or forces massing at ports would stop that

we are very lucky to have the channel for defence etc, otherwise blitzkrieg would have steamrolled the UK as well i suspect