Vote on UK Nuclear Arms Expected Next Year

The government began what is expected to be a divisive debate on the future of the country's nuclear weapons on Thursday and promised a parliamentary debate and vote on the issue early next year.

The cabinet had a "very good" preliminary discussion on Thursday on whether or how to replace the country's ageing nuclear defence, Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman said.

Ministers say decisions must be taken now if Britain is to replace the existing system, consisting of Trident missiles carried aboard four Vanguard-class nuclear-powered submarines, that will reach the end of its life in about 2024.

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So what do you think the out come will be? I would like to see an entirely new system for the UK, updating the current system would go down in my books as a bit of a bodge job.
Knowing our Government they will probably replace them with super fuel efficient, energy saving green nukes and charge them £5 for every mile they travel.

Views.


[edit on 23-11-2006 by Thirst]

Originally posted by Thirst
So what do you think the out come will be? I would like to see an entirely new system for the UK, updating the current system would go down in my books as a bit of a bodge job.
Knowing our Government they will probably replace them with super fuel efficient, energy saving green nukes and charge them £5 for every mile they travel.


[edit on 23-11-2006 by UK Wizard]

..... does UK have any land based ICBMs? I know when I was over there after the wall fell, they were removing the intermediate range nukes the US put there. I know that britain is so small, they probably dont have alot of room to put land based missiles, so rely heavily on subs but I dont know for sure.

Yes XphilesPhan, we used to have a few. They were based at RAF Macrihanish on the Mull peninsular, alongside an 18 hole golf course.

That was way back in 1969/70 when we still hand the Handley Page Victor, Vickers Valiant and of course the Avro Vulcan.

It was decided that our fledgling missile 'Thor', would be scrapped in favour of 'Blue Steel' that was to be launched from the aircraft listed above and they in turn were scrapped in favour of 'Polaris' which was itself scrapped to allow Trident to be deployed on our fleet of 'attack' submarines.

In this day and age, I personelly feal that such an expenditure would be an insane and totaly obscene waste of money. My personal view is that we would best be served by long range air or submarine launched nuclear armed cruise missiles.

The technology exists which would allow the missiles to fly in excess of 5,000 miles or we could see the deployment of say the Predator with nuclear weapons in the forseeable future.

Now that would be a deterrent!

guess what!!

britian does have land based missle bases scattered along britians shores like british channel chorley liverpool wales ireland scottland south devon birmigham
cya g2g

thanks. Alot of our ICBM bases are in the middle of nowhere. but I know we still have the bombers and the subs as well. I heard them say if someone managed to knock out all of our land based ICBMs, we still have enough subs to do alot of damage.

The UK has only one nuclear capability - Trident

A comprehensive Strategic Defense Review was completed by the Labor government in March 1998 that resulted in a major revision in Britain's strategic nuclear posture in July. Effective immediately all WE177 bombs were removed from service, and all of them (175 WE 177 A and B bombs - with yields of 200 and 400 kt) were dismantled by the end of August. This left only a single nuclear weapon system in service - the Trident submarine.

nuclearweaponarchive.org...

In contrast with the other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the United Kingdom currently has operated only a single nuclear deterrent since decommissioning its free-falling nuclear bombs in 1998. This system consists of four Vanguard class submarines armed with nuclear-tipped Trident missiles, performing both the strategic and sub-strategic roles. An official decision on the replacement of Trident, which was developed during the cold war, is expected in the next few years, although it has been reported that preparations are already underway.[1]

en.wikipedia.org...

Korean1 I think you're confused / using very old info sources

UK has no land-based ICBM or any other nuke

I kind of suspected that the UK used only subs, hence their elite naval force. I would be sort of wary of having only one nuclear deterrent system. Of course, any attack on britain with a nuclear weapons would probably draw a smiliar attack from the US on the agressor, and we have alot of nuclear weapons.

Originally posted by fritz
Yes XphilesPhan, we used to have a few. They were based at RAF Macrihanish on the Mull peninsular, alongside an 18 hole golf course.

That was way back in 1969/70 when we still hand the Handley Page Victor, Vickers Valiant and of course the Avro Vulcan.

It was decided that our fledgling missile 'Thor', would be scrapped in favour of 'Blue Steel' that was to be launched from the aircraft listed above and they in turn were scrapped in favour of 'Polaris' which was itself scrapped to allow Trident to be deployed on our fleet of 'attack' submarines.

In this day and age, I personelly feal that such an expenditure would be an insane and totaly obscene waste of money. My personal view is that we would best be served by long range air or submarine launched nuclear armed cruise missiles.

The technology exists which would allow the missiles to fly in excess of 5,000 miles or we could see the deployment of say the Predator with nuclear weapons in the forseeable future.

Now that would be a deterrent!

Once again Fritz is wrong, im pretty sure Britain has never had land based intercontinental ballastic missiles. The RAF only had airlaunched nuclear missiles not sure whether they were free fall (think they were though) or guided missiles. For someone who claims to be or has been in the military you sure do get a lot of facts wrong Fritz

Thor was UK-based but an IRBM not ICBM - you're both right.

Thor's replacement blue steel/streak was cancelled when the Polaris deal was done

XphilesPhans question was whether the uk had any landbased ICBMs of our own and we all know the answer is NO.

I do believe that the UK needs its own nuclear deterrant espacially if we want to keep our permanant security seat on the UN

[edit on 24-11-2006 by mojoberg]

mojoberg, funny how I never met you at RAF Macrihanish in 1969 or again in 1970 when I was stationed there. I am pretty sure sure that I would have remembered you.

As to your being pretty sure that we've never had land based ICBM's well, unless you were 'there', I would think you cannot make an informed judgement.

[edit on 24-11-2006 by fritz]

[edit on 24-11-2006 by fritz]

Originally posted by Strangerous
Thor was UK-based but an IRBM not ICBM - you're both right.

Thor's replacement blue steel/streak was cancelled when the Polaris deal was done

Well yes I know that! But I always assumed in our case that Russia the main target and the East German land and air forces were Continental Targets and thus the fledgling missile force was ICBM in nature.

I also know that we (the RAF) tested them or their warheads, at Woomera and this could be seen from the not so secret RAF Edinburgh Field, some 250 miles to the SW.

Nit Pik your way through that mojoberg!

Thor was a land based IRBM purchased/leased for a very short period (1958 - 1963).
It was venerable to attack in the UK tho, time to erect and fuel the missile was approx 15mins.
There was talk of an indigenous British missile (a development of Blue Streak) but it was cancelled in 1960 as it had the same vulnerability and drawbacks as any other missile system back then in the UK.
Thor info here
More Blue Streak info here

With the failure of the air launched ICBM (Skybolt) program and due to cash constraints and the small physical size of the UK a submarine based deterrent (what became Polaris) ended up being preferred over the V-Force (which had Blue Steel - a stand-off air launched nuclear warhead missile) or land missile system.
Blue steel here
skybolt missile here

Interestingly 'we' skipped Poseidon (the sucessor to Polaris with the US Navy) and went for a 'home-grown' upgrade called Chevaline (this added decoys, chaff and other counter-measures against Moscow's anti-missile system).
This was expensive (IIRC £1billion was talked about at one time......when the story eventually broke, that was a major sore point in Parliament cos the Labour Gov of the time, with only a small majority and fearing their own anti-nuc's wing, kept it completely secret for many years) but it was probably less expensive than any other possible option as we awaited the next SLBM system
(Trident......and in fact we were able to skip the early 'C' version of Trident and go for the later D5).
Polaris missile info here
Cheveline info here
Trident info here

I expect something similar here.
I expect the British Gov to move to a half-way house of retaining the nuclear deterrent but in reduced numbers and involving an updating of the existing Trident missiles/submarine 'fleet'.


[edit on 24-11-2006 by sminkeypinkey]

I foresee some kind of nuclear deterrent being in place..my bet would also be on a reduced SLBM capability whether it be on an upgraded Vanguard class or possibly an Astute configured platform like ive heard mentioned.

well i know in the 80's/90's (cold war era) we had something like 800 nuclear missles.

we now have something like 300 (smallest of the big 5 nuclear states), never the less 300 nuclear weapons - each one 15 times more powerful than hiroshima, is more than enough to wipe out any country.

but i think britain just have them incase we are attacked, we would NEVER use them first, those 300 are just there as a warning that we can defend ourselfs if need be....but i will say if nuclear war ever broke out, i think britain (if necessary) have the power to produce more weapons almost instantly should we need them.

as for updating the trident, i'm on the fence with it - i think we need to retain our nuclear deterent, but i feel £25 billion (around $48 billion) could be spent on other things that we need, ie:- NHS or more prisions so we don't keep letting out prisoners on the tag after 2 weeks :/

[edit on 24-11-2006 by st3ve_o]

Just how independent is our nuclear arsenal though?

cndyorks.gn.apc.org...

Time to sever the ties on this little episode I think. It's clearly a waste of money, especially if a lot of that money goes overseas to subsidise someone elses reasearch.

on the bbc awhile back it said if we didnt have nuclear weapons we could not be considered a world power and we could forget about our permanent seat at the UN

that link is totally off the mark, britain conducted it's first nuclear test by ourselfs in the 50's and we developed our own nuclear weapons for 25 years....that link is totally wrong, britain was working on developing the atom from as early as WW1 era when it was first descovered there could be an ULTIMATE WEAPON....1939 churchill felt if we dropped the bomb on germany it would end the war (tube alloys project) - which developed into the 'manhattan project' worked on by mostly british and canadian scientists (commonwealth), in that link it's saying we realied on american help from day1, nowhere in that link it says the truth and the truth is all or 90% of atomic weapon research came from the united kingdom and the british commonwealth.

the americans mainly funded it being put together as britain could no longer afford to.

Originally posted by Britguy
Just how independent is our nuclear arsenal though?

cndyorks.gn.apc.org...

Time to sever the ties on this little episode I think. It's clearly a waste of money, especially if a lot of that money goes overseas to subsidise someone elses reasearch.

[edit on 24-11-2006 by Sepiroth]

It shouldn't even be a question of vote!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We Britons are allowed to have whatever weapons we want, and to use any weapon we consider necessary to be used to assure we are safe, regardless of whether other countries have WMDs or not.

Not only we shouldn't disarm, we should also increase our nuclear arsenal! We have enough plutonium for 12,500 500-kT warheads.

Regarding the missiles and the subs, yes, they should be replaced if needed. Not necessarily by SSBNs, it could be the SEPECAT Jaguar bomber, but they should be replaced.

Originally posted by DissolveTheCND
It shouldn't even be a question of vote!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We Britons are allowed to have whatever weapons we want, and to use any weapon we consider necessary to be used to assure we are safe, regardless of whether other countries have WMDs or not.

Not only we shouldn't disarm, we should also increase our nuclear arsenal! We have enough plutonium for 12,500 500-kT warheads.

Regarding the missiles and the subs, yes, they should be replaced if needed. Not necessarily by SSBNs, it could be the SEPECAT Jaguar bomber, but they should be replaced.

Mmm, says the guy who lives in a country with no right to self defense and laws against even having a gun on your person on your own property.

The UK submarine fleet is old and needs updating.