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Re: hey Brits!

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On 08/06/2016 22:47, Malcolm McMahon wrote:
> On Wednesday, 8 June 2016 00:34:16 UTC+1, Alex W.  wrote:
>> On 08/06/2016 00:59, Les Hellawell wrote:
>>> On Tue, 7 Jun 2016 05:12:42 -0700 (PDT), Robert Carnegie
>>> <rja.carnegie@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>
>>
>>>>
>>>> Okay, maybe it is possible to launch an American
>>>
>>> made missile with British made
>>>
>>>> nuclear
>>>
>>> weapons
>>>
>>>> missile to attack America.  But I think I won't do it until I
>>>> have more than one of them.
>>>
>>> It would be madness and mass murder to launch such a vile thing
>>> anywhere. We should scrap the damn things not renew them as is
>>> currently planned. They never served any useful purpose and young
>>> men should not be wasting their lives sat in submarines in the
>>> depths of our oceans for months on end. We have far far better
>>> things to spent our hard earned money on. (cue usual statement
>>> about how many NHS hospitals we could build instead).
>>
>> In a world with only two superpowers, our trifling arsenal only
>> served a very marginal purpose if at all.
>>
>>
>> But today?  Nations with nuclear capability are proliferating --
>> and so is the threat.  It isn't so long ago that two demented
>> dictators in the Middle East (Hussein and Gaddhafi) were actively
>> working on developing a nuclear arsenal capable of hitting the UK.
>> Without the means of responding to that threat in kind, those
>> loonytunes might well have ended up using their weapons, either as
>> a threat or by launching them. For such nations, the old rule of
>> Mutually Assured Destruction still holds.
>>
>
> But, even if we need a nuclear deterrent, is a SLBM the right kind
> for the modern world?

On reflection, you are correct.
Overkill is perhaps no longer the best solution.


>
> For a start the "invisibility" of nuclear subs, if it still exists,
> probably won't for long. The seas will soon swarm with
> semi-autonomous spy drones.

True .... at least until countermeasures are developed.


>
> And against the new actors the old nukes are likely to prove too big.
> If we dropped a single Trident warhead on North Korea, for example,
> we'd kill at least hundreds of Chinese, and even more South Koreans.
> These nukes were designed for Armagedon where collateral damage was
> hardly an issue.
>
> If we still need a nuclear deterrent a dozen Cruise Missiles with
> relatively small warheads would be a more credible one than Trident.
> And a hell of a lot cheaper.

Quite true.

The issue is whether we have the political will to invest in a programme 
to develop and build such missiles and the warheads to match.

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Re: hey Brits! Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@gmail.com> - 2016-06-06 04:08 -0700
  Re: hey Brits! Smiler <smiler@jo.king> - 2016-06-06 14:51 +0000
    Re: hey Brits! Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@gmail.com> - 2016-06-06 09:35 -0700
      Re: hey Brits! Smiler <smiler@jo.king> - 2016-06-06 19:05 +0000
        Re: hey Brits! Les Hellawell <les@shant.tell> - 2016-06-06 20:30 +0100
          Re: hey Brits! Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@gmail.com> - 2016-06-07 05:12 -0700
            Re: hey Brits! Les Hellawell <les@shant.tell> - 2016-06-07 15:59 +0100
              Re: hey Brits! "Alex W." <ingilt@yahoo.co.uk> - 2016-06-08 09:34 +1000
                Re: hey Brits! Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@gmail.com> - 2016-06-08 03:12 -0700
                Re: hey Brits! Malcolm McMahon <malcolm.mc74@googlemail.com> - 2016-06-08 05:47 -0700
                Re: hey Brits! "Alex W." <ingilt@yahoo.co.uk> - 2016-06-09 18:41 +1000
            Re: hey Brits! "Alex W." <ingilt@yahoo.co.uk> - 2016-06-08 09:25 +1000
              Re: hey Brits! Smiler <smiler@jo.king> - 2016-06-08 19:03 +0000
      Re: hey Brits! "Alex W." <ingilt@yahoo.co.uk> - 2016-06-07 09:15 +1000

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