if this goes through, the UK might's well give up any further pretense of being a world power
Posted on 02/15/2015 5:51:33 PM PST by sukhoi-30mki
REPLACING Trident with a nuclear deterrent dropped from the air would save up to £13 billion for priority defence equipment spending, a think-tank has claimed in a new report.
Trident nuclear submarines at Faslane are an “expensive and excessive” solution to the UK deterrence requirements and would have been ineffective even during the Cold War, CentreForum said in its analysis.
Instead, the UK’s forthcoming F-35 Joint Strike Fighters – a stealth aircraft bought for conventional missions – should be adapted to deliver a “minimum nuclear deterrent” based upon a stockpile of 100 British built B61-12 nuclear bombs, the “independent liberal” think-tank stated.
The proposal echoes that of the Royal Air Force’s V-force of the 1950s and 1960s, when the UK’s nuclear deterrent was carried by Valiant Vulcan and Victor bombers.
Nationalist politicians have made the replacement of Trident in the next parliament a key election issue, with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon suggesting that the SNP would make the scrapping of the system a condition of propping-up a minority Labour government.
Toby Fenwick, the author of the report, said the cost of an “air-dropped nuclear deterrent” was half the £33 billion estimated cost of replacing the four Faslane-based Vanguard class submarines that carry nuclear weapons.
Mr Fenwick said a government led by Labour or the Tories would face a “tough challenge” to fund the renewal of Trident, which he claimed would put the UK’s defence budget under financial strain.
He said: “Trident is a gold plated solution that risks the modernisation of the UK’s conventional forces. Its advocates need to explain how they can fund their expensive system without doing irreparable damage to the UK forces.
“Our costed proposal provides a credible minimum independent UK nuclear force whilst providing our soldiers, sailors and airmen with the equipment they need.”
CentreForum’s report claimed replacing Trident with an air-dropped nuclear deterrent would “significantly strengthen the conventional armed forces”. It said it would free up funds for a further five Astute-class attack submarines and four Type 26 frigates for the Navy, as well as eight maritime patrol aircraft to fill the gap left by the cancellation of Nimrod aircraft in 2010.
Mr Fenwick added: “Our costed proposal provides a credible minimum independent UK nuclear force.”
However, a Ministry of Defence spokeswoman, said a UK Cabinet Office review in 2013 had examined similar proposals for free-fall air bombs, but “judged such a system insufficiently credible”.
A Nationalist MSP also criticised the plan from CentreForum, which he said “misses the point entirely” and would leave nuclear weapons in Scotland.
SNP MSP Bill Kidd said: “Moves to simply replace one eye-wateringly expensive nuclear weapons system with another one misses the point entirely.
“Nuclear weapons are a moral obscenity and the prospect of wasting tens of billions of pounds on weapons of mass destruction at a time when more and more people are relying on foodbanks is utterly wrong.”
Eesh...should they even be putting this information out there?
Talk about defense regression.
Trident is nuclear-hardened. That means that close-by nukes will not knock an incoming warhead offline, nor stop the missile itself, assuring that the warhead would be delivered. The nuclear resistance is built in and is compex to accomplish.
A fighter plane, on the other hand, is quite vulnerable to nuclear pulses, doses, and neutrons.
Unless they are willing to harden the fighter planes, this is a serious degradation of capability. And you can’t harden a fighter plane too much more than the pilot.
Then there is the issue of the fighter escaping the detonation of a Trident-class warhead.
The only remotely positive thing I can see out of this is at least an “independent liberal think tank” seems to be accepting the principle that a nuclear deterrent of some sort is necessary.
Yes, Mr Kidd, nuclear weapons are a ‘moral obscenity’ and for the last sixty five or so years, the only thing stopping the obscene and immoral from using them is fear of the response. If you can miraculously prevent any chance of them being used by dictatorial regimes, then we can start talking about the idea of scaling them back in the hands of the free democratic countries protecting the world.
They think an F-35 will replace submarines??
Can an F-35 even reach Moscow on a tank of fuel??
Putin must be on the floor LAUGHING HIS BUTT OFF at Western Europe (and the United States, for that matter)...when he reads stories like this, or about us fielding LGBT battalions.
Bad idea. Stop the dang global warming initiatives and put the money into defense.
England is going down the sh!£ tubes.
Submarines are inherently survivable. How much would it cost for enough nukes and places to be as survivable as the Trident fleet? My guess: subs are a very cheap way of assuring that Britain has a secure second-strike capability.
What they need to do is advertise Trident as a countermeasure to global warming. If the worst case scenario occurs, and global temperatures rise by nearly two degrees in the next century, one Trident sub can tip us into nuclear winter and cancel out a century of CO2. That option should make liberals happy.
Britain needs a real bomber.
Due to it’s survivability, there is no greater nuclear deterrent than a Trident missile submarine.
The same independent liberal think tank (talk about oxymorons) that earlier criticized the F-35 for being obsolete wants to entrust Britain’s nuclear deterrent on it.
definitely not an F-35
Agreed. Boomers, at least when at sea, have negligible vulnerability to a first strike. Aircraft and land based missiles unfortunately are highly vulnerable. And the UK is in a bad spot because they are so damned close to the likely aggressor. Subs are the only nuclear deterrent that makes sense for them.
And let’s not kid ourselves. The SNP and their fellow travelers in the left wing wasteland that is Scottish politics all want unilateral nuclear disarmament.
If the F35 is how you approach your solution, your problem is about to get much worse.
if this goes through, the UK might's well give up any further pretense of being a world power
False economy. The strategic bombers will be destroyed in the air or on the ground. The Trident SSBN is a very different matter. They are the only delivery system that keeps aggressors awake at night because they are SURVIVABLE in a first strike scenario. It is the retaliation from the Boomers that the aggressor fears.
Now suddenly the slow speed and short legs of the F-35 matter,,,a lot.
“The strategic bombers will be destroyed in the air or on the ground”
And they are actually speaking of the F-35, as a strategic bomber. And the combat range will just about allow them to make Berlin. Sad,,,,
That was exactly the first thought I had too. They will need to launch a lot of stealthy refueling planes too... I don’t think those exist yet
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