if this goes through, the UK might's well give up any further pretense of being a world powerEesh...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.
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.
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 powerFalse 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.
I got a better idea! Why doesn't formerly-Great Britain just totally disarm, and give all its nukes to ISIS! That would be the non-racist and liberal thing to do. Just disarm, and preemptively surrender to ISIS. I mean, hey, they imams need little British white girls to marry, anyway, so they won't blow up England.
The Tridents are still a useful MAD tool. They could destroy an enemy long after their own nation had been rendered ruins. Deterrence rules.
Didn't the people on the dole get bumped off the dole in countries like France once Germany occupied the country?
Given how close the UK is to an Islamic takeover, I’d be happier if they got rid of the Tridents.