No Trident?

ILW

How would it actually affect the UK if it was not part of NATO?

heffsta

zappahey wrote: »

No, that's the excuse used to keep you in fear, while state powers are increased.

Frankly, the biggest risk from terrorism is the loss of freedom and privacy in the cause of preventing a small number of deaths every few years.

True, but the Trident is playing on our fear in the same way.

If we pull out of Afghanistan etc. there will be less hate towards us in world which in turn will mean less terrorism anyway.

In the end if we stop trying to follow the USA's way of doing things we will be better off.

purch

More importantly, we need it to keep our Veto seat

So basically we need to spend ££ Billions on a Trident missile system that we will never use, in order to keep a seat on the UN Security Council, or we will be like Germany and Japan and all the other countries who don't have such a seat :eek:

Pathetic argument

Pete111

We need Trident peeps. Nukes are a reality and giving them up now just beacuse the biggest current threat is not necessarily a fellow nuclear power would be madness.

You cannot seriously tell me that in the 80's the powers that be thought that 25 years down the line the biggest threat to the UK's cities would be the bearded chap with a dirty bomb in his suitcase. Similarly, we don't know what the threat will be a quarter of a century in the future - but to give up your trump card and hope for the best is nuts.

Re alternatives, the current nuclear deterrant works because of a) the great big bang nukes make and b) the near gaurenteed delivery system. Air launched Nukes do not offer anything like the same gaurantee that a ballistic missle system does. Leaving aside the obvious point that planes can be shot down, to ensure quick response they would need to be in the air, fully loaded with nukes by the time the country is hit.

The only way to ensure this is to keep them up in the sky, 'nuked up' at all times. The US tried this in the 50's and it nearly ended very badly when unsurprisingly, one of their alert bombers crashed in the US with a nuke on board. Not good.

Sub launched cruise missiles are subsonic. ie they are also relatively simple to shoot down. Plus you need to be relatively close to the target - hundreds not thousands of miles away usually

In contrast Ballistic missiles can be launched very quickly and - despite what you may think about anti ballistic missile 'star wars' systems - are ridiculously hard to shoot down. These things basically go into space so need to reach massive speeds to escape the gravitational pull of the earth Trying to hit something doing 7 miles a second is not so simple...

So in a nutshell. I can't see us giving up the big red button anytime soon. Sorry.

Jonbvn

purch wrote: »

Pathetic argument

You have to remember many have not got over us losing the empire just yet.

stevsand

jonewer wrote: »

Dont worry, the one-eyed snot eater is going to resign tonight.

I hope nobody in your family loses a eye.