Theresa May 'faith' in Trident after test 'malfunction' | Hacker News Reader

Theresa May 'faith' in Trident after test 'malfunction'

news.google.com

24 pointsAlex391719 comments

There appears to be a recent reliability problem with the Trident. There seem to have been at least two failures in the past 35 launches.

Lockheed often issues press releases after successful tests. Up until 2012, with the 135th, all of their press releases talked about the "XXXth consecutive successful launch." Starting in 2012 with the 137th, they all say "the XXXth successful launch." I take this to mean that #136 was unsuccessful. Their latest release talks about the 161st successful launch.

Where this gets interesting is that the British Prime Minister may or may not have known about this before the vote went to parliament to renew/upgrade this white elephant.

The funny thing is that the nuclear deterrent of the UK is obsolete for reasons not widely discussed. Nowadays anyone with enough money to bother can make themselves a 'drone submarine' to track the nuclear subs out of Scotland and to wherever they hide in the ocean depths. This is a game changer and the people in GCHQ really are not pleased with this.

The other thing about the 'British' nuclear deterrent is that the U.S. holds the keys to the launch buttons, so the UK would not be able to 'nuke Trump' (or take out the Pentagon for the good of the world...).

Anyway, keep watching this story and the political ramifications, if the Prime Minister did know that Trident was not working before the vote to waste more money on this 'preparation for war' then that could be a sackable offence...

So if some global thermonuclear war started and the US communications were wiped out, the UK would be effectively left defenceless on the nuclear front? Although if it got to that stage, I guess it wouldn't matter much.

" Nowadays anyone with enough money to bother can make themselves a 'drone submarine' to track the nuclear subs out of Scotland and to wherever they hide in the ocean depths."

This is not true.

If it were, they'd have been made a long time ago and would be commonplace.

"Nowadays anyone with enough money to bother can make themselves a 'drone submarine' to track the nuclear subs out of Scotland and to wherever they hide in the ocean depths. "

Your drone is going to have to quite a piece of kit:

* This: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Lyubov_Orlova floated around the Atlantic for some time and sort of vanished. A sub goes somewhat faster than a drifting ship and has three dimensions to play with.

* It will have to surface to relay the tracked sub's position or deploy buoys or something

* It will have to be able to match the tracked sub's endurance

There are probably some mitigations for the above but if your drone loses its quarry it is useless. If it is detected then it will be useless and in pieces - it will almost certainly end up in a fishing net or some other plausible accident.

I doubt GCHQ are really fussed with your drone given that they are not part of the Royal Navy. I doubt the RN are too bothered with your drones but mitigate for it anyway as part of the broader effort to secure the effectiveness of the subs.

Here is a speculative piece from the mainstream media, obviously no better than fake news for those with made-up minds:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/julian-borger-global-secur...

My knowledge of the 'sub drone threat' is from countryside walks with folks that work for GCHQ and what they are up to in Ascencion Island. Obviously that is mere second hand gossip, however it is a serious existential threat to Trident when the one nuclear sub that is seaworthy at a given time can be tracked out of Scotland and wherever it goes in the ocean. It is only a matter of time before this happens.

I've no doubt that you have spoken to people who are involved with GCHQ - you have said so yourself and I'll take that as trustworthy - why would you fib about that, it seems innocent enough? However how many of those people have actually sat down and _really_ evaluated the threat that you posit?

GCHQ employees are not submariners. Your mates in Ascension might be kitchen staff for all I know and given how you spell Ascension and the use of "folks", you are not from around here are you?

Its all very well denigrating something, perhaps you are doing this for someone's operational reasons, but it's not very convincing. sigh

Cheers Jon

...my first job was to do with hiding submarines between hot/cold currents in the ocean for the Royal Navy. The people I worked with were not the sharpest 'knives in the drawer' (whereas the civilian scientists I worked with on other projects most certainly were). There were only so many bits of the ocean that we looked at, I imagine that given the range of the missiles and the likely targets there are only so many places the one active nuclear armed submarine actually goes.

Although I have a passing interest in the UK deterrent that has 'protected me all these years', intellectually I lost interest after learning at an early age that it wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. (For starters, me being given any involvement with no skills whatsoever was a sign of such flakiness.)

I know that GCHQ are mostly about reading people's Facebook posts and emails these days, but, they are the 'government communications headquarters' and, compared to the chumps I got burdened with, they are from the drawer with slightly sharper knives. I have no real idea what they are up to in Ascenscion, however, the guys sent out from Gloucestershire were far too far along the Civil Service road to retirement on final salary pension to be 'catering staff'. However, most of those 'submariners' are doing things like catering, polishing boots and all those things that happen to keep things 'ship shaped'. I am sure the brains are in 'the doughnut' (GCHQ) and not in the tin can doing as it is told somewhere beneath the waves.

Although GCHQ people work in a giant doughnut instead of at sea, GCHQ came out of the Royal Navy. It is a vital part of the setup and not this 'email-stalking identity that does ship to shore communications on the side'.

Obviously without photographic evidence of a Russian undersea drone the idea that someone could theoretically follow the Royal Navy's solo operational nuclear armed submarine is pure speculation, but, with secretly muttered gossip from Gloucestershire, articles in the mainstream news and my own appreciation of 'how to hide a submarine', I personally feel that the nucular deterrent is not all it is cracked up to be.

> The other thing about the 'British' nuclear deterrent is that the U.S. holds the keys to the launch buttons...

This is in contradiction to the the other famous, possibly apocryphal, letter of last resort meme, wherein putting themselves under American control is only one of the possible options should the nightmare scenario of failing to tune in to Radio 4's Today programme three days running occur.

"The other thing about the 'British' nuclear deterrent is that the U.S. holds the keys to the launch buttons, so the UK would not be able to 'nuke Trump' (or take out the Pentagon for the good of the world...)."

Credible citation needed.

I think you'll find that the PM can order the launch of the UK's nuclear warheads without permission from anyone else. I can also exclusively reveal that the Pentagon and Trump Towers are probably not on the list of targets.

This is far more interesting than your missguided assertions: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/in-the-eve...

I can't (be arsed to) find a source but I remember reading somewhere that the PM in the past was required to carry change at all times - probably a slack handful of tuppenny bits () - to be able to use a public phone box to be able to call in the final strike. The AA (see above) was another comms method and there were probably a few other odd ideas.

If you think we (UK) are odd then I'll just drop this for your delectation: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2515598/Launch-code-...

Cheers Jon

() The UK's currency, pre-decimalisation (1971), was a bit strange but no odder than clinging on to miles/pints and other odd measures. We do now use Celsius for temperature. It is still called "Stirling" (silver standard, even though we went through the gold standard and now free float). It was pounds (£ - "L" for Libre), shillings ("S" for sestertii) and pence ("D" for denarii) - yep: Romanesque - so LSD. £1 = 20s = 240d => 1s = 12d. There was also the guinea which was £1.1s, we still have horse race prizes measured in guineas - presumably £x + (5x) pence because at the point of decimalisation the shilling was redefined from 12 old pence to five new pence.

Got a bit sidetracked there. A tuppenny bit is a two penny coin but I should point out that tuppenny is pronounced "tuppny" - ie a sort ot contracted tup-knee. How the hell did the silent k in knee come about, but I digress again.

"Where this gets interesting is that the British Prime Minister may or may not have known about this before the vote went to parliament to renew/upgrade this white elephant."

I'd have added in an extra "may" to mess with people's heads ;-)

Title a bit misleading... And not title of article its linked to.

Details are sparse, but they were test firing off the coast of Florida.

The missile veered to the mainland instead of the intended target in the water.

Malfunction was in flight and raises issues with their system, that's hardly tested.

To elaborate, it's misleading because no nuke was involved. The missile was (of course!) not carrying a nuclear warhead for the test.

I wonder what would happen if by some bizarre twist of fate they accidentally nuked Florida? As in, same scenario but someone forgot to take a nuclear warhead off first.

Even if it was a demonstrable accident, a stupid number of people would still die. Would America be somewhat obliged to retaliate, even if just to show the rest of the world that they don't have a free pass to pull off an 'accident' of their own?

If anyone wants to turn this into a book, I'll buy it!

"England nukes Florida."

That would be one of the most unlikely collection of words ever strung into a single sentence, but hey in this topsy turvy Trumpy world, anything is possible I guess.

i disagree, because since "Florida" is one of those words, anything could happen.

"England nukes Florida - United States responds with a collective sigh of relief."

Trump declares that England has always been the deepest enemy of the U.S.A, receives instructions from Putin to retaliate.

U.S.A. nukes London.

If the US retaliated the UK would truly have a "hard Brexit".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com