Threat to UK Nuclear Deterrent | Hacker News Reader

Threat to UK Nuclear Deterrent

theguardian.com

28 pointszabzonk10 comments

I hadn't thought of this before but the UK nuclear deterrent is based on US built missiles. The UK builds its own subs and warheads, but the launch vehicle is a US designed and built Trident missile. If Trump carries on the way he's going, these may become unreplaceable/unserviceable.

Now, we could possibly buy the French equivalents, but they would probably not fit/work with the existing UK subs. Or we could build own, at enormous cost.

This potentially severely degrades the UK's defence capability. Do we go back to air-dropped bombs? Maybe Storm Shadow could be adapted?

I find the whole thing very worrying, personally.

Furthermore, if you ever see someone from the Thiel/Musk/Vance/Trump administration ever bringing this topic up, it's meant to weaken the UK nuclear posture and encourage Russia.

> we could possibly buy the French equivalents, but they would probably not fit/work with the existing UK subs. Or we could build own, at enormous cost.

Another alternative is enter some cooperation agreement with France, and build SLBMs based on the current French M51s for both countries, using factories in both countries.

IIRC the last UK designed, built, tested nuclear missile was the Avro Blue Steel (in service: 1963-1970) which was replaced by the Douglas GAM-87 Skybolt from the US.

That's going back a way in time.

EDIT: Not replaced by the Skybolt .. that was proposed, developed, never successful .. the UK ended up going with the US UGM-27 Polaris missile after Blue Steel.

Yeah, Blue Steel was the last. My Dad was a Vulcan captain flying them, and he was not impressed. Apart from anything else, they took about a whole day to be fuelled (liquids) and to be mated to the Vulcan. This was obviously not sensible.

Having said that, Blue Steel did have an inertial navigation system that could be slaved to the aircraft (Vulcans didn't have such tech until later), though my Dad was fairly unimpressed by its capabilities.

I grew up at the northern end of Woomera test range (largest land based missile test range on planet) and went into geophysical exploration - my father and his crowd would find 'lost' missile shells in the Tanami desert and surrounds, I found a few with remote sensing some years on.

We still have manuals for a few missiles (during the dev stages) dating back to the 1950s and 60s.

My Dad flew a Vulcan from the UK to Woomera with a Blue Streak (never deployed UK missile) stage for testing in the capacious bomb bay. All sorts of adventures including illegally overflying Indonesian airspace - but the Indonesians could never intercept a Vulcan.

The Len Beadell network is epic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL44EAyz8Qc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Len_Beadell

This is a point I've been discussing for a while but never to my knowledge gets brought up in the mainstream Trident debates.

Another point is the two test failures in a row recently.

Regardless of the stance on whether we should spend so much on Trident I think most would agree if we are spending we want it to work, and be able to maintain it ourselves.

Britain should rejoin the EU, the company that produces the Ariane rocket should produce ICBMs, which should then be stationed in Greenland.

Given the current threats, probably the ICBMs should point both ways.

If Greenland wants independence (unlikely given the current situation), the Danish parliament should simply refuse to ratify it. That's how politics works since 2025.

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