the concerned
Active Member
This exact issue was in the Sunday Express and they have stated that senior defence officials are looking into this idea and some congressmen are favourable to this .
The Royal Navy Discussions and Updates
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Anixtu
New Member
Weapons under UK control on US territory do not count against treaty limits any more than US controlled weapons on UK territory would count against any UK obligations, unless you can point me to the article of the treaty that says so.
Are you familiar with the agreements allowing US nuclear weapons under US control to be deployed on UK territory? Do you know whether those agreements include reciprocity? Regardless of whether current agreements allow for reciprocity, it does not seem unreasonable to expect it.
The UK has no nuclear weapons under its control on US soil. The nuclear warheads at Kings Bay Georgia are US owned and controlled. The UK leases its warheads from the United States.
US currently has no nuclear weapons on British soil and hasn't for several years. The tactical nukes have been removed and when they were on UK soil, they were exclusively controlled by the US under the NATO alliance. The US has never allowed any country to deploy nuclear weapons on its soil and the US Congress will never allow it.
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The Sunday Express is hardly authoritative on anything. Just because a "few congressman" are allegedly favorable to this is meaningless. Any agreement would have to pass the US House and US Senate and then get Presidential approval. The chances of that are slim and none.
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UK doesn't lease warheads from anyone, UK warheads are built and maintained in the UK (AWE, Aldermaston) and the missiles are picked at random from a joint US-UK stockpile in the US.
Anixtu
New Member
The UK has been allowed to detonate nuclear weapons in the continental USA.
That's hardly the same thing. You're grasping at straws.
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Incorrect - the UK's first deterrent patrols were with US nuclear warheads in Washington bombers (B29's with RAF roundels) - we had independent release.
Thor missiles were dual key, so that's another strike against your case, as you claim they were all exclusive US controlled items...
And no, the UK does not lease nuclear weapons from the US.
Anixtu
New Member
A concrete fact vs unsupported assertions on your expectations of the behaviour of Congress and the Executive, assuming the matter is not already covered by treaty.
So, we maintain two large establishments at Aldermaston & Burghfield to pretend to make the nuclear cores & build them into warheads, a few miles from where I'm sitting, & another one at Coulport in Scotland to pretend to mate the warheads with the missiles & separate them again when we send the missiles back to the USA, just for show?
Funny that. The people I know who work or have worked at the local establishments have always seemed to believe they were actually doing something. And don't you think it's going a bit far to have real radioactive materials on site if they're not needed?
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I don't think anyone on this board had any impression that the nuclear deterrent was a magic solution for everything, rather that it formed a useful component of a series of defence systems and options.
I'd also argue that those missile and boats are actually permanently in use - confusing actually firing the things with deterrence is incorrect - their use is in deterring nuclear aggression. If we have to launch, that's broken down.
Are their risks in the storage, movement and deployment of nuclear weapons? Of course there are - but as far as I'm aware, the sub based deterrent has an excellent safety record and looking at records of nuclear incidents over the years (and I *have*) I can't see any reference to any major loss or near-loss of a missile or warhead from the UK sub based deterrent.
Leaks? The warheads are encapsulated in large reinforced transport containers when moved, You'd have to have a pretty major disaster to affect one in transit.
Even if breached, we've numerous incidents on record of other warheads being involved in cataclysmic events but remaining intact without much release of nuclear material. Plutonium is pretty obnoxious stuff I grant you but it's hard to see there being much opportunity for such to occur.Which is pretty much the way it's been planned.
I'd also argue that those missile and boats are actually permanently in use - confusing actually firing the things with deterrence is incorrect - their use is in deterring nuclear aggression. If we have to launch, that's broken down.
Are their risks in the storage, movement and deployment of nuclear weapons? Of course there are - but as far as I'm aware, the sub based deterrent has an excellent safety record and looking at records of nuclear incidents over the years (and I *have*) I can't see any reference to any major loss or near-loss of a missile or warhead from the UK sub based deterrent.
Leaks? The warheads are encapsulated in large reinforced transport containers when moved, You'd have to have a pretty major disaster to affect one in transit.
Even if breached, we've numerous incidents on record of other warheads being involved in cataclysmic events but remaining intact without much release of nuclear material. Plutonium is pretty obnoxious stuff I grant you but it's hard to see there being much opportunity for such to occur.Which is pretty much the way it's been planned.
Can we now expect some news on the production of the T26? Given the way the area around the yards voted for independence, might that have an impact on the where the vessels will be built? I ask as should the Government and Unionist parties not come through on devo max, I would expect unrest in those parts and for that unrest to be mined by foreign powers for information - Barrow had numerous problems with Counter Intelligence in the mid 70's with Soviet spies.
Oh, that's underway mate - the day after the vote, BAE filed for three applications for work around the sites, their preferred being a single site redevelopment. Still Scotland and likely to be one of Scotstoun or Govan, depending on where planning permission goes. Some clearance work is already underway I think.
Ah: Link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-29286934
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most social media/forum feeds are pulled from industry feeds - and the hand off usually means that the material is deficient and invariably out of context
the majority of the public have no idea about industry feeds and journals and hence think that they have a "scoop"
IMO the internet is helping to make people dumber - not smarter
case in point - scout was appearing in industry subscriber publications 4-5 years before the broader media woke up.
Jeneral,
I read various articles from various sources with a critical eye and I can give you chapter and verse on nuclear losses and near losses from memory.
"In any case, one wonders why successive security reviews don't excessive reduce the firepower of nuclear weapons while the conventional forces get cut here there and everywhere."
I have no idea what this sentence means? We have reduced warhead count over the years and the Successor boats will carry about a third less missiles. There is a minimum size to a deterrent force, usually considered to be enough boats to maintain continual at sea patrols and we're at it now. Cutting further would constitute abandoning the deterrent in it's current form.
There's no link between the 2003 invasion of Iraq and nuclear deterrence. If Iraq had launched a nuclear strike against the UK or any other nuclear armed nation, I'd say you'd have a point. The bulk of the focus of investigation was into chemical, not nuclear, weapons, and we both now know, the case for invasion was over inflated for political reasons.
You could be disingenuous and claim that the lack of evidence of nuclear weapons is proof that the deterrent force worked just fine - otherwise, Saddam would have produced a nuclear weapon - but I'm not disposed to sink to those rather tortuous depths personally.
Once again, a nuclear deterrent is a deterrent to nuclear attack by a state actor. As long as we're not being attacked with nuclear weapons by nation states, it's doing a bang-up job. It's not intended to deter conventional aggression, although it will serve under some circumstances to provide additional leverage, either politically or militarily.
My view? It's better to have a nuclear deterrent and not need one, than to need a nuclear deterrent and not have one.
It's not a magic security blanket and it doesn't get chickweed out of the lawns, I grant you that. But it does make attacking the UK with nuclear weapons unpalatable.
Actually I find material from those sites to be somewhat biased and unreliable so really of no academic use or research reliability other than as pointers to sources of misinformation. Living in a country that went down the path of banning nuclear weapons etc., and having lived through the whole argument 30 years ago, I am well used to the arguments, good and bad, both for and against, so Jeneral I find you arguments somewhat uninformed and juvenile.
i had associates directly involved with both UN weapons investigations and inspections.
the issue for them then and now was that clearly identified caches of chemical precursors accounted for and logged on the primary inspections could not be accounted for on the follow up inspections - the flow on was that if the precursors were unaccounted for then where were they and had they been used to build those weapons. There are any number of SF reports from various countries where they found traces of known precursors which reinforced concerns about whether there were deliverable weapons hidden
unfort the iraqis also compounded the problem by being unable to account for the chemical caches identified and audited on the primary inspections.
so although there were never any complete weapons found, the fundamental concerns about where those precursor stocks were just served to reinforce that some might be in play.
unfort the whole history in the broader media condemning the 2003 war has conveniently ignored the fact that weapons precursor stocks accounted for in the primary inspections were unable to be accounted for by the Iraqis on subsequent inspections and which then fed into the narrative created by Curveball
Well, we knew the Iraqi military had had access to chemical weapons and delivery systems prior to the invasion so it was reasonable to conclude that they may well still have had weapons in play. Never before has poor accounting been the cause of so much misery 
I feel a bit let down by subsequent revelations that the reports delivered to Parliament were reworked to provide additional impetus for an invasion but that doesn't skew the point that the invasion and any events surrounding it don't (and can't) inform the debate about a nuclear deterrent.
I feel a bit let down by subsequent revelations that the reports delivered to Parliament were reworked to provide additional impetus for an invasion but that doesn't skew the point that the invasion and any events surrounding it don't (and can't) inform the debate about a nuclear deterrent.
yep, i just read it as an attempt at misdirection. OT and irrelevant to the core debate