US presses UK on renewing its Trident nuclear submarine fleet

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by MGR1

Another issue is an increasingly incessent, nasily, "We're no wantin' it here, pal!" emanating from quite a few areas of the Clyde Valley. Every single Scottish Labour branch office in the Clyde area voted in favour of scrapping the UK deterrent at their party conference last year. The major issue isn't the Faslane base itself, it's the nuclear weapon storage facility at Coulport.

Glasgow (and the 41 per cent of Scotland's population who live in the area) doesn't do being considered expendable, apparently.

Personally, the UK should keep them, but I'm all in favour of the base being shifted elsewhere. Glasgow's whinging get's a little grating after a while....

Mike.

What good would it be to have a Scotland without England to the south?

To help the burned and radiated peoples as they cross over the border?

Fear the enemy by being stronger than they are ... without FBM's no restrike would take place.

By the way what are those things on the two mast in Neal's photo of a UK submarine?
Both are the same leaving out an attack scope and a regular scope.
My best guess is some kind of hindsight underwater passive sonar.

[ikalugin]

The interesting question is - does a single sub on patrol guarantee second strike capability? Can that sub be tailed from the base by a modern SSN to it's patrol area? As such - does UK consider options in improving it's deterent survivability?

[nohouan]

Maybe at least two with an Abyss-style underwater mobile refuelling base. That'd be both creepy and cool.
Well, more seriously, four SLBMs is the minimum operationnal requirement for an almost permanent deterrent...

[MGR1]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

What good would it be to have a Scotland without England to the south?

To help the burned and radiated peoples as they cross over the border?

Fear the enemy by being stronger than they are ... without FBM's no restrike would take place. .

Note, I said I was in favour of keeping the UK deterrent, nor do I care where it is based, as long as it is retained.

What Labour's Scottish Branch Office (Scottish Labour is not an independent political party) chooses to do is largely immaterial, as it can be overridden by the UK-wide Labour Party, as has already occured. The UK Labour Party rebelled against it's current leader, the pro-disarmament Jeremy Corbyn, by voting to retain Trident at the main party conference last year. To complicate matters further, Scottish Labour's current leader, Kezia Dugdale, is in favour of retaining the deterrent. So you have an almighty degree of confusion and lack of clear policy on the part of Her Majesty's Opposition, i.e, the Labour Party.

It can be summed up thus:

Scottish Labour (a branch of UK Labour) - Anti nuclear weapon, but has a pro nuclear weapon leader.

UK Labour (the main party) - Pro nuclear weapon, but has an anti nuclear weapon leader.

This is all a moot point, anyway, as the Conservative Party (which forms the current UK Government) has a majority in the House of Commons and many of the Labour Party's MP's are also in favour of keeping Trident. Therefore it's pretty certain that the Commons will vote in favour of retaining the deterrent and investing in Trident's successor.

The only thing that would scupper those plans is if you had a US President (can you say Trump? Considering the recent furor in the UK over recent comments from him, he'd be the most likely culprit.) who would block the UK's use of the actual missiles. The warheads are UK produced, but the missile bodies themselves are shared with the US in a common pool. This is why it's not uncommon to see a UK Vanguard SSBN visiting Bangor in the US. All that would be required would be a Presidential order blocking the sharing of US resources with the UK and the UK would have warheads, but no way to deploy them.

Mike.