back to article Trident delay by the Coalition: Cunning plan, or bad idea?

The Coalition government, as part of its ongoing strategic review of UK defence, may decide to postpone replacement of the Trident nuclear deterrent by five years. What would that mean? Immediately in practical terms it would mean that spending on the replacement systems would be pushed mostly back out of the ten-year …

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      1. william henderson 1

        "In times of peace that's not an issue,.........".

        no, its in times of peace it is an issue.

        concord, shows we can work together, if only to beat the yanks.

        "Challenger? Direct result of the failure of the European MBT programs."

        direct result of the iranian revolution more like.

        we got what the persians/iranians originaly ordered.

        if the french want us in on a eurocentric deterence why is theirs still dedicated to french defence?

        i think youll find plenty of american programs that failed or morphed also.

        remember the sargeant york, or how the f18 or f16 started out?

  1. Sandtreader
    Thumb Down

    Moral aspect

    Lots of good strategic and cost reasons not to replace Trident discussed above, but for me the biggest reason is a simple moral one: Use of a nuclear weapon is primarily designed to kill civilians and destroy civilian infrastructure, and hence is /ipso facto/ a war crime. No amount of outdated banging on about 'deterrence' is going to change that, because the receivers of the punishment (the civilians) are not the actors (probably some terrorist nutcases or out of control military junta). They never really were even in the Cold War, but they certainly aren't now.

    So it would good if renewal were kicked into touch for a while, but it's a missed opportunity. If the UK took a proactive stance and said "for moral, strategic and cost reasons we are not replacing, and will retire existing capability by X", that would be a leading example in global disarmament and non-proliferation, on which our current policy is simply hypocritical.

  2. eric 2
    Thumb Up

    nicely done

    Good article, submarines are outdated technologically before the first of a new class even hits the water, so keeping these aging boats about doesn't make sense. New missile boats will operate with less crew, cost less to deploy and maintain, and be harder to detect.

    Yes, I'm a retired fast attack guy, wouldn't catch me on one of these three knots to nowhwere busses but they serve a purpose.

    Da Chief

    1. william henderson 1

      nicely done

      "submarines are outdated technologically before the first of a new class even hits the water"

      hunted by boats that are even more outdated.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Thank god for the bomb?

    If all we ever aim to evolve into is mass destruction of ourselves perhaps the best and biggest and swiftest is better than best?

    Defence seems something to get defensive about?

  4. Jemma
    FAIL

    ... bang for the buck...

    You know, its struck me as interesting that no one has made the obvious point in all this.

    The government of every single country in the world is paying through the nose for something that is entirely and utterly useless.

    Before you howl, I'll explain. Imagine you are back in 1880 and you are a UK government minister. Someone comes up to you and says this is a contract to build a battleship - please sign it. You sign it. You just spent god knows how much money on something that was never ever used. Not once. Never. Ever.

    All of this is specious garbage. It doesnt matter what we buy because whatever we buy its worthless unless there is a war which no one wants anyway, and the way things we are we'll be dead anyway... and dont quote me the 'mutually assured destruction' or 'deterrant' crap because to quote blackadder "there was a slight problem with the plan.." "what was that?" "It was bollocks!"

    ironically Lewis Page himself is just as specious, not meaning to be nasty. Since all I ever see his name on is articles whinging about the armed farces he's a part, admittedly a fairly remote part, but a part of the whole idiotic system.

    The best part of all is that if we didnt spend all this money on weapons because of retard politicians and ass-protecting self interested executives... we'd be spending money on decent schools, decent healthcare and generally a better standard of life - and there would be less idiotic tossers getting into politics and arms procurement than there are now (because most of the non-rich intelligent people in our current education get sick and tired of it aged about 8 and sod off to trade cocaine futures down the park - and that was me, hold the potential goldman sachs employee part) and there would be less chance of the probable/possible/imaginary wars we are stocking up for now... All the people, all the time - everyone would be able to fulfil their potential instead of the world relying for government on the sort of chinless wazzocks who act as if they have the gene pool of an inbred dalmatian.

    case in point is Labour right now - im waiting with baited breath for the first "better Ed, than Red" headline...

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