It's like an executive team discussing whether to adopt a mobile-first strategy and then someone blurts 'but Galaxy 7 phones caught fire!'.
It's more like an executive team discussing whether or not to equip the entire company with Galaxy Note 7 phones, and the CEO not mentioning the fires.
Only if your expectation is that missiles work 100% of the time - which nobody really expects an individual component of any weapons system to work 100% of the time and is explicitly allowed for in the way nuclear weapons are targeted.
I don't expect anything to work 100% of the time. I do expect a missile to fail in a way that wouldn't mean accidentally obliterating tens of thousands of people in the wrong country though.
I would also expect a politician to mention that failure mode is a possibility when politicians are considering spending £30b on renewing it.
Personally I'm actually against the UK having nuclear weapons - but I can't get too excited about this particular incident.
Missiles will go wrong, Trident actually has a fairly reasonable level of success and probably is far more reliable than equivalent weapons from other countries.
It's a political mess not a military/technical one.
"probably" isn't a good enough standard when the weapon system can end hundreds of thousands of lives and is paid for by the taxpayer. And really it's the second thing that people are upset about. If renewing Trident cost a few hundreds of millions say, it'd likely be a non-issue. But it doesn't, so it isn't. That it might be unsafe is worth investigating given what's on the line.
Is there any evidence whatsoever that the missile could fail in a way that would mean "obliterating tens of thousands of people in the wrong country"? SSBNs carry more than one missile for a reason - currently the UK sails with up to 8 missiles and 40 warheads, not every one needs to work perfectly.
It's also worth pointing out that if the UK ever needed to use Trident then the resultant nuclear fallout would probably cause that anyway.
> Is there any evidence whatsoever that the missile could fail in a way that would mean "obliterating tens of thousands of people in the wrong country"?
Yes, in the "test" last year (that is, the missile luckily didn't carry the real nuclear bomb) the missile was launched to arrive around the coast of Africa but it flew toward Florida! There's no more obvious miss than that.
That's the very "Trident "accident" which May did not disclose to Parliament" from the top post of this thread.
And the reason we should really press all the politicians for the reduction of nuclear weapons. It's not the question of if but when and what the consequences will be of the "accidental" detonations.
The best protection is to have at least a very limited number of weapons. The balance of power can be held even with a little of them.
If you hear anything else, it's from those that don't want the balance but to "win."
And it was destroyed successfully via the fail safes built into the system, so no-one died and no-one was at risk. The test was carried out in the Atlantic in order to provide a safety zone in every direction because missiles are known to occasionally go wrong. This is literally rocket science, there is no such thing as 100% perfection and lots of safety protocols are build into the process. Your use of quotes around test and the random inclusion of it being lucky the missile wasn't armed don't serve to help your argument at all.
For some perspective the new Russian Bulava ICBM has a 50% error rate, Minuteman had a 97.1% success rate, Trident II was on 97.27% (128 successes, 5 failures) - increasing that number to 6 doesn't really alter the confidence factor that the system works.
If your concern is large rockets being fired that might hit the southern US and cause casualties then I suggest you contact NASA about Cape Canaveral.
> because missiles are known to occasionally go wrong
So how can you claim that everything is OK or that my point is inaccurate? Or that "it can't fail"? You literally asked "is there any evidence whatsoever that the missile could fail" ... "obliterating tens of thousands of people in the wrong country." That it didn't happen during the test without the nuclear head and when there are additional safety measures is not a proof it can't once the head is in place and the "regular procedure" is followed.
The quote around the test means only that I am aware that what's for some people an "accident" is "just a test" for another, like your view.
I don't claim anything more than the public doesn't understand how brittle the whole system is, different parts of it failing all the time. I've written that once the public understands that, knowing that is "the reason we should really press all the politicians for the reduction of nuclear weapons. It's not the question of if but when and what the consequences will be of the "accidental" detonations."
I also wrote: "The best protection is to have at least a very limited number of weapons. The balance of power can be held even with a little of them." I've meant "nuclear" weapons of course, that's the whole topic. See: http://thebulletin.org/doomsday-dashboard There were 6 times more warheads in 1983 than now, and the number should be reduced much more.
> fail safes built into the system
How does that fail safe knows the rocket is wrong when the rocket decided it's right? Do you have any information about these particular fail safes? Isn't it that it existed there at all because it was a test, and it wouldn't if it hadn't been? The coverage of the "accident" that I've had an access to wasn't technical enough. It was presented as "it has to remain secret."
I think that's an argument for replacement, rather than continuing with what we have at the moment? If the failure rate becomes too high they may need replacement.
It's just the submarines that are being replaced - not the missiles. The UK draws Trident missiles from a pool owned by the US and missiles are picked at random for use in UK boats.
If the missles don't work I would argue that is pertinent information! Its all well and good discussing a strategy but if its based on a range of options where some are proven to work and some are apparently not working but its being covered up so they appear to work its subverted the entire process of oversight of government.
The question is, whether they were covering it up a real problem there, or they just wanted to avoid some idiot higher-up completely overblowing the importance of a single incident. I can somewhat understand their thinking if the latter was the case, given that overblowing stuff way beyond their importance is what politicians do as a part of their jobs.
Exactly - the point of a nuclear deterrant is to be credible, but never used. In a situation you need to launch, whether all the missiles work properly is irrelevant - you just need the majority of them to be assured to.
The test had intended to fire the missile towards the Atlantic. After launch, it turned around and flew the other way towards Florida. From the sibling posts's response I made:
According to the Sunday Times, the unarmed Trident II D5 missile was intended to be fired 5,600 miles (9,012 km) from the coast of Florida to a sea target off the west coast of Africa - but veered towards the US.
I am impressed how quickly they tried to spin it by claiming a successful test of the submarine and the crew. considering that the UK has four of these subs of which only one is on deployment it does beg the question, what is the point of such a fleet half or more is not in usable condition?
Because you need to be able to have one boat in repair/refurbishment, one en route to deployment or returning from, and another being replenished and preparing for its next deployment. Four is a minimum to get by and as you increase the number of boats you still only get an on-station percentage less than 50%.
Oh, except apparently it 'veered' towards the US. And this was before the vote to renew, so naturally people are trying to call it a cover up.