AIBU to sleep easier knowing Trident renewed with Putin’s recent antics

[Gartenzwerg]

AIBU to think that our MPs did the absolutely right thing in renewing our nuclear deterrent last year, given the recent hoo-haa with Russia and the nerve agent. Russia have proved that they are a serious threat to us as a nation.

Jeremy Corbyn should be ashamed of himself for trying to mislead us into thinking that we have nothing to fear from Russia. We absolutely can’t trust them.

it’d be pointless having the intelligence that a rogue state possessed nuclear weaponry and intended to use it against us without the ability to deter them.

All fine and well if you are sitting in London right now. Personally, I'm 30 miles from Faslane...guess who I voted for in the last election?!

it’d be pointless having the intelligence that a rogue state possessed nuclear weaponry and intended to use it against us without the ability to deter them.

Ha! So we just point them in the air and remain ignorant of everything that's out there??

We don't even control Trident - the missiles can't be fired without US permission.

Not sure where you have heard that, but it’s totally untrue.
Let’s agree to disagree.

Out of interest, do any of the posters on this thread who are pro Trident live in central Scotland?

Or any part of Scotland?

I don’t know any pro-trident people in West-central Scotland (apart from people whose livelihoods depend on it perhaps). If Westminster are so keen on it, move it to the Thames.

Also live in Scotland and not impressed trident was renewed. I actually worry about this issue frequently- have done for many years. Getting rid of trident is a big issue for many, many people who live in Scotland. I personally don’t know anyone who is happy about living so close to nukes. Maybe if it was in England and London and the SE was within the fallout zone people would think differently.

Agent Send it to Plymouth or Falmouth; we could do with the work it provides.

Kris Suggest you do some research on how the chain of command works. Of course we can fire Trident without US permission.

scaryteacher, couldn’t have said it better myself.

Not ONLY because it's less than 20 miles from me but because

WE don't control it - you trust trump with this shit?!

It's outdated

It's more expensive than better more up to date nuclear weaponry.

It DOESN'T really act as a deterrent - enemies just use other methods.

The money WASTED on this means money taken FROM other areas of intelligence and defence as has been said.

I actually know a few people that work in mod in this area and THEY think it's a bad decision too.

So yabVvvvvU

Scary you say that now but during the Indy Ref Westminster was terrified we’d vote Yes. There’s nowhere obvious in England to put the Trident submarine and building somewhere would cost millions and millions.

Apart from which I can just see the citizens of Portsmouth, Falmouth or Plymouth being thrilled about a pile of nuclear weapons in their backyard populated area.

And some of them actually vote Conservative.

Have you seen the size of Russia? Why should they be interested in invading us? They just protect their borders but Britain has invaded virtually the whole world at some point or other. More recently, we helped destroy Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan etc none of which threatened us.

I think Corbyn is saner on this issue than the Tories but if he ever got in power he would probably have to continue our weapon selling program. We need to look to make friends with other nations and stop being puppets of politicians.

I’m with you OP. We need a nuclear deterrent. Corbyn should have resigned for being the only person in the western world not to consider Russia a threat and specifically for the comments he made in parliament after the Salisbury poisoning’s. Mind you given half a chance he would turn this country into a dependant territory of Russia regretting the Soviet Union wasn’t still in existence for us to become one of its states.

Thistle Given that the Trident boats are refitted at Devonport, which has been the home of SM2 for an awfully long time (til the bastard politicians decided to move the entire submarine fleet to Scotland), one could argue that there was already much of the infrastructure already there for the boats. Portsmouth was not an option fyi.

Given that in Devonport you usually had the S and T boats, which were nuclear hunter killer boats, we are used to a degree of nuclear risk in Plymouth, and have been for the decades dh was a submariner. Can't say having the Trident boats and their payload around would worry me unduly. I vote Tory incidentally. Moving the boats back to Plymouth and using Devonport to its capacity with giving us some ships back from Portsmouth would help cement the Tory vote.

Graphista The whole point of Trident is that it is undetectable. There's a hell of a lot of ocean out there for a boat to hide in, and the deterrent is constant. I bet those in the MOD you know are Army or RAF, who object to the RN running Trident, or MOD Civil Servants, some of whom tend to forget that they are there to serve the needs HM Forces, rather than the other way around.

Why would Russia bother with nuclear weapons when they can attack power stations, communications infrastructure and water supplies remotely by tapping on a keyboard. I feel the world has moved on from nuclear weapons

Yabu

I don’t think it’s nuclear we should be worrying about with Russia for goodness sake.

Trident is a bit old fashioned and rubbish.

Look at what russie have done - election interference (Brexit and trump) and poisoning plus hacking.

These are our worries.

Having a big bomb is going to do fuck all.

Get with the times, it's the biological weapons, and the restriction of resources that you want to worry about.
Nuclear weapons are soooo cold war.

ThanksForAllTheFish

Also live in Scotland and not impressed trident was renewed. I actually worry about this issue frequently- have done for many years. Getting rid of trident is a big issue for many, many people who live in Scotland. I personally don’t know anyone who is happy about living so close to nukes. Maybe if it was in England and London and the SE was within the fallout zone people would think differently.

I live in London and I do not feel differently.

Strategically it’s required. You always need to have the weapons your aggressors have, it’s basic military strategy. So YANBU Op. we live in the real world.

Trident was placed in Scotland because it doesn't matter to Westminster if Scottish lives are lost if anything were to happen. I lived through the Cold War and having a nuclear deterrent didn't make us any safer then than it does now. As someone said up thread, they are using different weapons now. YABU.

@mogulfield

Why is it strategically required.... nuclear weapons I suspect are now miles stronger than the days of Nagasaki. So who is actually going to use one without potentially destroying our planet.

It’s a ridiculous argument based on fear.

Given we are leaving the EU anyway we should mind our own bloody business and focus on rebuilding our economy. We’ll be too economically stuffed to get sucked into outdated nuclear war.

LOL at the posters thinking we should choose what we have. You can't unring a bell. We need bombs and bayonets.

believe that fear you elude to in your post is a principle of war. It’s a powerful weapon in itself and when you consider Clauswitz’s triangle theory you can’t ignore the ‘people’ and how they’ll be affected.
Strategically nuclear weapons will remain important as long as even one of them exists in the hands of our aggressors.
Look at whether the Cold War was even a war and we have our answer regarding or nucleur programme.

So we're currently yelling "my dads bigger than your dad" at each other.

Well replace dad with missile, same thing. Marvelous!

The problem with Trident is that it runs on a ZX Spectrum operating system. Apparently Theresa May tried to launch a pre-emptive strike just after the poisoning but someone had recorded Kylie’s greatest hits over the launch tape.