So what's the point in nuclear weapons if we are worried about a war without nuclear weappons?

[cakeorwine]

All this talk of WW3 at the moment. The UK not having enough troops, weapons etc

We do have nuclear weapons though. Submarines capable of launching missiles and with orders to potentially destroy targets if the UK gets attacked.

However - when do we fire them? Russia invades a NATO country. We don't fire back.

Salami tactics and all.

However - we need weapons because other countries have weapons. So it's a deterrent. '
A deterrent against nuclear attack.
But against invasion?
Cyber attack?
I guess people know the salami tactic discussion from Yes Prime Minister

dont they say if they were fired it would be the start of mutually assured destruction, so we fire them and the other country (Russia) fires back. So I guess we don’t fire them because we don’t want to get nuked. But if we didn’t have them then Russia might be tempted to nuke us as we couldn’t retaliate. Ideally nobody would have them but if your enemy has them I understand why we need them.

Ukraine had nuclear weapons and it gave it up in 1994 in return for security guarantees. Look at Ukraine now.

Maybe we are bluffing?

We say we have them but we don't have many.

If we got invaded, at what point would we fire them?

We’ve got enough and we’re in NATO and I bet the USA would have plenty. I don’t know if we’d fire them if getting invaded, I don’t think we would because it’s the end of the world once that button is pressed I’d have thought. So even if Russian troops landed on the beaches I think it would still be more old fashioned fighting, similar to what’s happening in Ukraine now.

Mutually destructive doctrine worked for over 70 years so no reason why it shouldn't work now.
However US will position some of the smaller nukes here so if there is a tactical charge used somewhere in Ukraine we can fire back.
But Russians will not use it. There were military exercises in the 50s in Soviet Union when a small charge was dropped on the battlefield and infantry moved along. It was a complete disaster, they had over 40 thousand people with radiation but didn't achieve anything tactically. So smaller charges will never be used.

So would we be telling Russia, don't land on the beaches or we fire the weapons?

Don't attack London or we fire the weapons?

We know if we fire them, we get nuked. And vice versa.
So it's a deterrent against being nuked, but not a deterrent against attack - like we see in Ukraine.

Are you a Russian spy trying to do psy ops on MN OP? 🤣

Loads on Wikipedia under Mutually Assured Destruction and Nuclear Tactics if you want to dig into it all.

I see they're still trying to frighten us 🙄 it ain't gonna work mate. We've lived like this since the 1950s. People are used to it. If it happens, it happens. There's more pressing things to think about when living in an abusive Tory hellhole.

The only way to see if a country is bluffing about its weapons is to test it and to see if it gets nuked.

Which is a hell of a gamble to take!

Nuclear weapons are a deterrent. The chances anyone will actually use them are pretty close to zero. However, the very fact that they are unlikely to be used means warmongers feel they can get away with using conventional weapons as they know nuclear retaliation is highly unlikely unless there was, for example a direct sustained attack on American soil.

All the time nuclear weapons exist we need to have them, and I can't see a likely scenario where the whole world will declare peace and love and we all get rid of them. Mutually assured destruction is the safeguard, unless Mad Vlad in his bunker decides otherwise.

I think some people think we should have nuked Argentina when the Falklands got invaded.

Which would have been an over reaction.

Out of interest, why does anyone think we need to spend all the £billions on armed forces and weapons?

What "enemy" would want to invade us? We are a tiny and insignificant island who can barely manage our own affairs, living on tales of past glory.

If someone was daft enough to want to invade us, then they'd have already trampled across Europe and / or Scandinavia, so what do we think will do against that?

By the time the above happened it'd be pointless anyway, as the superpowers ( and anyone else day enough to think there's a win in it ) would be chucking enough nukes around to wipe out most life on earth.

And bearing in mind that we have singularly failed to stop small dinghies crossing the channel, it's hysterical that we think we'd stop an army.

Think what we could do with the £billions we'd save if we became neutral like Switzerland.

I think that aliens have more chances invading UK than Russians. First it's absolutely impossible to invade an island and secondly what's will he achieve by doing it?
I think a more realistic scenario would be Putin doing something on a NATO border somewhere far far away say Finland. See if nato uses article 5 and hit back. If it won't then the idea of collective security is dead and NATO is practically worthless.

If you are old enough to recall that conflict, you'll probably also recall that half the UK population were perplexed as to how the Argentinians had got to Scotland without anyone noticing.

Nuclear weapons were a deterrent- then came proliferation, and more recently smaller 'tactical and more precise' nuclear weapons. A deterrent only until 2 crazy, narcissist madmen get involved- and there are currently many many of them.

😆. True.

Don't believe the war drum hype. It's mostly clickbait media. Oh and political posturing - it's no coincidence there are elections in the UK, US and most of Europe this year.

OP, what are you talking about? What exactly is your question? Why we haven’t nuked Russia yet? Take a guess and tell us.

I was 12. I was convinced it was somewhere like The Shetlands.

Which is a long way from The Falklands.

If you think this thread is about why we haven't nuked Russia yet, then that is not what the thread is about.

There is all this talk of war. Forces being low. Not enough equipment.
But we do spend a LOT on our nuclear weapons.

Maybe we haven't got the balance right in our defence spending.

We won't use nuclear weapons unless we get attacked with nuclear weapons first

So really, they are just there, in our submarines, with people hoping they never have to fire them.

I was 18. We used to buy and drink all the Argentinian wine as it was always on offer at like 10p.

Many happy drunken days

It's a large cost

The cost of the UK's strategic nuclear deterrent - House of Commons Library (parliament.uk)

The estimated cost of the design and manufacture of a new Dreadnought- class of four SSBN is £31 billion, including inflation over the life of the programme. A £10 billion contingency has also been set aside, making a potential total for the programme of £41 billion. 20% of that contingency has been accessed to date.

In-service costs are expected to continue at approximately 6% of the defence budget. Calculating overall in-service costs for the Dreadnought class is, however, fraught with difficulty as assumptions must be made about the level of defence spending into the early 2060s, what will constitute in-service costs in the future and what the UK economy may look like. For that reason, several cost estimates exist for the total cost of the Dreadnought programme over its service life.

But we can't give them up - although many other countries seem to cope ok without them and instead - rely on those countries with weapons to have them

What is your argument or point or question?

Nuclear weapons won't save us from invasion - or even an attack on a NATO country.