Do we need an Armed Forces?

[McSteamy]

Did anyone listen to Jeremy Vine at lunchtime today when he posed this question? I was amazed that so many people think we don't.

what did they say?

think people are sick of hearing about our young soldiers dying for something that seems futile.

Mainly that we don't need them as the world is no longer a place we need defending from. No one is about to invade and so therefore we could save billions of pounds by not having an RAF, Army or Navy.

Well my view is that war is truly awful but you need to show your potential strength to avoid it happening.

I think we need them.

Yes, of course we do.

Many people are also idiots.

I'd be more than happy with no military - I suspect it would make us think a lot more creatively about how to solve problems...

It employs a lot of people....

To be fair, the Navy (for one) does a lot more than just "defend" us in the traditional sense. It is very helpful stopping drugs smugglers, for example.

And hurricane relief.

Armed forces? Yes.

Nuclear weapons? No.

Getting rid of the armed forces only works if every other country in the world does the same.

The armed forces do a lot more than "just" fight: search and rescue, disaster relief, anti-smuggling operations etc.

What Lynette says, esp when scrapping Trident could have plugged a whopping hole in the budget of this country. And by whopping I mean up to £100 BILLION (according to Nick Clegg...before the election).

i agree, armed forces yes, nuclear weapons no.

getting rid of armed forces would leave us sooo vulnerable. it would never happen anyway.

The problem with getting rid of Trident is that the ability to have nuclear weapons is out of the bag. You can't stop other people from creating the weapons and the point is to have a deterent.

I don't think the LibDems ever intended to get rid of Nuclear weapons - they wanted to find a cheaper alternative to Trident.

I'm army, I've done the fighting thing and the defence thing. I've also been a refuse collector, fireman and slaughterman. I've helped grannies get out of their flooded care home and have manned phone lines for relatives of those possibly lost during that tsunami.

Most people only think about us being in Afghan, happy to come home from there, but you still need us here.....

Well CaveMum that all depends on whether you think that having a nuclear deterrent acts as a deterrent to the other countries/organisations that have one. The threats we faced (or believed we faced) during the Cold War were very different. Al Qaeda, for example are not going to be too worried about a bit of Mutually Assured Destruction. And who knows about N Korea/Iran?

I'm actually on the fence on the issue of nuclear weapons per se, but Trident seems a rather ridiculous waste of money in the present economic straits.

"that all depends on whether you think that having a nuclear deterrent acts as a deterrent to the other countries/organisations that have one."

It's not just countries that have them now but countries that could have them in a few years time. You can't just whip up a nuclear deterrent out of nothing and due to the time these things take you have to play a very long term game.

Who knows what the global security situation will be like in 20 or 30 years time.

"I'm actually on the fence on the issue of nuclear weapons per se, but Trident seems a rather ridiculous waste of money in the present economic straits."

There probably isn't a more cost effective alternative that's worth having. Any alternative to Trident would either be far less effective or would require us to have more warheads to maintain the same capability thus shooting the cost argument in the foot. Trident also removes from our military any idea that they might be able to pull off a sneaky first strike and denies any enemy the thought that they might be able to do the same to us.

So the debate isn't should we have Trident or something cheaper but given that Trident is basically as efficient and economical as we can get should we have a deterrent at all?

"I'd be more than happy with no military - I suspect it would make us think a lot more creatively about how to solve problems..."

And how would you creatively solve a problem like the Falklands should it happen again? Unfortunately there are limits as to what creativity can achieve especially with somewhat unstable dictatorships trying desperate stunts to hang on to power knowing they've not got a lot to loose. If a foreign power forcefully invaded you home I bet you'd be looking to the Government for a bit more than just "creativity".

It would be nice to live in a world where we didn't need security forces, be they police or military, but we don't and so need them we do.

What a crazy idea. Of course we need armed forces. I dont think we should go running around the planet starting wars but defence absolutely.

We need nuclear weapons for the same reason -assured mutual destruction is the best form of defence.

I read somewhere that our nuclear submarine commanders have absolute discretion to launch their weapons if the UK Govt is destroyed. The ultimate deterant. It fights on even if the country is destroyed.

Even our fairly small arsenal of Trident warheads could put any country on the planet back 500 years.

It fights on even if the country is destroyed.

Why would it do that?

"I read somewhere that our nuclear submarine commanders have absolute discretion to launch their weapons if the UK Govt is destroyed. The ultimate deterant. It fights on even if the country is destroyed.'

That's meant to be correct. Apparently there were plans for us to have a similar system to the Americans with special codes needing to be sent out without which a submarine could not possibly launch it's missiles (the sort of thing you see on the movies).

However aside from that allowing the possibility of someone trying to decapitate the command structure it's alleged that the Navy also complained that it meant that they weren't trusted and had a tantrum until they were given the capability to launch independently.

As a further rumour it's alleged that the presence of Radio 4 on the airwaves is proof that the Government is still functioning. So it going down is one sign that a submarine crew might need to do the unthinkable...

"It fights on even if the country is destroyed.

Why would it do that?"

Because if it didn't it might tempt a country into thinking that if they could launch a sufficiently sneaky and sufficiently devastating nuclear strike they would not be destroyed by a counter strike.

For the deterrent to work it has to be clear to another country that if you attack us you will be attacked back and that there is nothing you can do to avoid that.

If contact is lost with London submarine commanders have a letter in a safe on board the vessel giving them standing orders from the Prime Minister. Apparently, it is the first thing each new PM has to do - write those standing orders.

It is unknown what each PM writes in their letter to commanders but that leaves enough doubt to make sure that no one thinks that destroying London would ensure no retaliation.

This article is chilling. Imagine being given the power to choose to destroy a country or even the entire World.

"It is the Prime Minister?s answer to a grim but essential question: in the event of a nuclear attack in which Britain is largely destroyed and he is killed before he has time to react, should Britain fire back?"

Badgerspaws and beenbeta - very interesting, you sound very knowledgeable (far more so than me), where do you get your info from? I would like to know more about Trident - I hear the term banded about a lot but don't know all the arguements for and against it.

Unfortunately it's so hard to find unbiased information these days.

That article had put the frighteners on me. I totally support a nuclear deterrent but hadn't thought about those blokes in the sub for 3 months at a time whos only job is to be ready for the ultimate sanction.

Commander Richard Lindsey is a steely-eyed missle man and no mistake.

I grew up in the 80's. Threads, The Day After, Cruise Missiles and Greenham Common were a part of what I grew up with. That and a lying, or seriously misinformed, teacher trying to do a recruitment job for CND during a class by showing the Day After and telling us "that's what the American's have here" when they showed the missiles launching (no they didn't) made me reasonably determined to be informed about what was going on.

What exactly do you want to know about Trident?

You can't uninvent nuclear weapons so on that basis we need one as a deterrent.

We also need an armed forces as, even though no-one has indicated that they want to fight us right now, that could change in 5/10/20 years and you cant magic an army/ navy/RAF out of nothing.

Badgerpaws- is it true that Trident basically swims around the globe so one big deterrent impact is that no country that might try to nuke us knows whether trident is within striking distance?

I can see the point of portable nukes vs land based because it increases your range. Based on current political situation, we're more likely to need a deterrqant against (eg) N Korea than (eg) France.

I read somewhere that the British nuclear submarines are so silent they have never been detected by any other navy. On top of that the exact location of them is not known to anyone but the commander.

In effect one of the most powerful weapon systems on the planet in undetectable, its location is unknown, it is not under the physical control of the Govt and once launched its missiles cannot be abhorted or destroyed.

"is it true that Trident basically swims around the globe so one big deterrent impact is that no country that might try to nuke us knows whether trident is within striking distance?"

The submarines go into hiding not so much so that no one knows if one is within striking distance, with a range of 7000 miles most potential threats probably are anyway (for example North Korea is will within that range), but so that no one can try and destroy them.

"I can see the point of portable nukes vs land based because it increases your range."

Again it's not about range but about survivability. If you've got fixed land based missiles then the enemy know where they are. They can then believe that if they can launch a sufficiently sneaky and devastating attack they can destroy all of the missiles and remove any chance of them being attacked back.

Therefore if you go for a land based solution you need to make sure that you've got enough missiles so as to reduce the chance of them being destroyed in a single attack. You also want to scatter those missiles. So you end up with more nuclear weapons in more places, which just isn't good.

"I read somewhere that the British nuclear submarines are so silent they have never been detected by any other navy."

They are very silent, however if an enemy had detected and followed one we wouldn't necessarily know about it. After all if they boasted about it we'd change the submarines to make them "undetectable" again.

"On top of that the exact location of them is not known to anyone but the commander."

The patrols are very secret. It seems likely that they use some system of prearranged "boxes" that each missile submarine will patrol within. However each box is going to be pretty large so even if a spy could get their hands on where the boxes are it would still be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.