http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35337432

What next? Aircraft carriers without the aircraft?

Specifically without the nuclear missiles.

Presumably it would still carry regular missiles (i.e. the ones that actually get used in combat, rather than the ones we shake at people to scare them)

Think we’ve already done aircraft carriers without the aircraft, or vice versa.

Given that 80%+ of the capital cost of trident successor was the new submarines and infrastructure, and 90%+ of the future in service and maintenance cost, it appears that Jezzas solution to the ‘Trident white elephant’ is to replace it with a white elephant with three legs and no tusks…

Presumably it would still carry regular missiles (i.e. the ones that actually get used in combat, rather than the ones we shake at people to scare them)

It would seem like a lot of money to deliver a cruise missile.

It would seem like a lot of money to deliver a cruise missile.

It is already a lot of money to carry around a bogeyman that we will never use.

Just seen this myself I would have thought the expensive bit is the keeping 4 ships running 24/7 with crew, fuel, power etc.

Not the Nuclear Armageddon just sat in the silos waiting to be fired. Although I suppose a full service and MOT on a nuclear weapon every (insert time scale) does not come cheap.

Personally I think we need to keep them as one day to piss the yanks off North Korea my decide to give us in the UK a nice sun tan and I would hope someone in a bunker somewhere as most of us vaporize, would do the same back, if they have the balls that is.

We should have used them already anyway on the new IS area on the globe IMO. At least we would have got some of our moneys worth out of them.

badllama – Member

We should have used them already anyway on the new IS area on the globe IMO. At least we would have got some of our moneys worth out of them.Genocide, always a fine solution! 😆

Integration of a different, i.e. non-nuclear weapon system will cost millions. What would their role be? The UK already has the Astute class for conventional attack. Seems like a typical politician’s not thought through idea!

I posted in the Corbyn thread. A nuclear submarine without missiles and Corbyn are both equally ineffective. I have Andrew Marr show downloaded will watch it later. His stance on the Falklands will go down like a lead balloon on the doorstep too.

Corbyn is skewered on Trident as the Unions are “pro” and he dodged the issue at the party conference so renewal is offi ial party policy and cannot be easily changed before the upcoming vote

It would seem like a lot of money to deliver a cruise intercontinental ballistic missile.

it could be argued that an ‘conventional’ armed ICBM is far more useful, as it has a possibility of actually being used. (IANA the model of a modern Major General)

the 5000+ warheads the US has did nothing to protect them from the 9-11 attacks, terrorists sail a nuclear device into New York harbour and detonate it who are they going to nuke ?

It’s simple though isn’t it? He’s offering it as a solution to the ‘killing Trident will put thousands of ship builders out of work’ argument. Whether it’s a realistic argument remains to be seen; we need to know more about what he would actually do.

North Korea my decide to give us in the UK a nice sun tan

The problem is of course that whether we have similar weapons makes absolutely no difference at all to a nut bag state like North Korea just as it makes no difference to ISIS or a cyber attack, both of which are the more likely dangers we face in the future, neither of which can be countered with the use of these weapons.

In the very near future the seas will be crawling with drone subs, making the ONLY advantage (stealth) that these subs possess redundant at a stroke.

There are some proper numpties in the world right enough.. 🙂

Those campaigning to scrap trident don’t really automatically fall into that category though..
I think it’s the old guard Eton mafia (and their sycophantic cronies and dewy eyed minions) that are sadly deluded if they think they can pull the wool over our eyes for too much longer 😆

It’s simple though isn’t it? He’s offering it as a solution to the ‘killing Trident will put thousands of ship builders out of work’ argument.

This.

Corbyn’s moral argument is with the advocates of nuclear armageddon, not with builders of fancy boats. That is a separate thing.

It’s simple though isn’t it? He’s offering it as a solution to the ‘killing Trident will put thousands of ship builders out of work’ argument.

Are more submarines what the Royal Navy really needs? More frigates would probably be a better use of the money.

In the very near future the seas will be crawling with drone subs

tbis is indeed very possible. I would imagine that a few high profile ‘proof of concept’ trials of (relatively) cheap drone subs will kill the Trident replacement project dead.

It would seem like a lot of money to deliver a cruise missile.

hunter-killers, we already have quite a few.

JC really hasn’t thought this through.

there probably is a much cheaper way of keeping our seat at the UN top table.

Corbyn’s argument does seem a little odd. If Trident’s not carrying nukes then the super-stealthy element of the deterrent becomes a bit redundant, which people above seem to be saying is where most of the money goes. In that case he might as well just give the money to some other job support scheme.

In the very near future the seas will be crawling with drone subs, making the ONLY advantage (stealth) that these subs possess redundant at a stroke.

That’s a really good point actually!

the 5000+ warheads the US has did nothing to protect them from the 9-11 attacks, terrorists sail a nuclear device into New York harbour and detonate it who are they going to nuke ?

They did stop WW3 and the red army steaming across Europe all the way to Normandy.

And given Putin, that would become exceedingly more likely to happen again if they did not exist.

It’s cheaper and exactly as useful, so there’s that. TBF having the submarines at all makes no sense, so this is one of those situations where a suggestion can be entirely daft, and yet still not as daft as the status quo. I suppose all that can be positively said for this idea is that it holds up a mirror to existing stupidity. Spending 80% as much for something that doesn’t do anything is still better than spending 100% as much for something that works but that you can never use.

It’s like that bike you never ride. It doesn’t make any sense at all to spend £800 on a bike with no wheels that you can’t ride, but when the alternative is a £1000 bike you’ll never ride, it makes total sense.

Corbyn comes out with some s***e but this really takes the cake. The V class aren’t designed for anything other than carrying the deterrent. For conventional ops they can’t compete with an A class (faster, quieter, cheaper, can already carry cruise missiles).

The V class can’t fire tomahwaks and the like out of their torpedo tubes unlike the A class without extensive modifications, and they can’t use their strategic missiles without the nukes as you wouldn’t be able to tell the whether a missile is nuclear or not. IIRC the US looked at converting some of their SSBN’s into conventional missile subs but Russia kicked off massively, warning it could lead to accidental nuclear war.

A Trident submarine is only good at one job; finding somewhere to hang out and then being extraordinarily quiet and unobserved until told it has to go play with the special fireworks.

It isn’t capable of any other role. It’s not fast, it’s not particularly nimble, nothing a multi-role submarine needs to be.

To make the Replacement so would increase the cost many, many times.

Rachel

Snap! 🙂

Just a transparent ploy to hang on to a shred of his principles while keeping the unions happy. No power, no influence, no credibility.

He’s jumped the shark.

{quote]thekingisdead – hunter-killers, we already have quite a few. [/quote] Correct me if I’m wrong, but ‘hunter killers’ don’t carry ICBMs, nuclear or conventional. An ability to deliver a conventional warhead, reliably and accurately anywhere in the world is probably a lot more real world strategically useful than just paying to carry a small proportion of Americas nuclear arsenal in exchange for a seat at the ‘big boy’s table’.

Corbyn could be suggesting that he would support the developing of something like url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike]this[/url]; to appease the ‘warmongers’ of the party and the general population, whilst maintaining his anti-nuclear stance.

Prompt Global Strike (PGS) is a United States military effort to develop a system that can deliver a precision-guided conventional weapon airstrike anywhere in the world within one hour, in a similar manner to a nuclear ICBM.[1][2] Such a weapon would allow the United States to respond far more swiftly to rapidly-emerging threats than is possible with conventional forces. A PGS system could also be useful during a nuclear conflict, potentially replacing the use of nuclear weapons against 30 percent of targets.[3] The PGS program encompasses numerous established and emerging technologies, including conventional surface-launched missiles and air- and submarine-launched hypersonic missiles, although no specific PGS system has yet been finalized as of 2015

Shamelessly copied from wikipedia

It would seem like a lot of money to deliver a cruise missile.

As much a cruise missile as a V2 rocket. Trident is a multi-warhead delivery system. The Trafalgar-class boats carry Tomahawk cruise missiles, which have been used in action, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Those boats are being replaced by the Astute-class.
It could be argued that the threat of a bunch of those boats stooging around off the coast of North Korea, with a bunch of nuclear-capable cruise missiles might be more effective than Trident.

Latest idiocy. what do we do with the submarines without the warheads but with the Trident missile system? Conventional warheads? Why would we spend all that money when we can already deliver them via current submarines, ships and aircraft? Barmy thinking driven solely by Union pressure and another example of policy from the hip of a desperate man. Waste of time having the labour defence review.

Latest idiocy

That ‘idiotic’ that the warmongery Yanks are trying develop something similar?
Latest ‘anti Corbyn mindless ranting’ I think you mean.

Crazy thinking by Corbyn and utter nonsense. As many above, the V Class is designed to carry the Strategic deterrent. Useless for anything else.

It’s a Strategic deterrent not a Tactical weapon. Big difference.

And given Putin, that would become exceedingly more likely to happen again if they did not exist.

Putin just wants us to buy his gas and oil, the last thing he’s going to do is blow us up.

Actually the US did convert 4 of the Ohio class from SSBN to SSGN. They don’t fire tomahawks from a torpedo tube like an SSN, Instead they carry 7 in a vertical launcher in each of the former trident tubes. That’s over 150 per sub. Plus 2 tubes act as air locks for swimmer or UUV deployment.

That’s quite a handy capability to have sat around very quietly in the gulf on standby, ready to deploy 50 or so special forces and follow up with targeted missile strikes.

Also worth remembering that without the investment in successors to the V boats, there won’t be a nuclear powered option to replace the Astutes, and quiet as air independent propulsion is, it doesn’t have the ability to provide round the world presence at high speeds and underwater endurance the way that a nuclear plant does.

it could be argued that an ‘conventional’ armed ICBM is far more useful, as it has a possibility of actually being used.

Surely they’ve been used many times..? Nuclear missiles have been in use throughout the cold war.

They haven’t been FIRED, but they weren’t built to be fired.

Ah, this thread is going to decend into ‘my weapon is bigger than your weapon’ fapping again, isn’t it? I think I’ll tactically withdraw.

However, one last FTFY;

the V Class is designed to carry the Strategic deterrent. Useless for anything else.

They did stop WW3 and the red army steaming across Europe all the way to Normandy.

And given Putin, that would become exceedingly more likely to happen again if they did not exist.

utter tosh if all you needed was nuclear weapons to prevent the russian hordes invading europe why invest so much money into conventional forces to do the same job, a10 a1m1 f15 apache all built for one purpose, why did they bother.

With the secretive nature of all things nuclear how about this. We tell everybody were building some really big nuclear torpedoes or whatever. In actual fact they are fakes (but we keep that bit quiet)… Hey presto…We have the deterent but just saved a few quid!

How do you know that hasn’t already happened?