AFAIK the last few PMs have written in their "final instructions" to sub captains that they were to take no retaliatory action should a nuclear armed country launch nukes at us.
The "Letters of Last Resort" are for if a sub is cut off from communications *after* a presumed nuclear exchange and presumed destruction of the UK as a country, not just if an ICBM is fired at us. A first-strike missile against the UK would provoke a different set of responses entirely.
There are various options sealed inside the letter that are full-scale retaliation, surrender, or hand yourself to the command of an allied nation should one still exist etc. Even the contents of the letters is only purported though, and there is no way that we would actually know what they did say. Leaking the instructions from the last PM would be a grave matter of national security. It is, unfortunately, vital that an adversary is under the impression that a retaliation would take place...whether it would or not.
The casual nature which the subject is being discussed is slightly alarming imo
Formal discussions only - no bow tie, no posts 😁
The problem is that others in the world don't want to mitigate and delay climate change while their economies positively depend on exporting fossil fuels.
Yes thanks for that. I was of course already aware of why some countries like the US aren't interested in combating climate change. It is however a salutory lesson in the self-destructive myopia of the human species. Maybe a nuclear war would be best all round and Putin and Trump are to be celebrated for brining us closer to putting us out of our misery. The human race doesn't deserve to survive.
I would hope the French use Galileo.
They dont or at least I doubt they do. I assume like the US/UK and Russian missiles they use astro-inertial navigation and so are completely self contained.
Since a)it doesnt need to be ultra precise and b)gps/galileo are vulnerable to be destroyed as part of a nuclear first strike. Detonate a couple of nukes in orbit and you would wipe them (plus all other satellites including your own) out.
Anyway - all of Russia needs nukeing - history has shown that the species that inhabt that land cannot be trusted.
Wow. From normalisation of mass murder to barely disguised racism and genocide. What a thread!
Anyway - all of Russia needs nukeing - history has shown that the species that inhabt that land cannot be trusted
Wow. ..<Clinton Baptiste mode>"I'm getting the word.... Nazi"!!!</Clinton Baptiste mode>
Killing millions of people in response to millions of our people being killed is somewhat vengeful and murderous.
Yeah but no one on here is doing that killing, planning to or ever likely to be in any position to influence those who are. We are irrelevant, powerless plebs and would be targets on an obscure cycling forum. The only pressure relief valve we have is to talk about it. Are you suggesting we shouldn't even do that?
I cant help but laugh at all these rich preppers who have bought decommissioned missile silos in the US to turn into their own little nuclear bunker
Rather than being safe, its more likely those spots have been mapped and pinpointed by Russian(Chinese etc) and will be receiving a salvo.
In my teenage years my father (in the RAF) was stationed at Fylingdales and a while before that in Gutersloh (Germany) which was the main harrier base at the time (and key to trying to stop a Soviet ground invasion through Germany) so I've grown up living close to prime first strike locations and ended up with more than a passing interest in it to.
It's just a rather scary looking building isn't it! Definitely held my attention on our holidays down to Yorkshire when I was a kid. Went down a bit of a rabbit hole with it as a young teenager and spent a few years being scared to death of the idea haha. Now though it's just turned into a general interest thankfully, and I am under the impression it will likely not happen.
AFAIK the last few PMs have written in their "final instructions" to sub captains that they were to take no retaliatory action should a nuclear armed country launch nukes at us.
is your point that nobody knows or are you suggesting you know the content of what we’re presumably highly classified documents and posted the gist of them in here?
a nuclear deterrent which the enemy thinks you won’t have the nerve to use is pointless, so even if there was some such instruction it seems unlikely that anyone would be told about it who was not likely to go to jail for posting about it online. That doesn’t mean you are wrong, it means I don’t believe you are right.
Maybe a nuclear war would be best all round and Putin and Trump are to be celebrated
Yep, the resulting cloud of dust would lower climate temperatures and slow global warming
It's just a rather scary looking building isn't it! Definitely held my attention on our holidays down to Yorkshire when I was a kid. Went down a bit of a rabbit hole with it as a young teenager and spent a few years being scared to death of the idea haha. Now though it's just turned into a general interest thankfully, and I am under the impression it will likely not happen.
I had a base tour there once and whilst in the main ops centre the BMEWS detection alarm went off, I wondered why everyone wasn't more spooked by it. One of the radar operators had to look through a binder and work out it was known space junk so the alarm got cancelled but it was something that happened several times a day. Hopefully whatever systems are in place these days are a bit more sophisticated (this must have been late 80s)!
We were also told during the tour that the base would likely be attacked & neutralised by Spetsnaz prior to any Soviet nuclear launches, that didn't help put my mind at ease either :p
I had a base tour there once and whilst in the main ops centre the BMEWS detection alarm went off, I wondered why everyone wasn't more spooked by it. One of the radar operators had to look through a binder and work out it was known space junk so the alarm got cancelled but it was something that happened several times a day. Hopefully whatever systems are in place these days are a bit more sophisticated (this must have been late 80s)!
We were also told during the tour that the base would likely be attacked & neutralised by Spetsnaz prior to any Soviet nuclear launches, that didn't help put my mind at ease either :p
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I'd love a tour! not sure they would do one these days, never know.
I think these days Fylingdales and the other radar systems on the ground work in conjunction with SBIRS satellites from the US, who can more or less instantly track an ICBM launch from it's exhaust plume before it powers out and starts it's space flight. So from my understanding it would be quite unlikely for the ground systems to be the first point of sight for an incoming missile strike - more that they are used once it comes over the horizon to further track and calculate trajectory. So you'd hope that they'd know about anything a few minutes beforehand...I may be wrong!
(sorry I don't know how to quote a reply properly!)
We were also told during the tour that the base would likely be attacked & neutralised by Spetsnaz prior to any Soviet nuclear launches,
Which in itself would mean its a success as an early warning system for launching missiles back the other way.
- Sir Humphrey: With Trident we could obliterate the whole of Eastern Europe.
- Jim Hacker: I don't want to obliterate the whole of Eastern Europe.
- Sir Humphrey: It's a deterrent.
- Jim Hacker: It's a bluff. I probably wouldn't use it.
- Sir Humphrey: Yes, but they don't know that you probably wouldn't.
- Jim Hacker: They probably do.
- Sir Humphrey: Yes, they probably know that you probably wouldn't. But they can't certainly know.
- Jim Hacker: They probably certainly know that I probably wouldn't.
- Sir Humphrey: Yes, but even though they probably certainly know that you probably wouldn't, they don't certainly know that, although you probably wouldn't, there is no probability that you certainly would.
- Jim Hacker: What?
Thing is, MAD has been rather successful hasn’t it? No one has dropped a nuke in anger since 1945, think about that for a moment. Also, the West has not been in direct confrontation with Russia throughout that period.
Well other than the few down my way Palomares (in Spain) that went off in ‘66 although that was part of an accident.
I think the odds of getting nuked again are pretty low 🙂
I assume like the US/UK and Russian missiles they use astro-inertial navigation and so are completely self contained.
Fair point. Thanks.
(sorry I don't know how to quote a reply properly!)
place your cursor over the start of the text you want to quote and while holding your left(if right handed) mouse button glide the cursor over the text and youll see a little ,, appear. Click that and the text will be quoted.
My father in law was the Weapons Commander of a Polaris nuclear sub based out of the Gairloch. I got to asked him the question would he and he answered without hesitation yes.
In some ways his answer was reassuring in that any doubt on MAD could be seen as an opportunity to strike without the inevitable retaliation. I think that time is in the past thankfully and it’s all posturing now.
A lot of oligarchs would be upset if their London mansions were vaporised and the villa in Amalfi was affected by nuclear winter.
I do wonder if Putin would find out about the terrible design of Russian windows if the crunch came, it’s just hard to know if it’s posturing until it isn’t.(The world is definitely different from the past, as it’s not the USSR who didn’t own a whole lot of really nice stuff in quite the same way as they do now and would still like to enjoy the life they have now)
I wasn’t surprised he invaded Ukraine as he had a way back and had seen how his last expansion had played out but there’s no return from a nuclear launch from his side.
I assume like the US/UK and Russian missiles they use astro-inertial navigation and so are completely self contained.
I would probably guess (jokingly) its impossible to get one to fly west from its point of launch though I do know the Mirv's have no terminal guidance
I would probably guess (jokingly) its impossible to get one to fly west from its point of launch
The last but one UK test had to be aborted cos it was doing just that. Decided to head for the USA!
On the "is it really independent?" question that the last two UK tests failed does help out the conspiracy theories.
