Pathetic middle aged men with a potency anxiety buy a fancy sports car as a penis extension. Pathetic middle aged impotent British Prime Ministers commission a new nuclear weapons system as their’s. Today Blair will demonstrate his lame duck status by proposing a replacement to Britain’s so-called independent deterrent.
In his youth Blair was a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament but as is well known he sheds principles faster than his hair and his head is getting a pretty big bald spot these days.
Blair is not the first PM to initiate a new nuclear programme and it does seem to be a peculiarly Labour Party trait to have to show their masculinity in this way. Throughout the history of the UK’s nukes it seems to be that party in charge when significant developments are initiated. Blair does not even have the balls to make a decision, instead he had now started the charade of a “consultation”. The pathetic ponce cannot even openly chose his own strap-on. He is aking his acolytes to chose how the British treasury should be shafted in a White Paper to be published today. Just like the Iraq War decision, even that is a fake.
First, let’s get rid of the notion that Britain has an “independent” nuclear defence. The warheads may be made in the UK but the designs are American and the Trident rockets virtually leased from the USA.
Instead the Trident II missiles belong to a pool of missiles managed by the United States and stored at Kings Bay, Georgia. British boats pick up their load of missiles at Kings bay when they are commissioned and exchange them there when missiles need servicing. The Trident warheads are mated to the missiles on-board the submarine at the Royal naval Armament Depot at Coulport.
Even the construction and maintenance of the warheads has been contracted out to a consortium including an American company:
The management of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) was put up for bid in 1998, and on 1 April 2000 an industrial consortium consisting of British Nuclear Fuels (BNF), Lockheed-Martin, and Serco Limited, took over under a 10 year contract worth 2.2 billiion pounds
How did this peculiarly British pretence start? Well with the post-WWII Labour government headed by Attlee. After all the British developments and expertise were sent to Palo Alto as part of the war effort, there was a “sharing” of information on how to build a bomb
Immediately after World War II, on 29 August 1945, the new Labour government headed by Prime Minister Clement Attlee convened a organized a secret Cabinet committee on atomic energy to establish nuclear policy. This committee, called GEN.75, was a subset of the full Cabinet and was termed the “Atom Bomb Committee” by Attlee. Later on an even smaller secret group of ministers known as GEN.163, which was a subset of GEN.75, made key decisions relating to the atomic bomb program. An advisory group, called the Advisory Committee on Atomic Energy (ACAE) was also set up and on 18 December 1945 PM Attlee reconvened Gen.75 to consider this group’s report. The initial step of building one or more nuclear reactors was adopted.
Secrecy was to become another feature of the British decision making as was the grand dillusion of British government self-importance. The pretence of a great power had to be maintained even as the population faced harsher rationing than had been in place during wartime and virtually no consumer goods were available. All had to be exported to pay the war debt. The inevitable winds of change that would divest the Empire were just an ominious zephyr but nobody could buy a Ford. Still having a suitably large bang would buy you a place at the big boys’ table.
After Labour lost power, the first test was to be under a Conservative administration in October 1952. It was so hastily arranged that the technicians ha to borrow plutonium from Canada. There were a couple of strange co-incidences. The ship that was used as the primary observation platform was HMS Campagnia – the site of the main observatory for the first US test was a hill named Compagnia. Even more prescient, the test was at sea to examine the effects of a nuclear weapon being smuggled into the country on board ship, the big scare that the neocons use to justify hysteria against countries that have no effective aerial delivery system but might (as in Iraq might have WMD) send them along with the Walmart consignments.
The Attlee legacy included Britain’s first operational bomb in 1953 which was effectively a copy of the US Mk4 which first saw service in 1949. The first weapons were dropped from aircraft but the first missile was an air to ground British rocket called Blue Steel. It had a range of about 200Km and an accuracy of 100-750 metres.
British rocketery continued with the development of a system capable of delivering a warhead without the use of a plane to ferry it near the target. The first successful launch was the Black Arrow which was cancelled before the first test. (Another wierd co-incidence is that the Israelis have an interceptor rocket called the Arrow that they have tested on another of their rockets called the Black Sparrow) The cancellation came at a time when the test had already been set up in Australian and the technicians thought “what the heck” and launched. Black Arrow was one of three rocket systems under development with the overtly military Blue Steel being the prime candidate for the first UK delivery system. The skin was so thin it needed the liquid fuel to provide stability and this in part led to the development of a silo system to protect it. That was later to be adopted by both the US and USSR for their land-based systems.
While Blue Steel was in itself quite succesful, using a Rolls Royce engine considerably improving on the US rocket it was based on, costs meant that development to an operational nuclear system was out of the question. Instead the choice was to go with the submarine based Polaris system bought off the shelf from the USA. a decision made in June 1963 but soon after the shortcomings of the initial system were discovered and an upgrade was decided on rather than going with the US Poseidon system.
In June 1967, the Labour Government announced in Parliament its decision not to upgrade the Polaris system by purchasing Poseidon missiles from the United States. Instead of deploying Poseidon, it was decided to re-direct work at Aldermaston to investigate the possibilities of designing a new warhead capable of penetrating Soviet defences using decoys, hardening techniques and penetration aids. Studies of the concept were made in 1967 and the decision to proceed was made by the first Wilson government that same year. By 1969 the Chevaline concept was defined and by 1972 the system had been worked out in detail. It was approved for deployment by the Heath government (1970-74), a decision finally ratified by the second Wilson government in February 1974. At the time of the Wilson decision to proceed the cost was estimated at £250 million. By 1975 this cost had increased to £400 million, and a review was held to determine whether the program should be cancelled in September. This was an important moment in British nuclear policy making because the key issue on review was more than just Chevaline – it was whether the British could afford to maintain its deterrent and competitive in the arena of nuclear arms.
Such was the secrecy surrounding this decision that its existence was not formally revealled until 1980 by which time the costs had spiralled to £1,000 million. Although based on a US program called Antelope, the extra development needed had inflated the bill.
Chevaline was a complex system was based on the coordination of the 16 missiles on a single submarine, maneuver by the RVs to elude interceptors, along with multiple decoy re-entry vehicles, and hardening of the warhead against ABM weapon effects. Each missile would fly a different trajectory so that all missiles would arrive simultaneously over the target (Moscow) and release two real warheads (reduced from the three of the AT3) plus four decoy RVs, and a large number of decoy balloons. The defense would be presented with 96 simultaneous maneuvering targets to intercept (even after the balloon decoys burned up). The system proved far more difficult to develop and deploy than expected.
The current system, Trident is unusual in that it was initiated under the Maggie and Ronnie show. Still Thatcher had the same motive – showing she had bigger balls than other PMs. Production continued until 1999 after a Labour review of the defence systems. That involved scrapping the remaining air dropped bombs and cancelling the final 7 Trident missiles – saving £50 million but involving writing off £40 million. In a first flush of post Cold-War but before 9/11 idealism Blair reduced the number of operational missiles to under 200. With the lack of any real separation of the US and UK nuclear arsenals, this would be a wet fart after the American bang.
Eight years on Blair is both a dying duck after the announcement of his resignation by August next year and desperate to put his legacy in place. There are a number of options on the table for defence after the operation life of the current system is up. This will not be needed for 20 years or more and even the USA has not decided its strategy. Still, with Blair in the last stages of megalomania, ensuring contracts for the eventual new submarines go to a British company have to be in place. This of course has nothing to do with his probable future employment with the likes of Carlisle and those with similar interests in the military/industrial complex. The decision has already been made by him despite the pretence of a Cabinet decision. The White Paper with its recommendations had already been printed.
The excuse for a replacement system appears to be “well you never know what will turn up”. The implied threat of course is the supposed Iranian development of nuclear weapons technology. Scare a Minuteman and you can get him to buy more guns, scare a country and you can con them into buying a load of new submarines.