European Tribune - Comments - Why Great Britain needs Trident

Why Great Britain needs Trident | 121 comments (121 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Why Great Britain needs Trident (none / 0)

It's not true deterrence, because while the enemy can't be completely sure he'll knock out all your launchers, you can't be sure enough of your launchers will survive either.

Unless you have subs.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Wed Jul 15th, 2009 at 11:21:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Why Great Britain needs Trident (none / 1)

Its still deterrence, it's just not MAD enough.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Wed Jul 15th, 2009 at 11:26:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Why Great Britain needs Trident (4.00 / 2)

Could a cruise missile actually lift the weight of a MIRV warhead?

A free fox in a free henhouse!

by Xavier in Paris on Thu Jul 16th, 2009 at 06:25:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Why Great Britain needs Trident (none / 0)

Tomahawks were built to carry a single 200 kT warhead. Or to put it another way, the conventional Tomahawk carries a 450 kg ordnance while a single warhead in a MIRV weighs a few hundred kg. So in short, no. You could of course build a bigger cruise missile with a higher range and payload, but then you might just as well get an ICBM.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Fri Jul 17th, 2009 at 01:34:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Why Great Britain needs Trident (none / 0)

this is what i was thinking. Furthermore, i believe that nuclear warheads are quite sizeable, which would mean that a cruise missile based detterrence would not really be considered serious.

I remember some information on the topic during the north corea crisis: they have missiles, they have nuclear bombs, but they don't have (seemingly) nuclear bombs on missile.

A free fox in a free henhouse!

by Xavier in Paris on Fri Jul 17th, 2009 at 02:49:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Why Great Britain needs Trident | 121 comments (121 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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