You are reading a single comment by @deleted and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
deleted
It's the missiles we keep in a common pool with the US, not the warheads. The warheads are manufactured, assembled and serviced in Berkshire, and stored in a hollowed out mountainside at Coulport, near the Faslane submarine base.
Officially, they are Proper British H-Bombs, but in reality (as far as we can know these things) they are thought to be a licence-built version of the US Trident warhead.
The government always states that the deterrent can be fired independently of the US. Probably true, but what about once it's airborne? Can the US step in and activate the self-destruct mechanism? Do they require a signal from the US GPS system, or any other US-owned system to find their target? No one knows, but it doesn't seem impossible.
Frankly, whether it is truly independent or not doesn't really matter, as long as the government asserts that it is and we can't prove otherwise, then it gets to serve its main purpose of securing our seat on the UN Security Council. If it ever came to using it, its independence would be irrelevant because it would have failed in its (nominal) task of deterring the need for its use.