In the news

Nobody else heard the story that Trident Captains resurface after the set time,
after receiving the alert.

If they cannot find the BBC Radio 4 Long Wave signal,
they know that British/Ihnguhlish/Brexit* 'civillisation' has been destroyed
and unleash their missiles to the preset targets.

(* delete according to preference).

I doubt that. A submarine is hard to find under water. On the surface, not so much.

Who owns your cars then?

I didn't realise that there was only one place on earth that could service my car, and that if I didn't service it regularly I'd have no option but to dispose of it very very carefully indeed, at once.

With all this doomsday chat:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich
lightly unsettling.

If you "own" something that needs constant maintenance, and you can't maintain it but have to pay someone else to do so or you can't use the item how truly would you say that you own it?

Owning your own home thread >>>>>>>

Nobody said we lack the ability to maintain them, just that it's cheaper to use a pooled facility in the US. If Trump refused to give us back our share of the missiles he would probably be declaring war on us. No we would not act independently of the US, but we could, it's just highly unlikely that we would ever launch them unless under attack or following lots of talking to the US and the UN.

I think this debate sums up some of the conflicting issues with the nukes.

• A nuclear deterrent is really expensive cause you can't half arse it or it's useless.
  
• It's cheaper if you share or lease some of the difficult tech from an ally, but then you have to rely on that ally long-term.
  
• You can decide to do it all yourself, but then it's even more expensive.
  
• You can ditch the whole thing and rely on diplomacy, but then you're back to relying on allies if it comes to a nuclear showdown, which essentially leaves you cosying up to either the Americans or the Russians.
  
  

And that's before you get to the tricky ethical issue of potentially unleashing fiery death on millions of innocent people. Tricky stuff this. I think we might need a few more pages to nail it.

The people voted to Brexit. Fuck them.

Nobody said we lack the ability to maintain them

We lack the ability to maintain them.

if it comes to a nuclear showdown

A) this if is a bit tenuous. We've noved a ling way from the cold war era of peace through superior fire power or MAD. Principle nuclear threat from a nation is from North Korea and we don't even make their top 10 list. Regardless, whoever might launch a nuke at us isn't going to "show down". They'll just do it full in the knowledge that we'll retaliate shortly before we die from their strike.
The other threat is a guerilla deployed dirty bomb from an extremist organisation. The problem there is we can't retaliate properly because they don't have a handily identifiable land mass and you can't bomb an ideology.
The reality is there is no "nuclear deterrent" any more which leads us to:
B) what are the vast majority of countries without nukes doing? Because that really is what we should do. Careful analysis shows its working for them well so far.

Gassed up helicopters, motorcycles. It's bicycles and cockroaches only post apocalypse :P

if Trump refused to maintain our warheads

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.

It strikes me that the issue of an independent deterrent should be more usefully examined as it pertains to our foreign policy.

Can our foreign policy ever be independent of the US when we are utterly reliant on them to maintain a critical component of the deterrent? Can we ever take a principled stand against a US position if they are always able to nullify our 'independent' deterrent, and remove our status as a nuclear power?

That's the real question of independence - since this started in the 60's with Polaris, we have been shackled to US foreign policy, and will continue to be for as long as we maintain a nuclear deterrent. That seems like a greater submission of sovereignty than even EU membership.

This... It's just politics, a way for little old Blighty to feel like they're still relevant on the world stage... One of the big boys when in actual fact most people are sniggering behind their backs...

I agree with the majority of your points, but...

I think the very fact that we see terrorism and rogue states as the highest threats has a lot to do with the US being tooled up to the eyebrows. If Trump suddenly announced he was disbanding the armed forces I think Putin would take an extended European holiday of the old USSR variety.

Also, what everyone else has been doing (at least in Europe) is rely on NATO protection, which basically means America bails us out. I think the Americans have been pissed off with this for ages but have now elected a president who acts on his impulses, so the balance may suddenly shift.

I think the Americans have been pissed off with this for ages but have now elected a president who acts on his impulses, so the balance may suddenly shift.

Or simply the fact the opponents is a woman.

NATO is not fit for purpose anymore either, dragging the UK into dirty wars.

If anything needs a reform... but I don't think we can do w/o with Russia on one end and the USA on the other: Stuck in the middle.

More trade, fewer oil fights would help but... easier said than.

It's probably a very cut-down version of XP.

Wonder if it has Minesweeper installed still...

Wonder if it has the same das boot screen...

" you sank our own battleship "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrHs8CWDzmc

..

Who knew that hippy has a cousin in China?

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/chinese-man-goes-300-miles-in-the-wrong-direction-while-trying-to-cycle-home-a3449056.html

He probably took directions from @rhowe

Never follow Ludwig.

Sounds like @owenreed after west beers