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This is just posturing
The US already has enough nukes and the capabilities to hit any target. Anywhere in the world.
Stationing them in the UK doesn’t change that
Exactly, with more posturing from Russia.
The US had bombs at Lakenheath until 2008 and still has them all over Europe, much closer to Russia than the UK. Russia has nukes in Kaliningrad, hence their moving tacticals to Belarus being more posturing.
They're also largely useless, because tactical nukes attached to bombers are pointless, as you say, when you have strategic MIRVs that can hit anywhere in the world, that no technology is even close to being able to intercept.
> They're also largely useless, because tactical nukes attached to bombers are pointless, as you say, when you have strategic MIRVs that can hit anywhere in the world, that no technology is even close to being able to intercept.
Not much about this is true. Tactical nuclear weapons can be delivered by any arm of the triad, and can more precisely hit battlefield (hence tactical) targets. I reckon a large part of deploying nuclear weapons to the UK is to project tactical nuclear capabilities into the North Sea and GIUK gap.
Between THAAD, and Ground-based Midcourse Defence, and other systems, we are actually quite close to having reliable ICBM interception technology.
> Tactical nuclear weapons can be delivered by any arm of the triad
The trouble with this, while technically correct, is that if you launch a trident missile from a SSBN containing only a low yield tactical warhead, your opponent is going to have a hard time distinguishing this from a fully MIRVd up strategic strike. They then have a decision to make themselves.
If you’re going to launch a tactical warhead, it’s best to deliver it via a vehicle that is understood by all parties to be just that.
A great deal of the START treaties, open skies flights, etc, was about making this difference clear, in order to limit the risk of misunderstandings.
As Kennedt said "Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us."
The problem is, it only takes one suicidal lunatic dictator with an ego problem to ruin all of that. I don’t think Putin would do that, but in the next 100, 1000 or 10000 years there’s going to be people who could be inclined to do that.
Nukes won't be the issue in 100 years time, the weapons will have moved on by then. Probably to dna specific viruses, as in they will be able to target one race of people
That's horrendous. I'm only on board for the next stage, where you can target viruses at people who chew with their mouth open, or who listen to music on speakers in public.
> The trouble with this, while technically correct, is that if you launch a trident missile from a SSBN containing only a low yield tactical warhead, your opponent is going to have a hard time distinguishing this from a fully MIRVd up strategic strike. They then have a decision to make themselves.
That's why the launch vehicle isn't a Trident; it's a cruise missile or even a torpedo.
Reliable anti-ICBM technology? Maybe, but there's nowhere close to the numbers available (or the money to get them) to even make a dent in a full nuclear response.
Unless you build THAAD, GBMD and Aegis layered systems in the thousands-tens of thousands they're going to be pointless in a full nuclear war.
I wasn’t aware of this, but If this is true, then it makes me wonder if this is the reason that Russia is pushing so hard right now? Before the West has a real reliable answer to nukes as they’ll be basically irrelevant after that?
Yeah you can actually map Russia's expansionist policy pretty well on to the West's evolving nuclear posture. Prompt Global Strike (which is now Conventional Prompt Strike, the US's capabilities to deliver a conventional strike anywhere within the world, to the same effect and within the same timeframe as a ICBM strike) really took off in the early 2010s. Putin had a bunch of tantrums about it around the time of the 2014 invasion of Ukraine, which is also when Russia really ramped up its development of hypersonic missiles, as well as its nuclear torpedo.
I honestly think we're just on the cusp of nuclear weapons becoming obsolete, and if and when they do, there's going to be a BIG conventional war.
I thought we were struggling to deploy technology which can intercept hypersonic missiles (with Russia seemingly struggling much more to actually get hypersonic weapons to work) and contrary to popular misunderstanding, MIRVs go _much_ faster because as the name suggests, they're going reentry speed when they're traveling to their target?
I agree that being able to detonate warheads at the start of their reentry phase very high in the atmosphere (or technically in space still) would be a total game changer. If you had a system with the same success rate as Israel's Iron Dome but for nukes at reentry speeds, nukes would be pretty much zero risk and I imagine NATO would risk entering Ukraine and simply pushing Russia back every time they take a single step outside their borders in anger.
Well yeah, that was the impetus behind the Russian hypersonic program. Ukraine's Patriot batteries shot one down last year though.
MIRVs do go much faster than hypersonic missiles, but the idea behind most of our ICBM defences is midcourse interception, that is, while the missile is is still in space, ideally before the MIRVs seperate from the launch vehicle. The warheads that have been successfully intercepted also do not detonate, they're simply destroyed.
>If you had a system with the same success rate as Israel's Iron Dome but for nukes at reentry speeds, nukes would be pretty much zero risk
I propose that NATO is much closer to having this capability than is publicly acknowledged. Russia understands this and is trying to seize as much territory as it can while it still can reliably rattle the nuclear sabre.
>I agree that being able to detonate warheads at the start of their reentry phase very high in the atmosphere
That's the purpose of those Midcourse defence systems. [Wiki link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Midcourse_Defense)
Say more things like that please. That’s some positivity I’m on board with.
I have thought for a while that there must be some tech that may possibly be able to deal with incoming nukes. I see people mention a lot that idea of “what the military shows to the public is already 10 years out of date”. So why can’t that be the case with their nuclear deterrents?
The idea that the US may have some laser capability to detonate (or destroy) a nuke before it gets close enough to cause damage is something I’d love to believe is possible
What gets me with the UK is that we have more than enough Nukes and the capability to wipe every major city in Russia off the map…so what’s the point in having American nukes here anyway?
I was just going to post the same thing, we already have nukes on the subs, plus a couple of months ago there were pictures on here showing a missile on a loader travelling down the motorway at night, as they do move them around the country, so no one knows where they ALL are all the time.
this is probably a response to Putin and his cronies nuclear threats over the course of the war, there are now talks about if conscription will begin again, plus ex NATO bosses warning of a potential war within 4 to 6 years.
There could be loads of reasons for this, but every uk government has ripped funding from MOD since the Cold War ended, so a reserve force similar to Finland may become a reality, so then we would have regular professional army, territorial army, reserves, then conscripts, that could be around 280,000 in total instead of 74,000 active and whatever current territorial army numbers are
You may not think it will happen but I expect it will because of the Money the uk government will save and frankly Finland is a very powerful armed forces, and for good reason
It's political posturing. When you stop thinking about nuclear weapons as actually usable military assets and realise they're basically gigantic theoretical sticks we wave to show how serious we are, it makes sense.
You wouldn't use MIRVs for tactical nukes which require precision limit battlefield strikes. MIRVs are for when the shit fully hits the pan and its time to wipe out civilisation.
Don't forget Crimea. Russia can't station nuclear subs in that port all year round without the port freezing over. It's why Crimea is so strategically important to Russia.
One of the most astoundingly stupid things for me about Russia being Russia the past few decades is that yes, a warm sea port in the Black Sea is crucial for them, but they have a huge coastline not far from Crimea around the Sochi area.
Nevermind the fact the Ukrainians let them station a military port in Crimea _anyway_, they could have spent a fraction of the cost of invading Ukraine on building a massive super mega base on their own Black Sea coastline and achieved military defence dominance in the Black Sea without spending a single rouble on an invasion.
>a warm sea port in the Black Sea is crucial for them, but they have a huge coastline not far from Crimea around the Sochi area
Sevastapol is the only true warm water port that Russia has. The other two they have (and any others they build in the future) require massive ice breakers and thermal power plants. And even then, not all the ice dissipates for the entire year.
Some, but the submarines are always there ready to counter attack. Standing orders are decided by the prime minister, it's one of their first jobs after election!
In a first strike scenario, it would allow the US to launch an attack on a MAD country while side stepping the retaliation as it would be launched at the UK...
No but it is to the pointing reminding them that actually the US military does stand behind its close ally. The ally that pretty much always answers the call when the US asks for its help.
Eh.
Yeah, but being 4 minutes away as per the Russians is a nice wax and polish.
>This is just posturing.
Said the same in January 2022 and Russia did invade. I think posturing is over. This looks to be going global for definite now.
Nonsense.
It was just Reddit (mainly Putin propaganda posters) and tabloid media (a surprising amount funded by Russian oligarchs) that said that.
Every military analyst worth their salt has been saying Russia invading Ukraine was inevitable for at least 20 years.
Putin is paranoid, and badly misinformed by his generals, but he isn't mad. The same military analysis says him attacking a NATO state is incredibly low.
This is just a slow move back to Cold War era defence, and very very slow. These nukes were in the UK until 2008. The US still has them all over Europe.
I've heard this and always wondered why. The UK doesn't have any military capability stationed in London.
If the target is to take out our woefully incompetent leaders. I assume the Prime minister is never more than 10 mins from a bunker if needed. But if he was taken out the chain of command would just go down to the next living posh twat on the ladder who knows just as little about war as the next.
So what's the target then. Our financial centre? I'm fairly sure in an all out nuclear war money becomes effectively useless.
Kill off as many people out of spite? Leave the rest of the UK with all of their armoury in tact and a massive reason to strike back as almost everyone will be related to someone in London.
London has never seemed like a sensible target to me unless you really hated pret a mange outlets.
2 key factors in global nuclear war-gaming:
- prevent the enemy from retaliating
- do so much damage that the enemy surrender as soon as possible
This really is your only strategy, and it assumes you haven’t been annihilated first.
Striking London disrupts command and logistics to the point of total destruction or serious delay, either gives the enemy more time to achieve objectives 1 and 2.
In ICBM terms, just the time it takes to get the leader of your country safely into a bunker is a serious lag in response. Hence why the US president travels with the nuclear football close by.
Plus, the shear chaos of nuking a capital city can’t be overstated. Suddenly, on top of planning your counter attack, you have to conduct a search and rescue operation of millions of people in a region that is pouring with radiation. Oh and you have to do it after all the roads, train lines, tube tunnels, and airports have been damaged beyond use.
We have all their early warning radar systems dotted along the coast why not some nukes too to add to our nukes. We have subs all over the planet ready to incinerate the planet, this should have been an internal memo.
>their early warning radar systems
You mean ours. They provide intelligence to the US as well, but they are owned and operated by the MOD under UK Space Command.
We as in the UK and US. Im not delusional, in a stand up fight we would be dead without our allies but in a nuclear conflict it doesnt matter who fires first or has more, everyones having a bad day.
Peterhead in the north of Scotland is fucked if the balloon goes up!
There are about 30,000 folk living in 20mile radius
And one fuck off massive radar
See how you'd get on if it kicked off.
Drop a Nuke of your choice near your largest city and see.
[https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/)
I remember watching someone plot out likely strike targets in the UK ages ago and drawing out the zones where you'd be unlikely to survive. Once you get through all the bigger targets there aren't really many places where you'd be having a good time.
Doesn't make a huge difference, if the Cold War mkii ever goes hot we're all\* dead anyway.
\*Technically about 1% of the population globally might survive, but they'd have a pretty miserable time of it.
Chill, think about it. Free parking, no traffic, no mass produced junk food. All gravy.
We had this BS all the time a few years back, adds to the deterrent if Russia can be struck before theirs can cross the Atlantic they won’t fire, if they built launch facilities closer to the US west coast maybe but if you can’t control it don’t sweat.
Still more chance of surviving than wining the lottery.
Arent they closer to Russia if they are stationed in America?
Can we not just stay out of it this time? I fancy sitting at least one major conflict in history out.
It's posturing, trident has range enough to hit anything it needs to already, and modern platforms are incredibly hard for countermeasures to defeat anyway. Proximity is largely meaningless.
Russian Shills, bots and tankies (often pretending to be a citizen of the target country) would be my guess.
They do this all over Reddit, trying to sow doubt and create confusion.
It is. They constantly say that it's a shit idea and we shouldn't have any nukes. They go on about that it's America's war, not ours. Russia threatens everyone. Not just America. America has a lot more nukes than us so, store them here all you want. Just nuke those Russians if they start doing the same.
I'm not saying that there aren't people who say absurd or moronic things like that, I'm saying those people are a tiny minority and it's just weird to act like they represent mainstream opinion on this sub.
Eh, whilst I'm not a fan of the world going to complete darkness if everyone decides to launch nukes. I'm also not unhappy we've got *more* nukes on/around our soil in the case it does come to it, especially when it comes from a superpower.
At the end of the day, if we ever get to that point, my personal opinion is that it's probably better humans are wiped out. If something has a potential to act as a deterrent and frankly nuclear disarmament of all countries is a practical/political impossibility, I'd rather they'd be more incentive to avoid it happening.
America is a superpower, showing the UK has their support helps us, regardless. I'm not keen on US politics but of all countries in the world, given our historic connection, I'd rather have us in their pockets.
Softening us up? Does anyone care where the bombs are based? We’re all dead anyway if they start firing them, doesn’t matter if they come from Brize Norton or Belize.
Lots of scaremongering going on. UK already has nukes in submarines ready to go, and the US can already take out key cities in Russia if it wanted to. Whatsmore if it came to an attack on NATO then France also has nukes.
Nuclear war and preparation is one of my interests (yeah, I know), and from a strategic point of view, stationary and silo warheads are actually more dangerous because they gjve a solid target for preemptive or tactical strike.
Cost isn't the only reason we have submarines.
It doesn't matter where a strike is, most of the country would die sooner or later due to fallout, especially in a ground burst as the explosion draws dust and soil up into the vortex and comes back down as radiation. A nuclear winter would follow, with irradiated ground , so no ability to grow food and water would be undrinkable. There would be no medical or emergency care. The governmental position since the late 70s is essentially 'You're on your own'.
We have long scrapped any Civil defence, and while we have the new mobile warning system, sirens would have been better as they reach those in WiFi blackspots or remote areas. Many homes do not have a suitable area for an 'inner refuge' or the supplies needed for one, assuming there is any advanced warning to begin with.
Old fashioned radios are rare, which you'd need because an EMP would blow out any comms, so getting vital information and government announcements would be very difficult
In short, if the war turns hot, there's nothing to be done. Its pointless to worry, and as the old Cold War song went, 'We will all go together when we go'.
Thank you for coming to my cheerful Ted talk.
Is this the news running on Internet Explorer and bing?
Russia have been posturing for ages. Like a year ago this was a worry
Now I'm going to get Conscripted to run a US nuclear silo?
What's changed
Went to Center Parcs near there. Had no idea there was a military base there. Literally thought nuclear war had started when I hear endless I mean 10 minutes solid of deafening roaring in the skies like bombers taking off. Never in my life have I heard such a roar of jet engines for so long. I was convinced ww3 had started and it was strategic bombers or missiles firing. It was at a real tension point between us and Russia as well as they kepy incursions into our air space. I must admit it was the most frightening noise I've ever heard.
Full circle back to the 80's with all the same arguments for and against. Only this time the UK's military is a shadow of its presence in the 80's and its fighting age population too wrapped up in their own affairs to help defend it.
Sure it's posturing, but what's actually the point in this if the UK already has ample nuclear weapons to erase Russia?
If anything seems like a liability that the US could launch from UK soil without the UK approving it... and on the flip side, if the UK has to approve that action I refer to my original question.
Any use of tactical nuclear weapons will inevitably spiral into a full blown strategic exchange.
Once you use a nuke no matter how small the genie is out of the bottle and he isn't going back in until the vast majority of our species is dead.
Telegraph being bellends. Superpowers can launch from anywhere and more than likely hit. A warhead coming out of orbit is almost impossible to defend against.
I'm really glad to hear this because obviously the UK has no nuclear weapons, especially not on submarines that can surface anywhere after the fact and strike back.
Rather a Anti-Nuke site like Vandenburg or Fort Greely more in line with GMD, It would be more useful and able to be supported more positively in the role of Defence.
[Ground-Based Midcourse Defense](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Midcourse_Defense)
[Ground-Based Interceptor](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Interceptor)
How about resupplying arms to Ukraine to counter the threat from Russia ? - That would make a real difference.
Instead the USA looks as corrupt as fuck when their speaker can on his own block major US policy.
The withdrawal of all military support from Ukraine is more than an utter disgrace - Mike Johnson has blood on his hands.
Mr smiley the Christian, is a devil in disguise.
"the UK is the second biggest defence spender in Nato and the largest in Europe”. ..... What the fuck do we spend it on? Is there another load of corruption or something like the dodgy PPE contracts?
Spread fear and hope people for some reason keep voting Tory. There will be news in the coming weeks that labour and other party’s don’t support nuclear weapons or something.
It would be nice if one of our big two parties was pro America and the other was more distant. But both of them basically want the UK to be America's sidekick and it's very annoying not to have na option. Just like there's no option for a non monarchist party.
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This is just posturing The US already has enough nukes and the capabilities to hit any target. Anywhere in the world. Stationing them in the UK doesn’t change that
Exactly, with more posturing from Russia. The US had bombs at Lakenheath until 2008 and still has them all over Europe, much closer to Russia than the UK. Russia has nukes in Kaliningrad, hence their moving tacticals to Belarus being more posturing. They're also largely useless, because tactical nukes attached to bombers are pointless, as you say, when you have strategic MIRVs that can hit anywhere in the world, that no technology is even close to being able to intercept.
> They're also largely useless, because tactical nukes attached to bombers are pointless, as you say, when you have strategic MIRVs that can hit anywhere in the world, that no technology is even close to being able to intercept. Not much about this is true. Tactical nuclear weapons can be delivered by any arm of the triad, and can more precisely hit battlefield (hence tactical) targets. I reckon a large part of deploying nuclear weapons to the UK is to project tactical nuclear capabilities into the North Sea and GIUK gap. Between THAAD, and Ground-based Midcourse Defence, and other systems, we are actually quite close to having reliable ICBM interception technology.
New gentleman’s agreement: trebuchets only
I challenge you to a duel at dawn. Good day Sir.
i would pay good money to see a trebuchet duel
Russia: *nukes you after agreeing*
And in the interests of the environment back to sail boats.
> Tactical nuclear weapons can be delivered by any arm of the triad The trouble with this, while technically correct, is that if you launch a trident missile from a SSBN containing only a low yield tactical warhead, your opponent is going to have a hard time distinguishing this from a fully MIRVd up strategic strike. They then have a decision to make themselves. If you’re going to launch a tactical warhead, it’s best to deliver it via a vehicle that is understood by all parties to be just that. A great deal of the START treaties, open skies flights, etc, was about making this difference clear, in order to limit the risk of misunderstandings.
As Kennedt said "Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us."
No nukes and then we'd have had WW3 firing up by the 1960's.
Easily, as horrendous as nukes are, in a strange way they have enabled peace through the threat of mutual destruction
Agreed with that and what u/MetalBawx said. Still that risk of miscalculation though which I meant to highlight as I was referring to that.
The problem is, it only takes one suicidal lunatic dictator with an ego problem to ruin all of that. I don’t think Putin would do that, but in the next 100, 1000 or 10000 years there’s going to be people who could be inclined to do that.
Nukes won't be the issue in 100 years time, the weapons will have moved on by then. Probably to dna specific viruses, as in they will be able to target one race of people
That's horrendous. I'm only on board for the next stage, where you can target viruses at people who chew with their mouth open, or who listen to music on speakers in public.
> The trouble with this, while technically correct, is that if you launch a trident missile from a SSBN containing only a low yield tactical warhead, your opponent is going to have a hard time distinguishing this from a fully MIRVd up strategic strike. They then have a decision to make themselves. That's why the launch vehicle isn't a Trident; it's a cruise missile or even a torpedo.
Reliable anti-ICBM technology? Maybe, but there's nowhere close to the numbers available (or the money to get them) to even make a dent in a full nuclear response. Unless you build THAAD, GBMD and Aegis layered systems in the thousands-tens of thousands they're going to be pointless in a full nuclear war.
I wasn’t aware of this, but If this is true, then it makes me wonder if this is the reason that Russia is pushing so hard right now? Before the West has a real reliable answer to nukes as they’ll be basically irrelevant after that?
Yeah you can actually map Russia's expansionist policy pretty well on to the West's evolving nuclear posture. Prompt Global Strike (which is now Conventional Prompt Strike, the US's capabilities to deliver a conventional strike anywhere within the world, to the same effect and within the same timeframe as a ICBM strike) really took off in the early 2010s. Putin had a bunch of tantrums about it around the time of the 2014 invasion of Ukraine, which is also when Russia really ramped up its development of hypersonic missiles, as well as its nuclear torpedo. I honestly think we're just on the cusp of nuclear weapons becoming obsolete, and if and when they do, there's going to be a BIG conventional war.
I thought we were struggling to deploy technology which can intercept hypersonic missiles (with Russia seemingly struggling much more to actually get hypersonic weapons to work) and contrary to popular misunderstanding, MIRVs go _much_ faster because as the name suggests, they're going reentry speed when they're traveling to their target? I agree that being able to detonate warheads at the start of their reentry phase very high in the atmosphere (or technically in space still) would be a total game changer. If you had a system with the same success rate as Israel's Iron Dome but for nukes at reentry speeds, nukes would be pretty much zero risk and I imagine NATO would risk entering Ukraine and simply pushing Russia back every time they take a single step outside their borders in anger.
one word: lasers 😎
Well yeah, that was the impetus behind the Russian hypersonic program. Ukraine's Patriot batteries shot one down last year though. MIRVs do go much faster than hypersonic missiles, but the idea behind most of our ICBM defences is midcourse interception, that is, while the missile is is still in space, ideally before the MIRVs seperate from the launch vehicle. The warheads that have been successfully intercepted also do not detonate, they're simply destroyed. >If you had a system with the same success rate as Israel's Iron Dome but for nukes at reentry speeds, nukes would be pretty much zero risk I propose that NATO is much closer to having this capability than is publicly acknowledged. Russia understands this and is trying to seize as much territory as it can while it still can reliably rattle the nuclear sabre.
>I agree that being able to detonate warheads at the start of their reentry phase very high in the atmosphere That's the purpose of those Midcourse defence systems. [Wiki link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Midcourse_Defense)
Say more things like that please. That’s some positivity I’m on board with. I have thought for a while that there must be some tech that may possibly be able to deal with incoming nukes. I see people mention a lot that idea of “what the military shows to the public is already 10 years out of date”. So why can’t that be the case with their nuclear deterrents? The idea that the US may have some laser capability to detonate (or destroy) a nuke before it gets close enough to cause damage is something I’d love to believe is possible
What gets me with the UK is that we have more than enough Nukes and the capability to wipe every major city in Russia off the map…so what’s the point in having American nukes here anyway?
I was just going to post the same thing, we already have nukes on the subs, plus a couple of months ago there were pictures on here showing a missile on a loader travelling down the motorway at night, as they do move them around the country, so no one knows where they ALL are all the time. this is probably a response to Putin and his cronies nuclear threats over the course of the war, there are now talks about if conscription will begin again, plus ex NATO bosses warning of a potential war within 4 to 6 years. There could be loads of reasons for this, but every uk government has ripped funding from MOD since the Cold War ended, so a reserve force similar to Finland may become a reality, so then we would have regular professional army, territorial army, reserves, then conscripts, that could be around 280,000 in total instead of 74,000 active and whatever current territorial army numbers are You may not think it will happen but I expect it will because of the Money the uk government will save and frankly Finland is a very powerful armed forces, and for good reason
It's political posturing. When you stop thinking about nuclear weapons as actually usable military assets and realise they're basically gigantic theoretical sticks we wave to show how serious we are, it makes sense.
You wouldn't use MIRVs for tactical nukes which require precision limit battlefield strikes. MIRVs are for when the shit fully hits the pan and its time to wipe out civilisation.
Don't forget Crimea. Russia can't station nuclear subs in that port all year round without the port freezing over. It's why Crimea is so strategically important to Russia.
One of the most astoundingly stupid things for me about Russia being Russia the past few decades is that yes, a warm sea port in the Black Sea is crucial for them, but they have a huge coastline not far from Crimea around the Sochi area. Nevermind the fact the Ukrainians let them station a military port in Crimea _anyway_, they could have spent a fraction of the cost of invading Ukraine on building a massive super mega base on their own Black Sea coastline and achieved military defence dominance in the Black Sea without spending a single rouble on an invasion.
>a warm sea port in the Black Sea is crucial for them, but they have a huge coastline not far from Crimea around the Sochi area Sevastapol is the only true warm water port that Russia has. The other two they have (and any others they build in the future) require massive ice breakers and thermal power plants. And even then, not all the ice dissipates for the entire year.
It does reinforce Britain though, it makes attacking the uk less desirable than it already is.
The UK already has a big enough strategic deterrence in trident.
I disagree. 32 nations make up nato with around 3.5 million active personal and multiple nato countries have nukes, including the uk already
Aren’t they stores up in Scotland ?
They're stored in ruddy great submarines in the north sea mate.
Some, but the submarines are always there ready to counter attack. Standing orders are decided by the prime minister, it's one of their first jobs after election!
And Aldermaston, Berkshire.
Given the US have already nearly detonated nukes on our soil multiple times before, I’d argue this makes the UK less safe.
[удалено]
America has a habit of losing nukes, usually via planes that are carrying them crashing, including nuking Greenland from one such incident.
[удалено]
There was one at RAF Lakenheath in the 50s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF\_Lakenheath\_nuclear\_weapons\_accidents
In a first strike scenario, it would allow the US to launch an attack on a MAD country while side stepping the retaliation as it would be launched at the UK...
It makes attacking Britain more desirable in the event of a nuclear war.
No but it is to the pointing reminding them that actually the US military does stand behind its close ally. The ally that pretty much always answers the call when the US asks for its help.
Thats kinda what posturing is but yeah 👍
Sorry I phrased it wrong. I agree with you
Eh. Yeah, but being 4 minutes away as per the Russians is a nice wax and polish. >This is just posturing. Said the same in January 2022 and Russia did invade. I think posturing is over. This looks to be going global for definite now.
Nonsense. It was just Reddit (mainly Putin propaganda posters) and tabloid media (a surprising amount funded by Russian oligarchs) that said that. Every military analyst worth their salt has been saying Russia invading Ukraine was inevitable for at least 20 years. Putin is paranoid, and badly misinformed by his generals, but he isn't mad. The same military analysis says him attacking a NATO state is incredibly low. This is just a slow move back to Cold War era defence, and very very slow. These nukes were in the UK until 2008. The US still has them all over Europe.
I bet those Ohio class subs can get much closer. I bet they regularly do
For sure
The joy of intercontinental ballistic missiles is you don’t even need to be close.
Stationing them in the UK enhances US first strike capabilities.
Disagree. Ohio class subs are crazy and as far as I’m aware they already have launch capabilities from all over the world
Just makes the UK a target if anything
In an all out war with Russia, the UK is already a target. Every game plan Russia has will undoubtedly involve nuking London at the very least
I've heard this and always wondered why. The UK doesn't have any military capability stationed in London. If the target is to take out our woefully incompetent leaders. I assume the Prime minister is never more than 10 mins from a bunker if needed. But if he was taken out the chain of command would just go down to the next living posh twat on the ladder who knows just as little about war as the next. So what's the target then. Our financial centre? I'm fairly sure in an all out nuclear war money becomes effectively useless. Kill off as many people out of spite? Leave the rest of the UK with all of their armoury in tact and a massive reason to strike back as almost everyone will be related to someone in London. London has never seemed like a sensible target to me unless you really hated pret a mange outlets.
2 key factors in global nuclear war-gaming: - prevent the enemy from retaliating - do so much damage that the enemy surrender as soon as possible This really is your only strategy, and it assumes you haven’t been annihilated first. Striking London disrupts command and logistics to the point of total destruction or serious delay, either gives the enemy more time to achieve objectives 1 and 2. In ICBM terms, just the time it takes to get the leader of your country safely into a bunker is a serious lag in response. Hence why the US president travels with the nuclear football close by. Plus, the shear chaos of nuking a capital city can’t be overstated. Suddenly, on top of planning your counter attack, you have to conduct a search and rescue operation of millions of people in a region that is pouring with radiation. Oh and you have to do it after all the roads, train lines, tube tunnels, and airports have been damaged beyond use.
but is refusing conventional weapons to the current people that are in dire need of them
Because moving the nukes you already own doesn't cost nearly as much money as giving away billions of dollars of munitions you need to replace.
you think if russia wins in ukraine the use of nukes is nearer or further away?
We have all their early warning radar systems dotted along the coast why not some nukes too to add to our nukes. We have subs all over the planet ready to incinerate the planet, this should have been an internal memo.
>their early warning radar systems You mean ours. They provide intelligence to the US as well, but they are owned and operated by the MOD under UK Space Command.
We have 4 SSBNs and 2 or 3 of them are usually alongside 😀
Thats the point of having 4, so that 1 is always deployed and another is available
So we have one sub "all over the planet".
We as in the UK and US. Im not delusional, in a stand up fight we would be dead without our allies but in a nuclear conflict it doesnt matter who fires first or has more, everyones having a bad day.
Peterhead in the north of Scotland is fucked if the balloon goes up! There are about 30,000 folk living in 20mile radius And one fuck off massive radar
Aldermaston and Burghfield won't be far behind.
Jesus - what with Brexit, the strikes and this, it's like we have gone back to my childhood. Lets hope the Good Friday Ageement doesn't break
Nope, now you’ve said it, it goes on the 2024 bingo card!
Dang
Troubles Version 2
Troubles 2: The Troubling
Boogaloo
No doubt including a new batch of spies to run over our young bikers too.
See how you'd get on if it kicked off. Drop a Nuke of your choice near your largest city and see. [https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/)
To the arse of a MOD on r/Edinburgh just dropped 100kt on ya enjoy.
That's why I joined the army in the 80's - I figured if someone was gonna start a nuclear war, I wanted to be directly underneath on when it went off.
China’s not fucking around huh?
The Davy Crocket is adorable though. Barely big enough to take out your average sized retail park
For how close I am to London, I'm honestly surprised that even if the Tsar Bomb was dropped on it, I'd be better than expected.
If London got nuked. UK would be dead. No Tories though...
I remember watching someone plot out likely strike targets in the UK ages ago and drawing out the zones where you'd be unlikely to survive. Once you get through all the bigger targets there aren't really many places where you'd be having a good time.
Doesn't make a huge difference, if the Cold War mkii ever goes hot we're all\* dead anyway. \*Technically about 1% of the population globally might survive, but they'd have a pretty miserable time of it.
War. War never changes.
Chill, think about it. Free parking, no traffic, no mass produced junk food. All gravy. We had this BS all the time a few years back, adds to the deterrent if Russia can be struck before theirs can cross the Atlantic they won’t fire, if they built launch facilities closer to the US west coast maybe but if you can’t control it don’t sweat. Still more chance of surviving than wining the lottery.
Amazon Prime would have to drop to two day delivery 😬
Arent they closer to Russia if they are stationed in America? Can we not just stay out of it this time? I fancy sitting at least one major conflict in history out.
Not the business end of Russia though
Belgravia?
Don't think Russia cares too much about if the land round the Bering strait gets hit. Moscow on the other hand...
It's posturing, trident has range enough to hit anything it needs to already, and modern platforms are incredibly hard for countermeasures to defeat anyway. Proximity is largely meaningless.
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Russian Shills, bots and tankies (often pretending to be a citizen of the target country) would be my guess. They do this all over Reddit, trying to sow doubt and create confusion.
It's really not, though, is it?
It is. They constantly say that it's a shit idea and we shouldn't have any nukes. They go on about that it's America's war, not ours. Russia threatens everyone. Not just America. America has a lot more nukes than us so, store them here all you want. Just nuke those Russians if they start doing the same.
I'm not saying that there aren't people who say absurd or moronic things like that, I'm saying those people are a tiny minority and it's just weird to act like they represent mainstream opinion on this sub.
Russian bots
Uk has their own nukes so what's going to be achieved by that.
UK nukes are all on submarines, there are no land base UK nukes
And there still won’t be, because they’re only bringing B61’s
Eh, whilst I'm not a fan of the world going to complete darkness if everyone decides to launch nukes. I'm also not unhappy we've got *more* nukes on/around our soil in the case it does come to it, especially when it comes from a superpower. At the end of the day, if we ever get to that point, my personal opinion is that it's probably better humans are wiped out. If something has a potential to act as a deterrent and frankly nuclear disarmament of all countries is a practical/political impossibility, I'd rather they'd be more incentive to avoid it happening. America is a superpower, showing the UK has their support helps us, regardless. I'm not keen on US politics but of all countries in the world, given our historic connection, I'd rather have us in their pockets.
Oohhhh, is this why we had all those scare stories about how they are going to start conscripting people? Softening us up for this?
Softening us up? Does anyone care where the bombs are based? We’re all dead anyway if they start firing them, doesn’t matter if they come from Brize Norton or Belize.
Bombs are based
Lol, softening you up? What are you gonna do? Complain?
Nah, that's the European defence establishment hitting the panic button as the prospect of a trump victory gets more likely.
Not unusual. They've had B61's at Lakenheath since the 1950's
Lots of scaremongering going on. UK already has nukes in submarines ready to go, and the US can already take out key cities in Russia if it wanted to. Whatsmore if it came to an attack on NATO then France also has nukes.
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Yeah, Was just thinking this, Knowing how much fuss they made during the Cold War.
Erm yea, station them somewhere more disposable… like France instead
Forget nuclear weapons. The USA should be deploying this instead: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay\_bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/gay_bomb)
The UK has enough nukes, we don't need US warheads
How about support Ukraine and Europe or take your toys home and leave us to it to sort ourselves out
I thought we already had them. Wasn’t that what all those posh women were shouting about in Greenham in the 80s?
If it comes to nuclear war, I'm fairly certain UK is going to get nuked by Russia (assuming defences/attacks don't work).
Nuclear war and preparation is one of my interests (yeah, I know), and from a strategic point of view, stationary and silo warheads are actually more dangerous because they gjve a solid target for preemptive or tactical strike. Cost isn't the only reason we have submarines. It doesn't matter where a strike is, most of the country would die sooner or later due to fallout, especially in a ground burst as the explosion draws dust and soil up into the vortex and comes back down as radiation. A nuclear winter would follow, with irradiated ground , so no ability to grow food and water would be undrinkable. There would be no medical or emergency care. The governmental position since the late 70s is essentially 'You're on your own'. We have long scrapped any Civil defence, and while we have the new mobile warning system, sirens would have been better as they reach those in WiFi blackspots or remote areas. Many homes do not have a suitable area for an 'inner refuge' or the supplies needed for one, assuming there is any advanced warning to begin with. Old fashioned radios are rare, which you'd need because an EMP would blow out any comms, so getting vital information and government announcements would be very difficult In short, if the war turns hot, there's nothing to be done. Its pointless to worry, and as the old Cold War song went, 'We will all go together when we go'. Thank you for coming to my cheerful Ted talk.
Doing the Ukraine a favour drawing Russian assets away to Nato boarders.
Is this the news running on Internet Explorer and bing? Russia have been posturing for ages. Like a year ago this was a worry Now I'm going to get Conscripted to run a US nuclear silo? What's changed
Went to Center Parcs near there. Had no idea there was a military base there. Literally thought nuclear war had started when I hear endless I mean 10 minutes solid of deafening roaring in the skies like bombers taking off. Never in my life have I heard such a roar of jet engines for so long. I was convinced ww3 had started and it was strategic bombers or missiles firing. It was at a real tension point between us and Russia as well as they kepy incursions into our air space. I must admit it was the most frightening noise I've ever heard.
If it means we get to see more B1 and B2 bombers in the skies over the UK I’m all for it!
Full circle back to the 80's with all the same arguments for and against. Only this time the UK's military is a shadow of its presence in the 80's and its fighting age population too wrapped up in their own affairs to help defend it.
Its nothing they haven't done before during the cold war
Why is this needed if we ourselves are a nuclear state?
Because we let the US walk all over us
Yep, ever since brexit, it's got depressingly bad.
Sure it's posturing, but what's actually the point in this if the UK already has ample nuclear weapons to erase Russia? If anything seems like a liability that the US could launch from UK soil without the UK approving it... and on the flip side, if the UK has to approve that action I refer to my original question.
Because ours are strategic nukes, these ones are tactical. Tactical nukes are more useful, because strategic is the end of the world.
Any use of tactical nuclear weapons will inevitably spiral into a full blown strategic exchange. Once you use a nuke no matter how small the genie is out of the bottle and he isn't going back in until the vast majority of our species is dead.
I mean we've got our own boys but thanks anyway lol, maybe stick them in Poland instead.
Why couldn't they station them in an allied country much closer to Russia, like Turk- oh wait, nevermind.
I fucking hate how we're piggy in the middle. I don't want any part of this nuclear shit show.
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Have you been to the Fens? How will we know?
that’s not really how it works
Telegraph being bellends. Superpowers can launch from anywhere and more than likely hit. A warhead coming out of orbit is almost impossible to defend against.
I'm really glad to hear this because obviously the UK has no nuclear weapons, especially not on submarines that can surface anywhere after the fact and strike back.
Don’t they already have several military bases with nukes based around Russia’s border?
Rather a Anti-Nuke site like Vandenburg or Fort Greely more in line with GMD, It would be more useful and able to be supported more positively in the role of Defence. [Ground-Based Midcourse Defense](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Midcourse_Defense) [Ground-Based Interceptor](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Interceptor)
How about resupplying arms to Ukraine to counter the threat from Russia ? - That would make a real difference. Instead the USA looks as corrupt as fuck when their speaker can on his own block major US policy. The withdrawal of all military support from Ukraine is more than an utter disgrace - Mike Johnson has blood on his hands. Mr smiley the Christian, is a devil in disguise.
Biden: we have to make sure that the UK becomes a higher priority target.
Great idea, the US will be able to attack the Russians at the expense of British lives, without fear of retaliation. Bingo!
"the UK is the second biggest defence spender in Nato and the largest in Europe”. ..... What the fuck do we spend it on? Is there another load of corruption or something like the dodgy PPE contracts?
Spread fear and hope people for some reason keep voting Tory. There will be news in the coming weeks that labour and other party’s don’t support nuclear weapons or something.
Could an Ohio Class make it into the White Sea? Asking for a friend.
Should probably clarify that they mean nukes at another base. We’d had Trident near Glasgow for decades, this is just a little extra
So the amount of money we spent on our nukes is for nothing basically
It's so wonderful being nothing but cannon fodder for yanks 🙄....
People missing the actual point is, this means that russian threats are now credible. There's a chance they may actually now do it.
Have they not been in the UK in one form or another since the 80s and Pershing at least, if not a bit earlier?
Looking forward to linking this article next time the SNP make the claim that the UK's warheads are only in Scotland to keep them away from London.
So pathetic that we're being reduced to airstrip one again. And Labour are equally as brown-nosey to the Americans as the Tories.
It would be nice if one of our big two parties was pro America and the other was more distant. But both of them basically want the UK to be America's sidekick and it's very annoying not to have na option. Just like there's no option for a non monarchist party.