Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)
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Re: Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)
#62Re: Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)
#63Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if it was not an actual failure but a warning, and the public is just getting fed the "it *veered" line. Never forget that GB opposed US naval supremecy and as recently as post WW2 we have come close to war for similar reasons, but due to the 47UKUS agreement most people but old sailors and generals have forgotten it all and now were permabestfriends.
Re: Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there any evidence whatsoever that the missile could fail in a way that would mean "obliterating tens of thousands of people in the wrong country"? SSBNs carry more than one missile for a reason - currently the UK sails with up to 8 missiles and 40 warheads, not every one needs to work perfectly. It's also worth pointing out that if the UK ever needed to use Trident then the resultant nuclear fallout would probabl…
> Is there any evidence whatsoever that the missile could fail in a way that would mean "obliterating tens of thousands of people in the wrong country"? Yes, in the "test" last year (that is, the missile luckily didn't carry the real nuclear bomb) the missile was launched to arrive around the coast of Africa but it flew toward Florida! There's no more obvious miss than that. That's the very "Trident "accident" which…
For some perspective the new Russian Bulava ICBM has a 50% error rate, Minuteman had a 97.1% success rate, Trident II was on 97.27% (128 successes, 5 failures) - increasing that number to 6 doesn't really alter the confidence factor that the system works.
If your concern is large rockets being fired that might hit the southern US and cause casualties then I suggest you contact NASA about Cape Canaveral.
Re: Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)
#65Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if it was not an actual failure but a warning, and the public is just getting fed the "it *veered" line. Never forget that GB opposed US naval supremecy and as recently as post WW2 we have come close to war for similar reasons, but due to the 47UKUS agreement most people but old sailors and generals have forgotten it all and now were permabestfriends.
Can you give sources for such a surprising statement? I mean I am aware of war plan red, but there are a great number of such plans for each major power, it doesn't mean that it is deemed in any way likely
To much of the US and even the UK, have this idea of the monarchy as vestigle forms of the state required only for ceremonious pomp and ceremony, but I would venture to say this is not much more than a well placed propaganda myth. I say this because understanding the history of relations between the US and the UK, I propose, can never be understood properly until one gets past this first point.
To review a timeline of relations between the two countries, allow me to refresh your memory of times in which then GB opposed the US. Of course, the revolutionary war, and the war of 1812 with the burning of the whitehouse and the capitol, but the one I feel most misunderstood and mistaught in schools is the civil war, in which Britain openly sponsored the confederate states in an effort to undermine it's traditional enemy. After this is where the "mainstream history" goes off the rails and, due to WW1/2, pretends there was little animosty remaining due to the great alliance needed to defeat the enemy.
King Edward VII, often mistold in the histories as a gallavanting playboy, was actually instrumental in establishing the encircling alliances leading up to the first (and hence the second) world war. Through Sir Edward Grey (Yes, the tea), who controlled Edward House, Woodrow Wilson was pushed into the war despite the fact he had campaigned on not doing so. Of course after WW1 the issue of naval supremecy was a primary pain for both, which is why in naval parlance the Paris Peace conference is referred to as the Naval Battle of Paris. Admiral Benson of the US, during a meeting in which a British Sea Lord was found proding a secretary for information about the US's postwar naval building plans, said of Britains desire to maintain naval supremecy; “[...]it will mean but one thing[...] war between Great Britain and the United States.”[1] Of course, you mention war plan red, but the mistake is to dismiss it as a dusty old plan never intended for use. It was very much part of a real potential response to the entangled alliances developing. It was worked on up to 1936, by none other than Douglass McArthur.
As for WW2, the propaganda primarily centerred around anglo-american unity centered on the Atlantic Charter and it's four freedoms, even though Churchill later said the four freedoms did not apply to the British Empire, or even outside of Europe. This is where it gets more complicated, because it's mostly all about old war plan maps and the military pushback of the US against plans laid out by the UK. Only a handful of generals were able to comprehend the game GB was playing at manipulating how bloody the pacific campaign would be in order to influence the post war balance of power. McArthur was one of them, and his initial pushback against the proposed Brisbane line was only the first in many such political-strategic military moves to counter the traps set by Churchill. This pushback is what moved the lines of battle into New Guinea and the Owen Stanely mountain range. I come from a long line of military men, and a great uncle of mine was wounded on Guadalcanal and later died on the second push of Iwo Jima. Gudalcanal was an essential defensive victory which helped in reversing the Japanese "invincibility" by defeating them in the Battle of the Coral Sea. McArthur also avoided Churchills plan of full frontal assault of each fortified island by conducting leapfrogging instead, gaining control of lightly held islands to establish air bases and supply routes, which allowed him to get all the way to Tokyo with less than 90,000 casualties. The point of me droning on about this is that Churchill was most defenitly not a true ally of the United States, and the hero worship of him I see in modern media disgusts me. If he had his way the US would have bled out people for many more years than happened, and he was a scoundrel for it and more.
After WW2, the British plans for Pacific balance of power were shattered because of this, which is why they supported Mao Tse-tung inssurection as a counter against the American friendly Chiang Kai-Shek’ nationalists and their allies in the inner areas that were against the British colonialism. In order to reinforce this move, they used the Harriman (from which the Bush dynasty emerged) faction, including General Marshall and eventually Henry Kissinger, internally in the US against those resisting it. One of the telling moves was that after Mao's march in 49, the British were extremely quick to recognize his government and supply him with strategic goods through Hong Kong. As a matter of fact my old Marine Corps unit to this day still has symbols on the unit logo from it's China Marines days. To further restore the balance, they entangled the US in Korea, and it was McArthurs brilliance that created victory with inferior numbers and supplies, stunning the British, as they expected a different outcome. Since that play had backfired, the triple-agents in waiting were activated (though some had been used already during Korea), including Kim Philby, Guy Burges, Donald Mcclean, Anthony Blunt, Lester Pearson, and Victor Rothschild. They were triples because at first glance they were British agents, at the second layer they were recruited by the KGB (the Cambridge 6, yes, that's right, 6, not 5) but behind it all, they were ultimately loyal to the British monarchy. Plausible deniability you see. Eventually, the Harriman faction pushed Truman to finally get rid of McArthur for being such a pain in the imperialsts ass.
Now we get to Vietnam. After Diems assasination, the best option for the US would have been to stay out of that war, but a Saigon military advisor by the name of Sir Robert Thompson was at the time billed as the number one expert in counterinsurgency (shades of Patreaus anyone?), and later Robert Macnamaras book, the Pentagon Papers, et al, showed that it was his influence that was used to get LB Johnson to "take the plunge" in Vietnam once JFK was no longer around to veto it. It was Thompson who pushed for COIN operations in the south via US divisions in the Mekong delta doing nation building, despite the fact that the south Vietnamese defense minister had a superior plan in cutting off the Ho Chi Minh in the north near Laos with just a few US divisions by building a wall, and if the NVA tried to amass and attack, an amphibious assault from the rear would destroy them, and the nation building in the south would be left up to the Vietnamese themselves.
[1]https://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/5a2b52ff-831d-446b-b41f-...
Re: Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the missles don't work I would argue that is pertinent information! Its all well and good discussing a strategy but if its based on a range of options where some are proven to work and some are apparently not working but its being covered up so they appear to work its subverted the entire process of oversight of government.
The question is, whether they were covering it up a real problem there, or they just wanted to avoid some idiot higher-up completely overblowing the importance of a single incident. I can somewhat understand their thinking if the latter was the case, given that overblowing stuff way beyond their importance is what politicians do as a part of their jobs.
Re: Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's more likely to be this: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2015/11/18/r... Interestingly, it appears to be propaganda only intended for internal consumption in former USSR.
That's minor PR event which likely purpose is to send some message to the West, while also delivering some "good news" to the audience of state TV. If you'll ask anyone in Russia, noone will remember it. Meanwhile, RS-28 is real and Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces do perform the upgrade of the whole triade at this moment.
Re: Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is there any evidence whatsoever that the missile could fail in a way that would mean "obliterating tens of thousands of people in the wrong country"? Yes, in the "test" last year (that is, the missile luckily didn't carry the real nuclear bomb) the missile was launched to arrive around the coast of Africa but it flew toward Florida! There's no more obvious miss than that. That's the very "Trident "accident" which…
And it was destroyed successfully via the fail safes built into the system, so no-one died and no-one was at risk. The test was carried out in the Atlantic in order to provide a safety zone in every direction because missiles are known to occasionally go wrong. This is literally rocket science, there is no such thing as 100% perfection and lots of safety protocols are build into the process. Your use of quotes around…
So how can you claim that everything is OK or that my point is inaccurate? Or that "it can't fail"? You literally asked "is there any evidence whatsoever that the missile could fail" ... "obliterating tens of thousands of people in the wrong country." That it didn't happen during the test without the nuclear head and when there are additional safety measures is not a proof it can't once the head is in place and the "regular procedure" is followed.
The quote around the test means only that I am aware that what's for some people an "accident" is "just a test" for another, like your view.
I don't claim anything more than the public doesn't understand how brittle the whole system is, different parts of it failing all the time. I've written that once the public understands that, knowing that is "the reason we should really press all the politicians for the reduction of nuclear weapons. It's not the question of if but when and what the consequences will be of the "accidental" detonations."
I also wrote: "The best protection is to have at least a very limited number of weapons. The balance of power can be held even with a little of them." I've meant "nuclear" weapons of course, that's the whole topic. See: http://thebulletin.org/doomsday-dashboard There were 6 times more warheads in 1983 than now, and the number should be reduced much more.
> fail safes built into the system
How does that fail safe knows the rocket is wrong when the rocket decided it's right? Do you have any information about these particular fail safes? Isn't it that it existed there at all because it was a test, and it wouldn't if it hadn't been? The coverage of the "accident" that I've had an access to wasn't technical enough. It was presented as "it has to remain secret."
Re: Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is probably a question of money. The testimony of the leaker is full of references to the Americans supposedly doing things better and more professionally. If true, that is surely a funding issue.
An American officer isn't really allowed to blow off concerns (at least from a nuke) like they did in that rant. They actually can't if they want to keep their job. This rant pretty much falls into what every sailor that hates their job dreams about doing. Though they normally end up sadding out before it gets to this point (using real or fake psychological issues to disqualify themselves).
Re: Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
And the invaded stay occupied?
If you're talking about Crimea then... well yeah, wasn't that going to happen anyway? Not sure why Trump gets the blame for things that already happened on Obama's watch.