Trident being the UK’s nuclear weapons program, in the form of the nuke equipped HMS Vanguard, HMS Victorious, HMS Vigilant and HMS Vengeance.
The current leader of the Labour Party is opposed to the program and has suggested that we get rid of the nukes, but keep the subs, that nuclear weapons a holdover from the Cold War of zero use in today’s climate against the likes of ISIS. The CND has campaigned against the UK having nuclear weapons since the '50s.
The system as it exists makes the U.K basically an adjunct of the US. US missiles. US warheads,And provides zero flexibility.
A UK nuclear deterrent is needed. The Vanguard-Trident system? Not so much.
RAF Typhoons equipped with nuclear-tipped storm shadow missiles seems to be a better investment.
Since, in today’s world, the use of nuclear weapons would actually indicate they have failed in their primary purpose - deterrence - it ought to be theoretically possible to adapt the language of deterrence to an earlier set of thresholds than actual creation and deployment. The trouble is, getting there from here; it’s difficult enough with America, Russia, Britain and France (could we really adapt to an international environment where the French are willy-waving and we aren’t?), but once you bring China, India, Pakistan and Israel into the equation, not to mention North Korea.
It’s a thorny decision - looking at the weapon system as a geo-political negotiating device then the argument for having one is clear, IMHO. But then you could ask why would a government as bereft of stature as ours be concerning itself with geopolitical leadership, when it has no ideas to bring to the table? Then again, that is the short term, and it is possible that stronger government may emerge in later years.
Then you have the cost - how do you quantify this when it’s a sort of massive inward investment into regions and people (and tax-intake) within the UK? Wouldn’t be my choice of investment, we could probably increase the science research budget 50 times over with this sort of funding, for example, but just making the point that it’s not a simple one-off expenditure.
The technical pros and cons of the system I can’t comment on - although it certainly has its detractors in this area.
So I don’t know. What I do know, however, is that it would be a brave decision to bin it off and I highly doubt this government has either the idealogy or bottle to do that.
I would scrap both the missile and the subs and instead negotiate a deal where we paid a yearly fee to the US to be formally covered by their deterrence (in addition to NATO). This is basically the deal that Japan and South Korea has with the US. I would imagine that such a fee would be considerably less than the cost of operating and upgrading Trident. Some UK nationalists would complain but since the UK is already dependent on the US for the actual warheads I don’t see much difference. Put the money saved into infrastructure and education.
Sure, but what would make you think that the British boomers would be hanging out at Faslane? Everything I’ve read says “at least one is always at sea”, but I’d imagine during something like the Falklands War, there was probably one in the general European vicinity, and a second a lot closer to Argentina.