British Nuclear Submarine Service

Sujoy wrote:" The UK's nuclear warhead replacement programme "depends on the U.S. technology development from the W93/Mk7". - Melissa Dalton, U.S. Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense, 10 June 2021

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AS/AS29/20210610/112737/HHRG-117-AS29-Wstate-DaltonM-20210610.pdf

In all these years U.K couldn't even design nuclear warheads ingeniously.

She made public a 'never to be acknowledged fact' that is highly unlikely to be reported in the UK. Other than perhaps by the Scot Nats, but then they want a lever so they will keep quiet too.

An 'independent' deterrent my arse. Only the submarines are independent, their weapon load (the deterrent) is under US control, nicely of course. These boats are just an extension of the USN under a different flag.

An 'independent' deterrent my arse. Only the submarines are independent, their weapon load (the deterrent) is under US control, nicely of course. These boats are just an extension of the USN under a different flag.

Technically a violation of the SALT and START agreements that these warheads are not counted as US weapons...

Russia and France have only independent deterrent in Europe.

HMS Audacious, 4th built Astute-Class attack submarine was formally commissioned

Would say that the sea is a harsh environment, but western fans use similar images of Russian and Chinese vessels to prove the sorry state their navies are in, so I will simply say incompetence and lack of funding... maybe the royal navy is losing its skills... the arrogance of calling themselves The Royal Navy... as if there are no other monarchies on the planet who might want their own navy...

Although this is being promoted as an RN problem its actually bigger than that as the T11 fired was selected from the joint USN/RN stock of missiles.

If the first stage didn't fire then it was just airborne for a few seconds after the compressed air ejection, hence flopping back into the sea near the sub.

The Sun reported that it was understood that had the firing taken place on a real mission rather than under test conditions, it would have been successful'


Kafir For You
@Kafir_For_You

The UK Trident firing exercise failed as missile fell into the ocean a few meters from the British nuclear submarine that launched it, The Sun reported. "It left the submarine but just fell, right next to them," The Sun wrote, quoting a source inn know as saying.

The nuclear submarine crew were executing the "doomsday" drill and the Trident 2 missile was launched. But its first stage failed to ignite and the 58-ton missile, equipped with dummy warheads, fell into the ocean and sank.

It's the second consecutive failed launch after a misfire in 2016 and the cost of a single Trident missile is up to £17 million ($21 million).

The British Ministry of Defense acknowledged there was an "anomaly" during the drill, but stated that UK nuclear deterrent remained "effective."

SputnikInt

AJ Occams Razor
@vega070

Northrop Grumman manufactures the rocket motors for all three stages of the Trident missile. This is a US industry failure as much as it is a UK problem as they are responsible for selecting the missile and preparing it for the test. The testing range is also managed by the US

OSINTdefender
@sentdefender

A UGM-133 Trident II Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile Test at the End of January aboard the HMS Vanguard (S28) reportedly Failed for the Second Time in a Row since 2016, with the Missile only remaining Airborne for roughly a Minute after the First Stage Boosters did not Ignite causing the Missile to fall into the Ocean off the Coast of Florida;

Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles from the British Royal Navy’s Vanguard-Class Submarines are the only Form of Nuclear Deterrence that is kept by the United Kingdom, meaning the Failure of both of these Tests is a Significant National Security Problem.

The scary part is that they are conducting TWO tests in EIGHT years ...
Both failed ...
What level of competency shall we expect?

The French proposed to the UK to do joint development of the M51 SLBM. The UK rejected it because they thought French SLBMs were "inferior" to the US Trident II. But the French seem to have no issues with their SLBMs.

Pride can be exchanged only for anal fisting. The Frogs offered only fellatio.

This missile works perfectly only in James Bond movie.

Shelf life shorter than expected.

Actually no, they are on the edge.
Those boats are all 25-30 y/o, while Trident's shell life was claimed to be 30 years.
Muricans claimed a few years ( :-) ) ago that they could increase it to 45y.
But it is not what worries me.
They hardly test those missiles.
Russkie fleet is carrying a regular and scheduled program of missile launches, and every program set for shelf life extension is made after multiple missiles are being used by multiple carriers.
Neither the US, nor the UK, nor France do so.

They are not only half-a-fukin-century behind in the technology, they are just in stone age concerning a good operational habits.

Any amount of experience in the mater is shocking, as te Russkie own expertise much bigger than all the others combined.

There is something seriously wrong with the western world.

Fukin seriously wrong.

They hardly test those missiles.

Too expensive.
They don´t want to waste the precious taxpayer money on something like testing. 

No, the taxpayer money is allocated for the oligarchy. Taxpayers can be ass raped for more for any number of reasons but
not in arbitrary amounts. So allocation is needed.

Defence sources insist Trident "could absolutely fire in a real world situation" if needed.

And that is the ignorance... we test to make sure everything works find and when things repeatedly fail in tests we pretend there is nothing wrong and everything is fine... look forward to faked test where everything goes perfectly... ie missile explodes inside sub destroying sub and killing all the crew and those observing the test because of multiple nuclear detonations.

When western space agencies call a rocket explosion and the destruction of the vehicle an unscheduled airframe disassembly event then you know the spin doctors are in control.

This might have been a fault in two missiles and all the rest are fine, but I would think the two failures would be reason to first test procedures and testing and missile assembly, but also the stocks of missiles to find faults before you need to use them.

What makes it funny is the disrespect they have shown in the past for problems the Russian Navy have had over various things, but now they will want respect and discretion from their media and public... and I think when they get it from the western media and well trained western public that nothing will change and things will continue to get worse.

Too expensive.
They don´t want to waste the precious taxpayer money on something like testing.

Exactly... they are a deterrent anyway so lets just pretend they work... you would think that would save lots of money but didn't Blow Job Johnson give the Royal navy hundreds of billions of pounds for their nuclear deterrent at a time when they could only afford a 1% pay increase for nurses and healthcare workers who had just saved his life?

I suspect that hundreds of billions of pounds was part of the agreement they signed with the US that got them in the game that kicked France out of the submarine deal with Australia and got the UK into AUKUS to fight the Chinese... the UK is wasting money for that but think how much money the Aussies are going to have to pay...

Biggest HATO drill for a very long time and both UK aircraft carriers are in dock getting repaired... where are the anti Kuznetsov groupies who claim Kuznetsov is junk and all other aircraft carriers never have any problems and are always ready for use... and they should never have bought them... scrap them now...

GarryB wrote:

Defence sources insist Trident "could absolutely fire in a real world situation" if needed.

This might have been a fault in two missiles and all the rest are fine, but I would think the two failures would be reason to first test procedures and testing and missile assembly, but also the stocks of missiles to find faults before you need to use them.

There is no way they can carry any check & correct project if using two missiles in a decade.
It is insane.
After a failed 2016 test, one would expect the arsenal checks, followed by the next tests to find out if the changes applied for work.
Nothing like that followed.

Arrow wrote:Tridents had many successful starts. It is still one of the most advanced SLBMs. The American ones still shoot very well and are still capable of destroying Russia or China, at least for today.

Try googling "Fogbank". The US lost the technology to make nuclear warheads. The people who made them in the Cold War were retired and dead. And they had to reverse engineer their own design to make the latest warheads. They had to reverse engineer a material used to make the warheads. And guess what, those warheads produced with the new material haven't been tested in the real world, since there is a nuclear test ban.

Arrow wrote:The American Trident II has not had any recent failures. The Russians also had multiple failures of their SLBM. Moreover, there is no 100% effectiveness in all types of weapon systems. The US fleet still carries approximately 240 Trident IIs. Even if several dozen do not arrive, it will still be able to destroy Russia. Plus 500 MM III. If even a few dozen don't make it, the rest will finish the job.

False. Bulava had lots of failures initially until manufacturing issues were figured out. This is normal for any new rocket. Bulava hasn't had a launch failure since 2013. 13 successful launch tests in a row. And Russia actually fires salvos on occasion. Not just single rockets. Which work. Which is more than I can say for the UK.

Arrow wrote:The S-500 will not be able to stop a massive attack of Trident II and MM missiles. They can install decoys on MM and Trident that pass through the atmosphere, etc. Russian ABM systems will not stop a massive US attack on Russia. Apart from the fact that the S-500 is against IRBM, and the only strategic ABM system is near Moscow and is capable of intercepting several RVs. The Tridents themselves carry over 1,000 MIRV and are capable of carrying over 2,000 MIRV.

Except last I heard the Minuteman was still using a unitary warhead. And Russia replaced most of its deterrent with Bulava and Yars which are MIRVed. And the S-500 isn't the only mobile system Russia has which can intercept ballistic missiles. There is also the S-300V.