Nuking the Yanks

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JawKnee

Original Poster:

1,140 posts

96 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
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jmorgan said:
Thing is, listening to the interview on the BBC with May, it seems that the anti are up in non threatening and padded arms on the basis of one failure without asking a whole bunch of other questions. Being "anti" nuke just means taking what you get fed and using that as the one single thing that symbolises why we should not have them. The thing at the moment seems to be that this was known about just before a debate. I cannot see why this would sway a debate, the need for the end product was at stake, not the testing.

Until the next excuse comes along, this will run for the usual suspects.

I expect we will get to hear about stuff in a few years, today it was one failure and we do not know what and why.
If you've plundered tens of billions of pounds of our money on something which has just been found to have a pretty serious defect, then that is certainly relevant to a debate on whether to spend hundreds of billions more on it.

ThunderGuts

12,230 posts

193 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
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JawKnee said:
If you've plundered tens of billions of pounds of our money on something which has just been found to have a pretty serious defect, then that is certainly relevant to a debate on whether to spend hundreds of billions more on it.
Whats the defect?


JawKnee

Original Poster:

1,140 posts

96 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
quotequote all
ThunderGuts said:
Whats the defect?
It goes the wrong way. laugh

98elise

26,366 posts

160 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
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JawKnee said:
Evanivitch said:
JawKnee said:
"The reliability rate of Trident is outstanding".

The first time we've tested it in 4 years it flew in the wrong direction. I don't know about you but that's doesn't sound very reliable to me.
What's more reliable:
Car 1 - fails to start on the 100th time. Previously 99 completed.
Car 2 - Fails to start 2nd, third and fourth, but starts on the 5th fine.
Both sound far too unreliable for something with hundreds of thousands of lives at stake.
You seem to be an expert, whats the yield for a test warhead?

ThunderGuts

12,230 posts

193 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
quotequote all
JawKnee said:
ThunderGuts said:
Whats the defect?
It goes the wrong way. laugh
Thats the outcome...

You, I and many other people don't know what went wrong, but feel free to use this very uninformed position to drive your opinion...

Not like its the first time rofl

ellroy

7,000 posts

224 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
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ThunderGuts said:
Whats his defect?
God only knows.

ThunderGuts

12,230 posts

193 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
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ellroy said:
ThunderGuts said:
Whats his defect?
God only knows.
Exactly! smile

jmorgan

36,010 posts

283 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
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JawKnee said:
If you've plundered tens of billions of pounds of our money on something which has just been found to have a pretty serious defect, then that is certainly relevant to a debate on whether to spend hundreds of billions more on it.
You are arguing from the point of one issue being the argument to ditch it. And using words like "plundered", OK, for your point of view. I like the big stick. So I am happy to go with "my taxes have been used".

Back to the defect. You have provided no information appertaining to previous successes or failures, no information as to why this failed, no information as to the fix. Other than "it went the wrong way", what else happened in the test. I see no metric to judge it as a system wide total failure and it must be binned.

Not being a missile expert or expert in anything here, I am happy to get the information to take my stance further. You do not have that info, so I stick with my big stick.

anonymous-user

53 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
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Catatafish said:
Mouth-frother clickbait of the highest degree.

Didn't the yanks drop an armed one on themselves once?

You have to be in a very special delusion to believe that such complex systems operated by human beings don't go wrong from time to time.
On my last trip to the USA I visited the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History. https://www.nuclearmuseum.org/

These two fell off a B52 laugh



The current Trident system is a lot safer than using Aircraft.

Jawknee, do you not think these missile systems have override safeties if they go tits up?

Ayahuasca

27,427 posts

278 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
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An interesting point for me was that they were able to make it self-destruct.

Is that capability only installed on test missiles? If so, its circuitry is not the same as an armed missile. If it is installed on armed missiles too, it means that a nuclear launch can be overridden, which I always believed was not possible. If it can be self-destructed by a radio signal, how hard would it be for an enemy power to so do?


jmorgan

36,010 posts

283 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
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Thems to ones from the air to air fuelling accident over the Med?

Eric Mc

121,770 posts

264 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
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There were quite a few "Broken Arrow" incidents during the cold war. I was only reading yesterday about a Bomarc Missile test that went wrong at McGuire Air Force Base in the 1960s. The area was contaminated and is still cordoned off.

Edited by Eric Mc on Sunday 22 January 16:59

Ayahuasca

27,427 posts

278 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
quotequote all
Is a sub that is to conduct a test like this actually on patrol as our nuclear deterrent, or is it another sub on a specific test-only mission?

If the former, it must carry live missiles as well as the inert test one.

Crewman - 'Hold on, which tube has the dummy missile again..?

anonymous-user

53 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
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jmorgan said:
Thems to ones from the air to air fuelling accident over the Med?
Memory is not 100% but I think one is from that and the other is from the 61 accident where it fell on land in Arizona.

Evanivitch

19,802 posts

121 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
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Ayahuasca said:
Is a sub that is to conduct a test like this actually on patrol as our nuclear deterrent, or is it another sub on a specific test-only mission?

If the former, it must carry live missiles as well as the inert test one.

Crewman - 'Hold on, which tube has the dummy missile again..?
It was a sub undergoing sea trials after refit. It was not the active deterrent boat.

ThunderGuts

12,230 posts

193 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
quotequote all
Evanivitch said:
Ayahuasca said:
Is a sub that is to conduct a test like this actually on patrol as our nuclear deterrent, or is it another sub on a specific test-only mission?

If the former, it must carry live missiles as well as the inert test one.

Crewman - 'Hold on, which tube has the dummy missile again..?
It was a sub undergoing sea trials after refit. It was not the active deterrent boat.
I'd guess we wouldn't do a test with the 'live' sub, as I expect we'd not want to give its position away.

HarryW

15,150 posts

268 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
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st happens, even when the probability of success is 99.99% you cannot predict when the 00.01% will happen. It could impact on the 1st or 1,000,000th event. Just learn from it.
Those who find it unacceptable have zero understanding of how complex systems such as these are. I bet if they open a box of Bic biro pens and come across one that doesn't ink straight off they don't give it a second thought... That's the difference....

Edited by HarryW on Sunday 22 January 17:06

Tango13

8,395 posts

175 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
quotequote all
Eric Mc said:
There were quite a few "Broken Arrow" incidents during the cold war. I was only reading yesterday about a Bomarc Missile test that went wrong at McGuire Air Force Base in the 1960s. The area was contaminated and is still cordoned off.

Edited by Eric Mc on Sunday 22 January 16:59
What was the quote by a US President?

'I don't know what bothers me most, the fact that the military have accidents with nuclear weapons or the fact that they have so many as to need code phrases...'

Ayahuasca

27,427 posts

278 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
quotequote all
Think how many satellite launch / shuttle missions were postponed / went technical etc, and these Trident rockets are sitting in their silos for months on end, and they are expected to work flawlessly at the push of a button, without any of the long prep time of say a shuttle, and from underwater!

don4l

10,058 posts

175 months

Sunday 22nd January 2017
quotequote all
JawKnee said:
Evanivitch said:
JawKnee said:
"The reliability rate of Trident is outstanding".

The first time we've tested it in 4 years it flew in the wrong direction. I don't know about you but that's doesn't sound very reliable to me.
What's more reliable:
Car 1 - fails to start on the 100th time. Previously 99 completed.
Car 2 - Fails to start 2nd, third and fourth, but starts on the 5th fine.
Both sound far too unreliable for something with hundreds of thousands of lives at stake.
How many lives were lost in this tragic incident?

I note that someone has unfairly called you an "idiot".

Even if only one life was lost, then they were clearly wrong.