A British nuclear Triad.
- Thread starter aaronupright
- Start date
You're very welcome. I must say that I was surprised by the mention of Crail being the first proposed site a surprise. Had a quick look at the book, and the War Office got as far as carrying out boring at Crail. So, it was a serious contender for the first operational Blue Streak base. RAF Ouston was also a proposed base, along with six of the Thor sites.
Air Forces and Armies, world over have vociferous disagreements over who controls what. Air arms believe if it flies, they control it, while Armies think that's ridiculous and want assets to be allocated according to operational use, if it's a platform used to support ground operations they should control it.
These disagreements have manifested over ballistic missiles, attack helicopters, SAMS and now UAV, UCAVs.
McPherson
Banned
Stable enough.
But they are NATO territory. If the US can install nuclear deterrent forces that way, why not the UK?
StepMap - Northwest Europe - Landkarte für Germany
Fractional orbital bombardment system. This is the type of missile or mass thrower system that puts a bomb into an orbital trajectory so that it can be delivered and de-orbited anywhere to targets and to any spot upon the Earth without regards to azimuth, operational "range" or launch bearing. An independent national deterrent second strike post enemy first strike attack system makes no sense without that capability. This capability would be somewhat "unique" as even the "Force de Frappe" (strike force) never had that capability, being purely a mostly anti-Russian system devised by France.
McPherson
Banned
Unless one can squeeze a Peacekeeper onto a basketball court, that is a nav-beacon site.
Unless one can squeeze a Peacekeeper onto a basketball court, that is a nav-beacon site.
Nah it'll be fine. Just bring over a bit of sand and rock from the mainland and you'll be laughing
I'm curious how would you envision a FOBS (or FORBS ?) system being used in this context ?
I'm assuming you mean a strategic nuclear triad similar to the US? That would be tricky to achieve, and almost impossible to maintain past the mid-1970s.
Up until late generation sea launch ballistic missiles (SLBMs) their accuracy wasn't great, although as the saying goes "Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and thermonuclear weapons". So good enough for countervalue targets but land based or air delivered weapons are required for a counterforce capability.
What huge target? The US fences off vast areas of wilderness because they have it available, if you look at the actual footprint of the silos and command centres it's not massive.
True, but that was more due to the politics of the time. The UK hosted the US Air Force with nuclear weapons and manned loaned Thor intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) without, as far as I'm aware, great fuss being made. Any British nuclear triad will have likely come into being in the early 1960s and reduced down to SLBMs be the late 1970s so not a problem.
I would be careful relying too much on the British Nuclear Deterrent (Study Group) report under Powell too heavily, some of the reasoning is apparently rather questionable. It does seem to be that certain participants entered into the endeavour with the outcome they wanted already chosen and then worked backwards to try and justify them.
France was able to independently develop nuclear weapons, ground based intermediate range ballistic missiles, nuclear powered submarines, and submarine launched ballistic missiles, which shows that it can be done if the determination is there. As you write though that means the question then becomes what do you not spend money on to balance the books.
What's the book like?
St. Kilda is bigger and between Rockall and the Hebrides.
Unless one can squeeze a Peacekeeper onto a basketball court, that is a nav-beacon site.
There's also the Orkneys to go with Shetland. Scapa Flow for instance?
Huge target as in each silo will be targeted by multiple high yield ground burst nuclear weapons to ensure its destruction.
McPherson
Banned
A MIRV "shotgun" dropped on the Orkneys is maybe a little too close to the main islands?
Riain
Banned
Standard Government practice, although the MoD followed this with a study surrounding the Violet Friend ABM system and found that with the number of actual warheads and well as decoys meant that the ABM system was not practical. Between Powell and Penley there appears to be enough truth to make the Polaris and Skybolt both appear much more attractive to Britain, it's just a shame Britain didn't choose Polaris in 1960.
What does Britain need great accuracy with when it comes to ICBM’s? They don’t have thousands and thousands of weapons. They aren’t going to be precision targeting Russian nuclear silos.
They’re going to be striking Russian cities. They don’t need precision for that.
Riain
Banned
Well the French had a triad, and if the French have it then the British should have it too, right? But the French didn't have a nuclear triad because they were advanced they had it because they were behind.
The French didn't get their 4th SSBN into service until 1976 and their SLBMs were short ranged and had small payloads. The S2 and S3 MRBM covered the weakness of the SLBM force. In contrast Britain was undertaking continuous SLBM patrols with the much more powerful Polaris from 1969.