DBWI: Trident wasn't cancelled?

Polaris has been serving as the Ultimate Defence of the United Kingdom since 1969 now, kept nearly up to date with numerous upgrades, and the debate on when and how, or if, to replace it is large and ongoing.

However, in the '80s, there was a brief attempt at a full-on replacement of the system using the Trident-II missile. Arranged to cost around £5bn (OOC: eventually closer to £10bn in acquisitions), it would've been a leap in capabilities over Polaris, or so I believe.

However, it was eventually cancelled under Thatcher after the Falklands War, in favour of upgrading the conventional forces. Her reasoning, it seems, was that atomic bombs didn't win back the Falkland Islands, it was soldiers and planes and warships, and that Britain might need to fight another Falklands in the near future.

Assume Thatcher goes the other way and keeps the Trident Program going. What gets cut to make way for it?

(OOC: This doesn't mean Britain has a 300 ship navy and a 500,000-strong army. The Elizabeth carriers are projected to cost a total of £6.2bn to acquire. Try to be reasonable in your predictions.)
 
It's an interesting question. I suppose we'd be looking at nine or ten hunter-killers rather than the fourteen we have now - the Trident submarines would certainly have killed the VICTORIOUS class. Probably fewer escorts, building the Trident submarines in the late 1980s would have caused a big budget crunch.

There again, without the cost of maintaining the RESOLUTION class, the rest of the Navy would be in better shape. They were built to last 25 years, it's taken heroic efforts to get them to 50 - and we're talking about another ten years before the new missile submarines come in. They're completely worn out and have been for two decades at this point, maintenance is becoming almost impossible. Polaris is no better, the US retired it what - thirty years ago? More?

I'm sorry, but the Polaris system is an unaffordable antique. It would have been cheaper in the long run to buy Trident and build new submarines. At the least, it might mean NOTTINGHAM is saved after her grounding off New Zealand and that ENDURANCE is replaced. As a real flight of fancy... maybe we'd have got more than eight Type 45s, and the CVFs been built. The HERMES class LHDs are good ships - or will be once all three are in service - but they're a bit cheap and nasty compared to the proper carriers we were looking for at one point.

Interesting thought, there - would Devonport dockyard still have closed?
 
Well, we probably wouldn't have National Service still in Britain. That was a big part of strengthening conventional forces.

And it let the Tories make massive political hay. They claimed it was solving the crime problem and the employment issues all in one go: get all the 'idle youth' off the estates and give them discipline and training in a trade. All those 'true life story' ads - 'I was a young school leaver with no prospects. Then I did two years in the Army, where I learned vehicle maintenance, and now I've a steady job in a garage'... They pretty much guaranteed Tory ascendancy for a while.
 
They pretty much guaranteed Tory ascendancy for a while.
Maybe in the Home Counties, but you should see what it did further north. The Scots really didn't like the implication that all they were good for was fighting Tory wars - in hindsight, conscripting all the would-be apprentices then closing down the industries they would have worked in was really bad timing.

Between National Service, the Poll Tax and shutting down the heavy industries, I'd be surprised if there's so much as a single Tory councillor in Scotland this side of 2050.

Giving Glasgow street thugs discipline and training turned out to be a really bad idea too. When Celtic F.C. went bankrupt back in '93... well, it wasn't pretty at all. And these days, Argyll Street is a no-go area after 11pm, to say nothing of the East End and Gorbals. There's a reason that Strathclyde police has armoured Land Rovers and more firearms officers than the rest of Scotland put together.

It was a real mess in the miners' strikes, too - who can forget Thatcher's Boys charging at Orgreave. I mean, not that the miners didn't need bringing to heel, but bayoneting Arthur Scargill does seem excessive. It's hard to imagine that the police wouldn't have handled it better. Yes, the squaddies responsible were hanged, and they deserved it, but it would have been better avoided.

Whoever Thatcher hired to do her PR over National Service was a miracle worker. They can't have been paid nearly enough.
 
Given that the primary mission of the British SLBM fleet was taking out targets in the western Soviet Union, no wonder why they cancelled the expensive project to get Trident missile subs. Instead, the Polaris missiles instead got a new first stage and rebuilt second stage to increase the range and a new warhead derived from the US-designed W80, but with more nuclear material to increase to yield to 325 kT.
 
Whoever Thatcher hired to do her PR over National Service was a miracle worker. They can't have been paid nearly enough.

Which enactment of policy did you think put Hacker on the road to No. 10? Yes, he wasn't Defence Secretary, but the idea and plan originally came from him. Truely, the political power-play of our time.

(OOC: No, he probably isn't actually that Hacker, but the National Service idea did remind me of it. I must admit, it was that very episode that prompted me to do this thread.)
 
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Archibald

Banned
OOC: I believed you meant this Trident (not the ballistic missile)
TRIDENT%2004.jpg
 

Oh, I agree - my point was more about the Home Counties.

I'd say that the Libyan War's really made people think hard about the whole thing. How many National Service squaddies came home in boxes from that?

Don't get me wrong - Britain's intervention was for all the right reasons, and they managed to do a decent job of putting the country back together (better than the Americans did elsewhere a few years prior), but still...

The fact that BP managed to get all the oil contracts from the new Libyan government didn't exactly help - it gave the whole thing a mercenary vibe, which when coupled with dead conscripts had unfortunate implications...

Which enactment of policy did you think put Hacker on the road to No. 10? Yes, he wasn't Defence Secretary, but the idea and plan originally came from him. Truely, the political power-play of our time.

Smart man, alright. Even if he doesn't always seem it, he's damn smart.

(OOC: No, he probably isn't actually that Hacker, but the National Service idea did remind me of it. I must admit,cut was that very episode that prompted me to do this thread.)

OOC: I had a feeling :D
 
Oh, I agree - my point was more about the Home Counties.

I think they dodged a bullet here in Northern Ireland by both restricting National Service here to volunteer, noncombat roles, and for keeping Operation Banner an affair solely for the professional army. Libya showed us how conscripts with six weeks of training can hold against an insurgent guerrilla force disguised among the civilians (not very well).

I'd say that the Libyan War's really made people think hard about the whole thing. How many National Service squaddies came home in boxes from that?

Don't get me wrong - Britain's intervention was for all the right reasons, and they managed to do a decent job of putting the country back together (better than the Americans did elsewhere a few years prior), but still...

The fact that BP managed to get all the oil contracts from the new Libyan government didn't exactly help - it gave the whole thing a mercenary vibe, which when coupled with dead conscripts had unfortunate implications...

If even Blair, a politician as smooth as a ball bearing, could crack under the pressure of justifying the 'policework' of Transitional Libya, you know you have a potential Vietnam on your hands. The most British casualties in a war since Korea didn't exactly help. It was probably that BP deal months before the 2001 election that gave Hague his (brief) time as PM.

It certainly made New Labour a stillborn.

Smart man, alright. Even if he doesn't always seem it, he's damn smart.

Was damn smart. The first PM to die in office in 130 years left a void in the Conservatives that tore them apart for a good while.

Anyway, I'd think the sacrificial lamb on Trident's alter would've been either the RAF. Thatcher lost a good bit of interest in Western Europe after the Falklands, the expeditionary capability was her pet especially as the talks on Hong Kong started to happen. Subs and carriers were the darlings that won the war. The RAF had to organise a vast fleet of bombers and tankers just to make one bombing run.

Perhaps the RAF wouldn't get their Harrier II, maybe the British Aerospace Typhoon would be a joint program with maybe America or France.
 
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