Liberal Democrats leader Sir Ed Davey is calling on the government to start building a “fully independent British nuclear deterrent” to end the UK’s reliance on the US.
The UK has operational control of its nuclear arsenal, including British-built warheads, but it depends on the US to supply and maintain the Trident missiles that would deliver them.
In a speech to his party’s spring conference in York on Sunday, Sir Ed will argue the UK’s continued reliance on US support is an unacceptable risk to national security.
So that means Russia is justified if they bomb the UK? Same reason we go after Iran.
To be clear, the UK already has a massive nuclear arsenal. This is just about building them domestically (and only the delivery system, they already build warheads) instead of importing. So, while you’re not wrong per se, the argument you’re trying to have kind of came and went a while ago.
It’s a joke. My reasoning is just as bad as the US.
If only there was a nearby group of nations we could share this financial burden with.
Hahaha, good one
Go for it UK! 👍
Meanwhile Denmark continues to buy F-35. I’ve been screaming and shouting about how bad that deal was from the start. And that was before USA threatened the Kingdom of Denmark. It is so stupid that the deal hasn’t been cancelled yet. Now we need to get rid of the F-35 planes we already bought!F35 are only such planes. If you want air domination, you need those.
It obviously would be better to have European 6th (I think) gen jets, but we don’t have them
Nah I don’t believe you, Ukraine has been able to close the skies over Ukraine against Russia, so Russian planes can’t enter Ukrainian airspace.
Although the Russian planes are not as good as the American, I think that whatever Ukraine is doing could be done against F-35 too.
Saab Vigen with AWAC support will probably do well enough, even against F-35. Especially if they were designed for it.
But that’s irrelevant for now, because they are definitely good enough against Russian equipment, which is what the traditional enemy is using.If we came at war against other F-35, who would we be fighting against? If it’s USA, we wouldn’t be able to use F-35 for anything leaving us utterly defenseless.
If it’s against Russia, and Trump decides to help Russia, we wouldn’t be able to use F-35 either.F-35 is useless, because USA has become an unreliable ally even acting like an enemy. It doesn’t matter if it’s technologically superior if it’s rendered useless by USA.
I also seriously doubt F-35 is very good in a prolonged war, because it requires insane amounts of maintenance, a plane standing on the ground because it requires fixing isn’t worth anything. And that’s a clear danger with F-35, because it requires about 5 times as much maintenance as Vigen AFAIK. F-35 is also extremely demanding in other way, like the quality of airbases. So a bombed airbase can easily ground F-35 too. Where with the Vigen you can take off and land on a decent road.
F-35 is only superior when you disregard all the downsides. Pressure the enemy to have their F-35 constantly in the air, and the F-35 air defense will quickly collapse.
Please read anything about modern fighter jets.
Ukraine doesn’t have air superiority over Russia, which is the thing modern military doctrines aim to achive.
US, despite being unreliable, needs to maintain some trust. If they turn off one F 35, which I’m doubtful they’re able to do, the global trust in them will significantly decrease.
It’s only 2 years to be back to business as usual anyway.
They don’t have to turn them off, they only need to not “delay” armory and spare parts, because of “supply issues.”
That’s right. Notice me when that happens, so I can short Lockheed Martin.
Why would I read outdated stupid bullcrap? F-35 is in no way proven to last for a long term conflict.
You can’t have air superiority with planes that can’t fly because of lack of maintenance or suitable airfields.
Did you even read what I wrote?
Furthermore the skies belong to drones now. If a $5000 drone can shoot down a 300 million F-35. It’s such a huge assymetry that the F-35 will look like something as useless as if it was from ww2.
It’s delusional to invest in F-35 at this point in time. Despite it’s technologically sophisticated it is just as outdated as it is expensive.
It’s the same assymetry we are seeing in Iran, where Americans use 1 million dollar missiles to shoot down $50k drones, and some times they even use more missiles for 1 drone. Resulting in the Iran war costing $6 billion for USA in just the first 3 days!Instead of just reading old worthless shit, you should also apply some critical thinking.
Drones are no more than intelligent missiles.
I would love to see any drone (or an older plane) shooting F35 down.
Our (western) systems are adapting to the inteligent missile warfare, give them few years and one or two wars.
Our Western systems already gave adapted, and all of Europe are working with Ukraine now, be because Ukraine is the global leader on drones.
You sound like someone who believes American superiority is a given. Even when USA is winning every battle in Iran, but losing the war.
You clearly don’t understand what asymmetric war means.
UK’s deal is better than Denmark. UK got full source code access and since they can grow jet turbines in the UK they can do whatever they want with the platform.
At least you’re not here in Australia, groaning as out defence minister still insists that we’re definitely getting our US-made submarines that we’ve paid for under the AUKUS deal…
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgr589k5yleo
That article is only 5 month old, if that deal is so new, I cannot fathom why anybody would make a deal with USA at that point?
What does Australia get out of it?
That should have been: HOW does Australia get out of it?
Even though the deal we made on F35 was under Obama, it was such a bad deal, and 100% based on corruption and to help Obama against criticism in congress.
The numbers were unrealistically tweaked to make it look good, as if we could maintain the planes for a third what Norway were supposed to, and then have them fly twice as much!!
Imagine the fleet we could have, even including AWACs from Sweden and it would still be cheaper both to buy and maintain, and the planes from Sweden are more versatile in many ways. I wouldn’t be surprised if F-35 is part of the problem USA has in Iran. All the planes we hear of are older planes, why aren’t we hearing about how amazing their new super plane F-35 is? Seems it’s completely useless for the conflict?
UK can cooperate with other EU countries. Pretty sure Poland gonna be very interested. Germany, Italy.
Lets not proliferate. Perhaps France.
Why not?
Britain and Poland would have to withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The only state to do so to date is North Korea and it would be a highly troubling precedent.
I also believe that a nuclear arms race would have catastrophic consequences for the world, but unfortunately, Russia, Israel, and the US are making it all too clear that international treaties are, sadly, worthless.
Right now, it would be important to find diplomatic solutions and return to a peaceful, international dialogue, but I fear that this is simply not possible with the unscrupulous despots at the helm of these powerful countries. They believe that international law does not apply to them and want to establish the law of the jungle as the sole premise of world politics - they commit the most horrific war crimes and apparently believe they have the right to terrorize the world simply because they can. As long as their heinous crimes go unpunished and these monsters remain at the helm of their countries, I fear that the world must arm itself to avoid becoming their next victim.
While true, I weep for an environment that will have to endure another decade of nuclear bomb tests
This is about the missiles not the warheads. Britain already manufactures those and doesn’t conduct testing.
They’ll only be testing missiles with a dummy warhead. All countries (except NK) are no longer conducting these tests.
I hope the dummy warhead is just a scroll that unfurls and says “Bang”.
fuck no. no more nuclear escalation please
This belies a complete and total ignorance of the entire topic of strategic nuclear deterrence, and an extremely naive geopolitical worldview.
For case studies of why nuclear deterrence is important, and why a lack thereof can be catastrophic to the state in question, see:
- Ukraine
- Iran
- North Korea (is effectively un-invadeable because of their nuclear weapons)
Moreover, this is not an escalation. It’s moving towards strategic independence from a (former) ally that has become deeply unreliable.
i do agree with the logic. it’s just… hate that were inching closer to nuclear annihilation
