Glow-in-the-dark tangent
Since the decommissioning of the WE.177 free-fall thermonuclear weapons in 1998, the four Vanguard submarines are the sole platforms for the United Kingdom’s nuclear weapons. The first boat of the class is now six years past it’s originally intended service life of 25 years; the last reached its nominal best-before date this year. There is a service life extension programme to keep them going until their replacement, the Dreadnought class, is ready. The first boat theoretically could be ready in the early 2030ies, but since BAE (“Billions Above Estimate”) is involved… make that late 2030ies.
Also, it seems like Rolls-Royce is a bit behind schedule building the plant that will make the PWR reactors as well.
The Dreadnoughts will also be armed with (updated) Tridents.
Each submarine is armed with up to 16 UGM-133 Trident II missiles.
The Royal Navy operates its missiles from a shared pool, together with the Atlantic squadron of the US Navy Ohio-class SSBNs at King’s Bay, Georgia. The pool is co-mingled and missiles are selected at random for loading on to either nation’s submarines.
The most recent test firing of a Trident from HMS Vanguard off the coast of Florida in January 2024 was a failure.
On British boats, missiles are equipped with a warhead called Holbrook, maximum yield 100 kt. The UK government insists the warhead is a British design, but there are indications that it is largely based on the US W76 design. Apparently British warheads received the Mk 4A reentry vehicles and some or all of the other upgrades that US W76 warheads received in the W76-1 life extension programme.
Under the 1958 US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement, the US supplies the UK with blueprints of its own warhead designs but the design, manufacture and maintenance of UK warheads are purely a UK responsibility.
The British government’s Atomic Weapons Establishment is currently developing a new warhead to replace the existing Holbrook warhead, with deployment expected in the 2030s.
In other words, the UK uses their own boats, their (somewhat nominally) own warheads - but not their own delivery system. All the US has to do is refuse maintenance and spare parts for the missiles for a couple of years (or simply outright deny access to the shared pool of missiles) and things get interesting. And that’s without resorting to the obligatory conspiracy theories about the US having backdoors into the British systems like being able to remotely mess with the Tridents.
Incidentally, France operates their own submarines with their own missiles and warheads, still has free fall bombs and the planes to carry them (including carrier based). France also has more nukes than the UK and is the World’s fourth largest nuclear power after the US, Russia and the PRC. (I’m still looking for a comparison in total yield instead of number of warheads.)
Also, anyone who thinks the UK would use a nuclear response, or any kind of military response, to answer a US invasion of Canada is delusional
But you are forgetting the UK’s secret weapon — Bond, James Bond.
Furthermore, lots of things in Texas are pretty small and it is perfectly reasonable to mess with it.
I’m in Texas. It is not only reasonable to mess with it, but needed. The fucking asshats running the state keep getting worse and worse
With blinding part of NORAD, I wouldn’t worry about British nukes.
It would be typically American: Win the war, and lose the aftermath. Occupying Canada would be a logistics nightmare. (I mean, the Toronto traffic alone…) Plus, trashing the economy of one of the US’s largest trading partners would have side-effects.
Brazier makes some very good points.
Unfortunately they are based on logic and reason.
2025? 2024 wouldn’t surprise me. Two of the largest narcissists on the planet can’t hold it together for too long.
Bonesaw Inc?
Conflict of interest is to be official government policy now.
It’s not like Trump ever really divested his business during his first term. Betsy DeVos probably didn’t divest her private schools either, as well as others. That guardrail was never fixed after it was broken.