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Originally Posted by MaxQ
(Post 4025673)
The fact that the use of their nukes has been ordered means that the reason for their existence has failed.
I’ve said it before. As humanitarian nations go, we remain undisputed heavyweight champ. But there is another side. So if you’re among those insisting on moral high ground for present hostilities, no alibis are available at this time. Pls ck back soon. Since the banner went up 250 years ago, the next bloody fight for Americans was never far off. Any promises of lasting peace always just another bucket of lies. Fate is the Hunter - e Gann https://youtu.be/3mmCo0um0qw?si=QVkSL05TQzufpujj |
Originally Posted by Excargodog
(Post 4025665)
Point being
1. The D5 DOESN’T work fine…in Royal Navy hands. 2. Having only one boomer capable of going to sea at a time means you are only one single point failure - be it engineering catastrophe, navigational error, or enemy action - away from not having an underwater nuclear deterrence at all. Built in the 1990s with a designed lifetime of 25 years and the Dreadnought follow on boats delayed at least ten years, their maintenance problems can only get worse. https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/the-...arine-patrols/ The only really satisfactory solution is to replace these four aging boats with the Dreadnought class. But the first boat of that program (which was started in 2016) is not expected to be operational before late 2032 assuming no glitches and actually getting currently projected funding levels so the existing boats are going to have to at least share the load pending commissioning of the fourth and final Dreadnought series “in the 2040s”. 3. And no, you can’t depend on an operator to assure your cities survive, but when you are using an INTERCONTINENTAL BALLISTIC MISSILE to hit an adversary it would be nice to have said missile hit closer to the adversary than your own boat. A CEP of half of the globe is a little too big even for a nuke. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/bu...ared-ps-030826 4.. The lesson learned from the last two launch attempts is that the personnel involved were less competent than their predecessors. That’s not a real comforting lesson. Also you're probably not aware of how modern boomers are designed... over-engineered and over-maintained to ensure patrol reliability, relative to all other combat platforms. As long as the thing sails out of the harbor, submerges, and doesn't make a lot of noise then deterrence is accomplished. Of course if it's perpetually dysfunctional then people will talk and the enemy will start to suspect. But I don't think they're quite to that point. Also the UK isn't really aiming deterrence at FR and DE... it's all about RU for them, so essentially they're just a part of the US system, with separate C&C. Honestly more about national pride than anything else... I'd rather they lose the boomers and just stock some gravity bombs and well-maintained stealth strike fighters. THAT they could probably do. |
Originally Posted by Excargodog
(Post 4025747)
So you are asserting that there is no meaningful difference between the UKs four small (generally carrying 12 missiles/48 warheads) dilapidated broken down old and poorly maintainable submarines with one operational and three in overhaul and the US’s larger and more capable (20 Tridents per boat, 80-100 warheads) fleet of 14 with two typically in overhaul and four operational?
A boomer at sea is like Heisenberg's cat... doesn't matter if it will work or not, because you don't know. Even a single boomer is a deterrent. The benefit of multiple boomers is really to make it had to ambush all of them at once, if you could somehow find them all at once. Ancillary benefit is that you have coverage in the event of an exceeding rare unscheduled mx issue. We don't have multiple boomers in case one of them fails to launch. Again, it only takes one submerged to provide deterrence, which is the point. |
Originally Posted by rickair7777
(Post 4025761)
The boomers are there to deter a first-strike attempt.
A boomer at sea is like Heisenberg's cat... doesn't matter if it will work or not, because you don't know. Even a single boomer is a deterrent. The benefit of multiple boomers is really to make it had to ambush all of them at once, if you could somehow find them all at once. Ancillary benefit is that you have coverage in the event of an exceeding rare unscheduled mx issue. We don't have multiple boomers in case one of them fails to launch. Again, it only takes one submerged to provide deterrence, which is the point. |
Originally Posted by Excargodog
(Post 4025844)
But - for the Brits - the point remains. When you only have one capable of submerging at any given time, you still have a single point of failure due to engineering mishap, navigational mishap, enemy action, etc. The entire history of warfare suggests redundancy is important.
Plan B is the current deployed unit gets extended for a while to cover the gap, anybody who has served on ships for any length of time has experienced that joy, nature of the business. Plan C would be to accept degraded ship safety, perhaps if tensions were unusually high with RU. Plan D would be to gap coverage and hope RU doesn't initiate a first strike. Bearing in mind that even if the UK boomers are all in port, the US boomers are not. What are the odds of RU nuking the UK tomorrow with no warning? Also I would argue that the benefit of UK boomers is not to deter a RU first strike today, but rather to deter them from even thinking about a long plan to blockade or invade the UK. So it doesn't matter if they're all in port today, just the prospect that they would likely be deployable in the future creates a future planning factor. |
One boomer? Decent movie plot. The feckless cruise of Boaty McBoatface
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Curious, who holds the launch codes?
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Originally Posted by METO Guido
(Post 4025949)
One boomer? Decent movie plot. The feckless cruise of Boaty McBoatface
Originally Posted by METO Guido
(Post 4026039)
Curious, who holds the launch codes?
They contribute to the cost of the D5 system, and get to draw from the pool. But once operational, it's their C2. It's not like the dual-key arrangements on the continent. UK gets TLAM under a similar arrangement, a lot of the targeting planning is pooled and shared. |
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