Monday, 13 February 2017

Trident Test goes Wrong

A Trident D5 missile launched from HMS Vengeance, a Royal Navy Vanguard-class ballistic missile submarine, malfunctioned during a "DASO- Demonstration and Shakedown Operation". The test launch took place off the coast of Florida USA in June last year. The missile had no warheads fitted and the automatic safety systems changed the missile's trajectory, off from its range and eastwards away from the American continent. It crashed harmlessly into the Atlantic Ocean. Oddly enough the government made no public statement until January... after the crucial Commons vote to renew the UK's independent sea-based nuclear deterrent, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/britain-renews-trident.html. Why? As we can see here, the Prime Minister Theresa May doggedly evades the question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WlVMeIEYpk. Source: https://www.rt.com/uk/374703-british-trident-test-failure/. Despite the fact that this was a minor incident and nobody was in any danger, it concerns me because the Trident system is such a devastating weapon. This is not just from its own destructive power, and each missile has fifty to a hundred times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb; but also because its use will trigger an instant and equal response from any nation attacked by it, thereby sending the whole world spiralling into nuclear war. In my view, a simple mistake is by far the most likely cause of any global nuclear exchange. In the event of such a blunder, how many missiles will fly and how many millions of people killed before somebody sticks up their hand and says: "Oops!... Sorry."? This is one of the many reasons Trident should not be renewed. In fact the existing system should be scrapped before it's too late.

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