UK has 'fewer than 225 nuclear weapons'

Originally posted by tothetenthpower


I am kind of impressed with the UK for this.

They seem to be one of the only countries not worried about releasing such important intel on their capabilities.

Will other countries follow suite? OR will this be seen as a weakness by rival countries of the UK?

Thoughts?

IMO this is a good thing for everybody. The more honesty, the better we can plan to reduce the numbers to 0.

~Keeper

www.cnn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

But the U.S. and Russia both have released such information...and besides that many nukes on that small slice of land....and a crap load of nukes.

Originally posted by Chris McGee
This is just outrageous, we have fewer nuclear weapons than france. I demand we build more immediately and put the damned french back in their place.

I lol'ed at this

reply to post by Retseh


As much as I agree with the statement the British armed forced are underfunded, I do feel the statement the British armed forces are a joke takes that a little to far...

Going by your statement and the reasons you give, the British armed forced of WW1 where a joke (soft caps in the trenches) the armed forces of WW2 where a joke (small under equiped BEF force, the likes of faith hope and charity defending Malta)

This has been the approach of the British armed forces through the ages..

I guess then, the joke is on the world for allowing such a joke of an armed force get so much control.

Get rid of the whole damned lot!
The costs for "upgrading" Trident have been put at anything between £20-£80Billion, and for what? So a bunch of Whitehall old boys and Admirals get to have their wet dreams and show how tough they are?

We are told week in, week out, that the biggest threat to our peace and security comes from terrorist bogeymen. Nuclear weapons cannot be used against such an enemy (if they even exist as we are told, and I don't believe they do).
Spend some of the money on conventional forces and the means to keep them active, and use the rest to pay for crumbling infrastructure.

No need for any more in fact I'd say anything more than 50 is overkill doesn't really make sense to me country's stockpile these by the thousands what really matters is the ability to deliver them and Britain has that.

I'd say 225 is fine and more than enough to cause any hostile country second thoughts.

Originally posted by tothetenthpower
I am kind of impressed with the UK for this.

Yeah, I can see how comforting it is for the UK to admit that they only have the ability to destroy 160 different cities.

The warm, glowing feeling of happiness is welling up inside of me.

reply to post by tothetenthpower


" UK has 'fewer than 225 nuclear weapons "

Is that all.. No bother.. we can take em. Just let PB get out of line. Can you say United States of Europe

Just kidding folks...

reply to post by Chris McGee


Look don't worry,as soon as the French launch codes are imputed,the business end of the rockets will surrender.

So don't sweat it.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
The US announcement saying it "would not use its existing warheads to attack non-nuclear states that are in compliance with nonproliferation agreements", does that sound like a veiled threat to North Korea and Iran, that they aren't exempt from getting nuked if they are nuclear powers not in compliance?

That is exactly what it means - a not-so veiled threat to those nations and was immediately perceived as such when we made that statement.

Originally posted by curioustype
I was recently advised (by an enthusiast, who I believe had found the stats online somewhere?) that some of the UKs larger underground weapons storage facilities are likely to hold c.300 odd USA nuclear warheads, and he thought they were largely smaller scale devices of the kind that may be used against an advancing land force/tanks (possibly Russian?)

No further data on this, but that sounds right. The U.S. kept a lot of such weapons in Europe during the Cold War and I would not be at all surprised if many are still there.

Back then, our biggest fear was a massive Soviet invasion into West Germany. We knew we did not have sufficient forces to stop the attack and at best we could hope to slow them down until we got more forces into place, but our lines of defense were very thin in Germany, mostly for political reasons (Germany didn't want massive amounts of military covering most of their country, which is what it would have taken).

Most war games we played out for such an invasion at the time, usually devolved within about a week to NATO lobbing a few tactical nukes into the onrushing Soviet forces as the only way to stop them. Our war plans called for forcing their units to concentrate, due to terrain concerns, into areas like the Fulda Gap, which we'd then nuke to reduce their forces and slow/halt their advance. Unfortunately, once this "nuclear genie" is released from the bottle, these war games then had the Soviets lobbing a few tac. nukes back at us...this would then go back and forth, with ever increasing frequency and bomb yields until it almost always devolved into total, global thermonuclear war.

My bet is that Soviet war games followed much the same route, hence nobody was ever willing to start such a war.

[edit on 5/27/2010 by LifeInDeath]

reply to post by tothetenthpower


My thanks to you for brining this to my attention. I would like to take this oppertunity to say that I am for the first time in a decade , proud to be British. I dont know how sucessful the new government will be long term, but for this display of outright gumption, I salute them.

Originally posted by BritguyWe are told week in, week out, that the biggest threat to our peace and security comes from terrorist bogeymen.

What they say and what they believe are two different things. Form your judgement on their actions - Keeping Trident.

As for Retseh - Ha! Great wind up. Got a couple of biters too.

That does not include bio weapons and chemical weapons stashed away at Porton Down in Wiltshire.... Some crazy stuff there that would do a whole lot more damage than a few hundred nukes..... We are world leaders in bio weapons....

Just saying....

reply to post by thoughtsfull


Wouldn't pay to much attention to Retseh and Vitchilo. Probably the same poster and they always spew some nasty, spiteful nonsense whenever they can about the UK, most of it untrue I might add.

You're right though, Uk armed forces, even at the height of Empire, were always done a shoestring with a good does of improvisation.

Say's alot about our armed forces actually and certainly proves they are anything but a joke. Just ask an US serviceperson who has worked alongside Brits, I have yet to see one say a bad word.

I hate to destroy your illusion but its more likely that any country would use its nukes against the own citizens if they decide to start a revolution rather then in a war against another country.
The strategy in case of a uprising and a march against Washington? Neutron Bombs...

[edit on 27-5-2010 by kybertech]

reply to post by kybertech


Oh dear lord, what rubbish!

So, in order to preserve control, our Government would deploy multi-megaton city killers against a baying crowd? That's almost on par with the "Queen is a shapeshifting lizard" nonsense in terms of sillyness.

What would they achieve from doing that? The country would be destroyed, any people left would be mad, the army would turn on the Government for killing their own people and they'd all be doomed! It's far easier, cheaper, less destructive and more efficient just to bash people with sticks and lob CS gas at them.

Nuclear weapons for crowd control....

I kind of waited for this response, my bad. If your mindset is about preserving power at all costs what would you do too many officers will not hit people with sticks?
Of course ... islamic terrorists got hold of a nuke somehow.

And other then that I just wanted to point out how likely a nuclear war with another country would be... like in the shapeshifting lizards area...

Would be nice if it was zero For ALL countries.

Nuke technology is something I wish we could un-invent.

reply to post by Centurionx


That's a bit naive.

Without Nuclear technology, we wouldn't have many advances we take for granted today. Making weapons is just one facet of a large area of knowledge.

The thing is that while wishing we could have a situation where NO ONE has any nukes is fair and a laudable goal, its unrealistic. The reason for that is simple. There is a massive difference between the man on the street, and the men with thier fingers on the launch buttons. The man on the street knows that war, and destruction are the bane of human kind, a cancer which eats at us , divides us and has scattered entire cultures to the wind of change. We know that above ALL considerations, avoiding massively destructive confrontation with other nations should be paramount in terms of a governments policy and planning.
However the powerful men in governments round the world dont see clearly as we do. They consider ridiculous notions like strength , and financial gain as being more important than lives, and as a result throw men and women into the teeth of hell, often over what amounts to nothing (NO WMD IN IRAQ). They pass military contracts to friendly business people, putting corperate interests before moral solidity at almost every juncture, swelling the coffers of thier pals in suits, and crushing everything in thier wake, while putting a solem and pained face on to the world. They even INVENT reasons to go to war, funding extremism round the world, arming terrorists, and then going to war with them. They arent interested in the fact that thier every move slays thousands of innocent civilians, as long as they arent western innocent civilians they dont care a damn. As long as the money flows to thier friends, and as long as they can get away with it , they will. It makes me sick to my gut.
Once long ago ,men whos sons and grandsons fight for the corperate war machine now, fought for freedom from fascism, a true global threat. Our forefathers fought for thier families , to save them from IMMEDIATE termination or enslavement by a regime so violent that merely contemplating its psychopathology sends shivers down ones spine. How sad then, to find men from the same lands now fighting under a banner so tarnished by corruption and greed.

Originally posted by stumason
reply to post by Centurionx

 

That's a bit naive.

Without Nuclear technology, we wouldn't have many advances we take for granted today. Making weapons is just one facet of a large area of knowledge.

Naive? I think not. While it may be true that we would not possess a number of techs without nuclear energy, I would gladly go without if it meant no nukes. I am not a pacifist, but nuking an entire city FILLED with civilians is hardly strategy. My country was the first and only nation to use the atomic bomb, I get the strange feeling we are next on the list. Seriously, minus the past 70 years, we got along just fine without it. This just goes to show how dependent we are on technology(myself included).

Besides, this thread is about weapons...horrible weapons.