Keeping a British nuclear Triad

Back in the day, the US based nuclear weapons on British soil. I don't remember if it was the Pershing missile or something else. It is a well known fact that there was a dual key system to guarantee political control of the weapons for both countries, requiring a launch directive from both governments. 

What the American politicians didn't understand or were ignoring for political expediency, is that these were British bases, and therefore were manned by Brits. It is my understanding that if the order was given to launch the weapons, the person holding the US key would either turn and fire in lockstep with their British counterparts, or would get a wrench to the side of the head, and the Brits would take the key off his dead body. 

Belushi TD

Well if a person comes charging towards a police they would shoot to stop them, using a pistol not a Gatling gun which is more than trying to stop a person, same thing goes for a single missile ore all missiles being launched at the same time.

But that is just me babbling.

There are two political sides to the usual Australian military policy debate.

A. Are the "British influenced post imperialists" who see Australian security as partnered with the "British Commonwealth" and have power projection tenets as part of the Australian defense policy. This faction in the past has been vociferous about "cooperating with the allies" and "punching above their weight" which has led to defense choices; such as buying an M-1 tank brigade but no sea lift and produced the F-111B Australian variant without proper anti-ship strike ordnance and has created a cottage industry of commentators about the Collins program and even such outlets as Air Power Australia.

Just to be clear; I am not a fan of the Pierre Spey School of Aviation Nonsense.

B. Is the Australian political faction that remembers MacArthur and Churchill, Alamo Force and Gallipoli and the Singapore disaster. They are more local defense and "Australia needs to take care of herself and her own defense first" in outlook. These folks are the ones pushing for landing ships ahead of air defense frigates and were the originators of the Attack class program in the first place. They were the first biters at the Swedish designed Collins class program back in the day and they are the outs in the current AUKUS deal. To show how they thought and think in this situation, an original proposal for the Collins replacement scheme was to option the Japanese Soryu class as a design basis. Let me write that one again. The Australian government was seriously considering a JAPANESE vendor.

That idea fell apart on the twin horns of domestic manufacture in Australia which the Japanese government and vendors could not guarantee and the little problem that the vendors were "Japanese". Memories are long. Just as a comparison, Britain and France as staunch allies have NEVER been smooth partners in any defense cooperative project. That goes back centuries.

But, anyway, the schizophrenia is quite evident to an outside observer in such recent indices as the Darwin port 99 year lease to a hostile foreign state for commercial operations and the desire to base a US attack flotilla of subs out of Fremantle... again.



I would suggest the A side of the Australian political / military debate is quite keen for this option. As for the Americans, I cite history; actual history. The American navy was and is not that impressed with the British Royal Navy as a power projection force and remembers the Retreat East of Suez as a very telling incident. The RN recent South China Sea "presence:" was more of a show-boat exercise for international freedom of navigation rights and for the London government to claim that "we are here!" than as any promise of future effective presence. The RN has no logistics footprint and no function commonality with the USN that would be of any help in region. The RAN does.



See B.



The latest variant of the Strike Eagle as being procured by the USAF as a striker and air borne HGV launcher; and of course the land based and presumably to be sea based HGVs for antiship use and general sea denial are also part of the conventional triad. The subs are another part of that package. In that case maybe an Astute variant that fulfills the same role as a Virginia Block III or IV as an HGV platform launcher will be chosen after the defense review.

This is from the Soviet/NATO invasion and nuclear targets across the world thread where in 1981 the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament published a map based on the Square Leg scenario.



This map identifies military bases [many of them American], secret bunkers and probable targets. The pink shading show areas likely to be contaminated by radiation.



On this map you can clearly see the secret government bunkers at Portland, Kidderminster, Cambridge and the really big one at Corsham Quarry.





Scotland had its share of prime nuclear targets. The map below shows mushroom clouds over the nuclear weapons store at Glen Douglas and the nuclear submarine base at Faslane. At the time the US Navy used to base Polaris missile submarines at Holy Loch so that would also have been a target. After they had been attacked and bombs dropped in the Clyde to catch fleeing missile boats there would not have been many people left alive in Glasgow.

There were secret government bunkers at Barnton Quarry [regional seat of government for Scotland, Kirknewton and Anstruther [now open to the public and worth a visit]. The people who drew the map didn't know about all the government hidey holes.



1970s Target list

A "top secret" list made in the 1970s by the UK government consisting of  106 cities, towns and military bases across the country as "probable nuclear targets" in the early 1970s, consisted out of the following targets across the United Kingdom:

24 towns and cities: Glasgow, Birmingham, Liverpool, Cardiff, Manchester, Southampton, Leeds, Newcastle/Gateshead, Bristol, Sheffield, Swansea, Hull, Teeside, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Leicester, Stoke-on-Tent, Belfast, Huddersfield, Sunderland, Gillingham, Rochester, Chatham, Maidstone.

14 centres of government: Central London, Cheltenham, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Catterick, York, Preston, Cambridge, Dover, Reading, Salcombe, Brecon, Kidderminster, Armagh.

23 RAF bases: Scampton, Waddington, Honington, Wittering, Marham, Coningsby, Lossimouth, Finningley, Bedford, Kinloss, Manston, Wattisham, Cottesmore, Wyton, St Mawgan, Machrihanish, Leeming, Valley, Brawdy, Coltishall, Yeovilton, Leuchars, Binbrook.

14 USAF bases: Alconbury, Bentwaters, Woodbridge, Wethersfield, Lakenheath, Upper Heyford, Fairford, Boscombe Down, Pershore, Greenham Common, MIldenhall, Sculthorpe, Cranwell, Lyneham.

10 radar stations: Flylingdales, Boulmer, Patrington, Bawdsey, Neatished, Buchan, Saxa Vord, Staxton Wold, Feltwell, Orford Ness.

8 military control centres: Northwood, Plymouth, Pitreavie, Fort Southwick, High Wycombe, Ruislip, Bawtry, West Drayton.

7 naval communications centres: Rugby, Criggion, Anthorn, Inskip, New Waltham, Londonderry, Thurso.

6 naval bases: Faslane, Coulport, Holy Loch, Rosyth, Portsmouth, Devonport.

An annex to his memo quoted an estimate from the joint intelligence committee that the Soviet Union could launch an initial nuclear strike against the UK with 150 land-based missiles, plus an unknown number of submarine-launched missiles. "They are unlikely to be inhibited by the question of overkill," it warned.

Estimates of Soviet nuclear strikes used "similar planning assumptions to those which we ourselves might use," the annex stated. "Thus, it is likely that the enemy would aim to achieve a minimum of 50% damage expectancy with a 90% or more assurance factor."

London was expected to be devastated by two to four bombs of up to five megatons each exploding over the city. Glasgow, Birmingham and Manchester were each said to be in line for one or two "airbursts" of up to five megatons. That's 333 times more powerful than the 15-kiloton US nuclear bomb that flattened the Japanese city of Hiroshima in August 1945, killing 140,000 people.

There were disputes about some of the estimates, with one memo pointing out that Home Office scientific advisers "find it difficult to see why an enemy would wish to deliver a three-megaton attack on Swansea and on Leicester when, in their view, one megaton on each target would be sufficient to cause almost complete destruction of those cities."

According to military planners, some of Britain's remoter regions could also be blasted. A radar station at Saxa Vord, now a holiday resort on the UK's most northerly populated island of Unst in Shetland, was down to be hit by a three-megaton bomb.

Another target was Orford Ness on the Suffolk coast, which was involved in an experimental US radar system known as Cobra Mist and is now a nature reserve. Two radar stations in Yorkshire were also apparently doomed: Fylingdales in the North York Moors and Staxton Wold near Scarborough.

Other targets included a Nato radio station at Anthorn in Cumbria and US naval communications installations at Thurso in Caithness and Londonderry in Northern Ireland. Nuclear submarine bases on the Clyde near Glasgow were on the list, along with nuclear airfields like those at Greenham Common in Berkshire and Machrihanish on the Mull of Kintyre.

Other high-level memos from 1971 said that the target list was drawn up for military planning purposes and to help "contingency planning particularly in the field of home defence". Home defence meant protect and survive measures such as shelters to help civilians under nuclear attack.

Not really.

There are the projectionists, who are very big supporters of the US alliance and doing what is necessary for it; and the Defence of Australia mob who don’t really want to say boo to a goose, particularly a Red Chinese one. The British angle hasn’t entered into it for donkey’s years until now.

It isn’t Imperial Nostalgics R Us vs US Realists, but All the Way with LBJ vs Paul Dibb and Co, with Paul Keating occasionally escaping from his nursing home to ramble on.The latter aren’t keen on long range submarines full stop.

Air Power Australia is not a serious body nor an influential one.

The Soryus being Japanese wasn’t a major factor, but rather, “let’s try to save Christopher Pyne’s seat in Sturt through whatever pork barreling can be done.” 

The Darwin port lease was done by the NT government and has been bally contentious ever since. It did play a role in the scrapping of Victoria’s attempt to go for the ChiComm Belt and Road. Getting American subs in Perth is a Federal goal, as defence is a Federal power. Never ascribe to schizophrenia what can be explained by basic State and Territory level avarice.

My reference to the cross pollination with the RAN and RN comes from the number of ex Andrew types in the Puss, particularly the subs. Once again, you seem to be setting up a Britain vs US paradigm when the reality is a “US (and Britain if we can get them) vs We’re Staying Home”.

The French sub deal was not a function of the Defence of Australia faction, but of Malcolm Turnbull’s 2016 election campaign and the latest battle of the civil war within the Liberals.

The Strike Eagle would be good, but is an aging platform that gets us roughly halfway to where we need to be.

One might say we see things differently. I ascribe this difference to "All real politics is local, and all geopolitics is macro."

We do seem to agree that there is a split in military thought in Australia between projectionists and localists.




Mister Dibb seems to misunderstand how deterrence actually works. The enemy has to be dissuaded in his area of operations, not yours.

Paul Keating's recent comments about AUKUS and the French submarine deal shows me he does not understand how that French deal was supposed to work to use Australia to finance France's next generation submarine design. Nor does he understand how AUKUS is supposed to work. If India signs on board, maybe he will see what the current Australian government is after?



Neither is "Sparky and his complaints about the US Army's various vehicle programs", but that "person" has gotten to the American congress and delayed and added considerable expense to vehicle modernization programs. The F-111 debate was the origin of Air Power Australia and the "people" who are its coterie have managed in their own way to befuddle public debate ever since, influential or not.



Sort of like the British building two LHAs (Quenn Elizabeths) in Scotland to save a few seats in Parliament for the current ruling party? All politics is local, so whose seat is saved by building nuclear subs in South Australia? And is it VSEL or General Dynamics who does the building under the ASC PTY LTD rubric? Or will it be that Netherlands outfit who took over CBI?



Revert it. Based on the mess the PRC port managers made in Panama and the Canal, one does not want incompetents handling a major port or waterway. That bolo was a horror show to straighten out.

The Silk Road is a Mackinder Nightmare which partially impelled AUKUS.




Maybe, but it makes sense to flank south the Chinese ingress routes into the Indian Ocean. They have to have a go at Diego Garcia. Neutralizing Guam is not enough.



Not exactly. The issue between the USN and RN is much as I wrote. The USN leadership does not trust the RN leadership. It goes back quite a ways, but recently the RN has failed to cover gaps they said they would cover. The FRENCH stepped in instead. So now you see the USN sharing naval tech (aircraft carrier design) with the MN instead of the RN as an example of whose name is mud around the ports.



That makes sense I suppose locally, but it was still a bad deal in the macro. One should have opted for the Scorpene instead of a redesigned Amethyst, or one should have gone for the French nuclear boat, even if it meant refueling. Asking for a nuclear boat to be redesigned with AIP D/E and lithium batteries (Guess what the Soryus already have?) from France meant they, NSG, had to fresh sheet the boat from scratch and beg, borrow or steal lithium hydride batteries from somebody; because the French do not have that submarine battery cell technology themselves. Only the Japanese, Chinese, Russians (Theirs explode.) and the Americans have it. Sometimes, one has to accept that politics has to transcend local interests?




So is the B-1 LANCER, but the HGV does not care what carries it to the launch point. It could be a balloon for all the hypersonic glide vehicle cares. (An actual proposal.) Only that the launch platform reaches Yankee Option and survives long enough to launch the missile.