EMR

Simple question even for you , who has it deterred, when was the UK and its allies last in danger of an invasion and by who.
Maybe the threat of a Russian steamroller once existed but that died with Stalin.
Do you think that an ISIS nutter who built a dirty bomb and set if off in the UK or US would be deterred by the fact that he and his fellow would end up as vapour when we sent a multi headed ICBM his way destroying most of Syria or Iraq killing a million or two.
Lack of logic in your argument,

EsuriJohn

You must understand that this is just one politician suffering verbal diohrea the infrastructure for basing the complete trident deterrent in Gib does not exist and could not be put in place without huge disruption to the whole community. As some one who took part in the prep for the occasional docking of one British or American sub that's all it is the infracstructure just does not exist for the permanent docking of 4 boats. Not only that you would need to replicate Coulport and accommodate the guard force that protect both places that is a lot of rough tough Royal Marines and armed MoD police. The accommodation that used to be available has been handed back to Gib or sold off so you would need to create new where and at what cost? It is just not going to happen there are easier and better locations in UK but the Devonions and Welsh might object just as ferociously as the Spanish.

Dick Dasterdly

Oh dear, have you been living on another planet these past fifteen years or else been stuck in a time warp ?

Anyway, just to enlighten you a little, there is a dictator/nutter name of Putin in charge of Russia now.
To further enlighten you, he's been invading countries and claiming new territory like it's going out of fashion ever since he took control.

Despite the fact his economy is in tatters largely due his own stupidity, he seems to be finding solace in keeping his armament factories turning out huge quantities of weaponry on a twenty four hour basis.

It is little wonder therefore that he is largely responsible for the renewal of the present Cold War situation which many consider even more precarious than the previous one, most especially the populations of some Baltic countries who look to NATO for protection and are already convinced they are next on his shopping list, especially after recent incursions.

That's just a brief resume of what's been happening on Planet Earth since the days of Stalin which is when it appears you were last in touch with the real World.

Hope it helps.

EMR

[QUOTE=Dick Dasterdly;11634184]Oh dear, have you been living on another planet these past fifteen years or else been stuck in a time warp ?

Anyway, just to enlighten you a little, there is a dictator/nutter name of Putin in charge of Russia now.
To further enlighten you, he's been invading countries and claiming new territory like it's going out of fashion ever since he took control.

Despite the fact his economy is in tatters largely due his own stupidity, he seems to be finding solace in keeping his armament factories turning out huge quantities of weaponry on a twenty four hour basis.

It is little wonder therefore that he is largely responsible for the renewal of the present Cold War situation which many consider even more precarious than the previous one, most especially the populations of some Baltic countries who look to NATO for protection and are already convinced they are next on his shopping list, especially after recent incursions.

That's just a brief resume of what's been happening on Planet Earth since the days of Stalin which is when it appears you were last in touch with the real World.

Hope it helps. [/QUOT


I think you are still living in 1950.

Conventional weapons and delivery systems now have the destructive power almost equal to the first atomic bombs.
There may be a place for small strategic battlefield nuclear weapons as a deterrrent but city busters based on atomic subs that cost billions and will once again go out of date as they will never be used is a phenominal waste of money.
Why do we have Trident in part to keep the US defence industry happy and to keep a place at the table of the big boys.

la mancha

Trident is not a counter-terrorism tool. It is an insurance policy against hostile states. There are several powerful nuclear-armed nations that do not share our values. Add to the list a number of hostile states that could, and are now trying to, develop nuclear weapons, how can we take the risk of not having it?

Trident, and with it our ability to build nuclear submarines, also protects thousands of highly skilled British engineering jobs.

I would like to ask you a question. If a hostile state with a nuclear weapon sends a ship to the English Channel and it sits there with a finger on the button and states their demands, knowing all we have to retaliate with are conventional weapons, what do we do? Capitulate?

You are looking at this from now and not the future. If we scrap our nuclear deterrent it will take many years to rebuild – maybe forever if we lost the highly skilled engineers - too late if that ship sitting in the Channel only gives us 24 hours for an answer.

Quote ‘Conventional weapons and delivery systems now have the destructive power almost equal to the first atomic bombs.
There may be a place for small strategic battlefield nuclear weapons as a deterrent…’

So what is your argument? Are you saying you are in favour of nuclear weapons, but not Trident?

EMR

[QUOTE=la mancha;11634215]Trident is not a counter-terrorism tool. It is an insurance policy against hostile states. There are several powerful nuclear-armed nations that do not share our values. Add to the list a number of hostile states that could, and are now trying to, develop nuclear weapons, how can we take the risk of not having it?

Trident, and with it our ability to build nuclear submarines, also protects thousands of highly skilled British engineering jobs.

I would like to ask you a question. If a hostile state with a nuclear weapon sends a ship to the English Channel and it sits there with a finger on the button and states their demands, knowing all we have to retaliate with are conventional weapons, what do we do? Capitulate?

You are looking at this from now and not the future. If we scrap our nuclear deterrent it will take many years to rebuild – maybe forever if we lost the highly skilled engineers - too late if that ship sitting in the Channel only gives us 24 hours for an answer.


The scenario you describe is just why Trident is a white elephant.
If the city busters that Trident carries were used there would be little left of the South east of the uk plus the opposite coast of France.
The majority of the technology you talk of is provided by the US,Trident is not a Uk sysrem.
Would thd world be a more dangerous place if the Uk did not have nuclear weapons of course not.
Is it a safer place because we have Trident of course not.

Should the UK maintain a limited capabilty of battlefield weapons that could respond in the very very very unlikely event of a terror attack from the likes of Isis then sadly yes.
Quote
There may be a place for small strategic battlefield nuclear weapons as a deterrent…’
That does not mean that I in favour of them .

la mancha

[QUOTE=EMR;11634280] Quote: ‘The majority of the technology you talk of is provided by the US,Trident is not a Uk sysrem.’

The warheads and submarines are made by Britain.

Quote: ‘Would thd world be a more dangerous place if the Uk did not have nuclear weapons of course not.’

We just don’t know that, do we? How naïve of you to say that.

Quote: ‘Should the UK maintain a limited capabilty of battlefield weapons that could respond in the very very very unlikely event of a terror attack from the likes of Isis then sadly yes’

Read my last post. Trident is NOT a counter-terrorism tool. Do you understand this? It is a deterrent against hostile states.

Quote: ‘Is it a safer place because we have Trident of course not.’

Well, we’re still here, aren’t we?

Quote: ‘There may be a place for small strategic battlefield nuclear weapons as a deterrent…’

What battlefield weapons? Can you name them? Do we possess them? What weapons?

EMR

[QUOTE=la mancha;11634330]

EMR

[QUOTE=EMR;11634444]Have you never heard of cruise missiles which can be kaunched from aircraft or naval ships. or nuclear artillary.

We have spent billions on the euro fighter which has nuclear weapon launch capability.

I can remember the Cuban crisis and all those since then and at no time was the world in real danger from nuclear war.
It was not the threat of nuclear war that made the Russians back down but that their ships carrying arms to Cuba would be fired on.

I cannot see any scenario where weapons such as Trident our 4 subs ,its Russian and US equivalents would be used because to do so would end the world as we know it.

The Uk can have a nuclear defence caoability without Trident which we could never use without the US using theirs .

No major power is going to use Nukes if it is involved in a non nuclear conflict.

la mancha

[QUOTE=EMR;11634451] Quote: ‘We have spent billions on the euro fighter which has nuclear weapon launch capability.'

Quote: ‘Have you never heard of cruise missiles which can be kaunched from aircraft or naval ships. or nuclear artillary.’

These all have short range launch platforms. The launch-pads, whether ship, aircraft or land, can be easily detected and knocked out when the missile is launched. The whole point of Trident is that it is a ballistic missile; it can be launched hundreds of miles from target from an undetected launch-pad.

Quote: ‘It was not the threat of nuclear war that made the Russians back down but that their ships carrying arms to Cuba would be fired on.’

The Russians sent nuclear weapons to Cuba in response to the presence of American Jupiter ballistic missiles in Italy and Turkey against the USSR. Russia did not back down because their ships would be fired on. They came to an agreement with America whereby America agreed that it would dismantle all US-built Jupiter MRBMs, which were deployed in Turkey and Italy against the Soviet Union. Both sides did not want confrontation i.e. nuclear confrontation.

You do not know what you are talking about.

EMR

[QUOTE=la mancha;11634475]

EMR

I do not know how old you are but I canrember it.
I do not use wikipedia as a reference source.
There was not a chance in hell that the US and Russia would have come close to nuclear conflict.
Both sides ended up with what they wanted and thesuper powers excluding the u k moved forward.

The only real threat to use nukes was when McArthur wanted to use them against China in Korea and he was sacked by Trueman as again no one has ever seriously considered using them.
MYbe the UK should just pretend that the sub's are armed but actually have empty launch systems.
As for GiB if the UK relocated it sub's there where would everyone else go to live and carry out their activities.

la mancha

You are all over the place here.

Just because you were alive at the time – as I was – and you can remember it, does this make your opinion right? Or do we believe the hundreds of historical documents you can read on the internet? Are you seriously telling everyone on this forum that you are correct in your assessment of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the whole world is wrong, just because you were alive at the time?

And you naively say that, quote: ‘There was not a chance in hell that the US and Russia would have come close to nuclear conflict.’

When in early 1992 it was confirmed that key Soviet forces in Cuba had, by the time the crisis broke, received tactical nuclear warheads for their artillery rockets, and IL-28 bombers. General Anatoly Gribkov, part of the Soviet staff responsible for the operation, stated that the local Soviet commander, General Issa Pliyev, had pre-delegated authority to use them if the U.S. had mounted a full-scale invasion of Cuba.

Please give me some facts or reason to carry on this discussion, other than your own left-wing opinions.

Dick Dasterdly

Hard to believe that there is still someone around so totally ignorant of World affairs during the past sixty years as EMR.

He just hasn't got the faintest clue other than in his own personal twisted fairy tale imagination.

You would think after being chewed up and spit out in so many pieces as he has here, he would have enough sense to stop digging, but no, on and on with ever more nonsensical posts, often reminiscent of his other Gibraltar contributions.

When he first became involved, I doubt very much if he could even have located the place on a map, though I imagine a huge red flag as a marker might well have attracted his attention.

Maybe1day

And Getting back to Gib for expats!
What are the queues like these days Fred? Do the coaches get fast laned ?
M