Trident Undone - The Spokesman 127

In late 2014, the US Navy awarded an $84 million cost-plus-fixed-fee modification contract for 'tactical missile tube manufacturing'. In total, according to the US Navy, 17 missile tubes will be manufactured:

'12 for the UK Successor lead ship, four for the OR [Ohio class ballistic missile submarine Replacement] First Article Quad Pack and one for the Strategic Weapons System - Ashore (SWSA) test facility.'

What is this arcane language telling us?
The $84 millions is to fund 'joint United States and United Kingdom Common Missile Compartment (CMC) missile tube manufacturing'. According to Rob Edwards (Sunday Herald, 23.11.14), 70 per cent of this cost is being paid by the UK. Curiously, 12 of the first 17 tubes are for the 'UK successor lead ship'. This is curious for two reasons. Firstly, the UK government has deferred until 2016 the 'main-gate' decision on Trident replacement. Secondly, the UK government has repeatedly claimed in public that it would use only eight tubes. Is it now being compelled to build in capacity for four additional tubes and, in so doing, facilitating significant expansion at some time in the future of the number of nuclear warheads carried on British submarines?

Contents

Editorial

Paradigm Shift - Robert Green

The Politics of Trident - Jeremy Corbyn MP, Julian Lewis MP

'Mingled Asset Ownership' - Shannon N Kile, Hans M Kristensen

Why I rejected nuclear deterrence - Robert Green

Einstein and Russell

Remember Guantanamo - Andy Worthington

Syriza and Europe - Alexis Tsipras, interviewed by Haris Golemis

The Curse of Minerva - Lord Byron

Realising Europe's recovery proposals - Stuart Holland

Looking ahead - Alistair Crooke

Pilgrimage - John Kinsella

The 1970s - Tom Unterrainer

Yuri Larin's Space

Reunion with Yura - Anna Larina

Reviews: Cathy Davis, Barry Baldwin, Christopher Gifford, Jo Vellacott, Michael Barratt Brown, Theodore N. Iliadis, Alan Tuckman

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ISBN: 978 0 85124 8455

Price: £6

Comments

tonyon said…

...all wars... See soldiers jumping innocently from the deadly and muddy trenches, forced to the force by order of their inflexible "superiors", to massacre them from enemy´s machine gun nests...while the causers of those wars: monarchs, politicians and of all religions pontifex in their golden palaces were eating partridges. (To the next war that going at trenches: pontifices, monarchs and politicians...and fight between them, then rapidly already NO MORE WARS).

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