http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22023184


Wow North Korea are barely capable of reaching the US let alone us. Iran does not even have the bomb yet.

Another "dodgy dossier" moment?

The thing I think Cameron is missing here is that the old 'death from above' missile based route of delivery is unlikely to be what we have to worry about.
If you have nuclear capabilities then loading it onto a missile that can be tracked back to the point of launch is foolish if facing off against an opponent with a bigger box of toys. The smart money says you expend the effort into smuggling it into the target location by other means and have it in place long before things start kicking off. A pre-placed nuke going off in an urban centre with no warning is going to be virtually impossible to trace and by definition leave very little viable evidence of who did it afterwards. That's the whole reason nuclear armed terrorists are a much bigger worry than a traditional opponent.

The US could presumably turn the whole of North Korea into blackened radioactive glass before they even knew they were under attack. The collateral damage both physical and political would be horrendous of course and the chances of it happening are virtually nil. If NK does try something then all bets are off.

I'm not sure how likely that is this time. Unlike Iraq NK definitely does have a nuclear capability not to mention the Chinese sitting behind them (for now anyway) and I also doubt that the UN security council will be as willing to accept intelligence produced by the US in the same manner as before.

Yes the US has blown all their intelligence credibility over Iraq to be trusted again, possibly for decades. The fact is that we do not need trident or any ballistic missile system. This is a white elephant as we can't really use them. Hunter killer subs with the option to put nuclear armed cruise missiles in the air are a much more viable and flexible weapon. The cost savings could be huge and would eliminate the needs for massive defence cuts elsewhere.

Big steel tubes stuffed with cash and dropped in the ocean?

Indeed. We could easily add nuke tipped cruise missiles to the Astute class. It would take longer for them to attack a country that nuked us first (compared to ICBM's), but it would still happen. The cost saving would be massive add the design is already in service, plus we would get more attack subs.

Well considering that asymmetric warfare means that technological advantages could be completely nullified by different tactics means we need to think differently. There was a war games in early 2000's were a US marine general wiped out a US battle group in war games with motorbikes as messengers to defeat the intelligence gathering capabilities of the US navy and launch one single overwhelming attack with simple rockets and aircraft completely overwhelming the US carrier group. That was unexpected so they redid the war game without the tricks to get the test they wanted. So we also need to think differently.


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