{"id":230,"date":"2006-12-04T16:15:28","date_gmt":"2006-12-04T15:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=230"},"modified":"2006-12-04T16:15:28","modified_gmt":"2006-12-04T15:15:28","slug":"should-the-uk-renew-the-trident-system-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=230","title":{"rendered":"Should the UK renew the Trident system? (1)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Trident, the UK &#8216;s nuclear weapons system, is a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) system consisting of four British-built Vanguard class nuclear-powered submarines each carrying up to 16 US Trident II D5 missiles.<br \/>\nThere are around three British-built nuclear warheads mounted on every missile making about 48 warheads carried by each submarine. Each warhead can be aimed at a different target and each warhead is estimated to have the explosive power of 100 kilotons. This is around eight times the explosive power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.<br \/>\nTrident will become obsolete around 2025. The government is soon to make a decision on whether or not to replace or extend its service life.<br \/>\nFollowing the statement today by the Prime Minister, the pressure group Compass has launched a consultation and presents useful summary of the relevant information <a href=\"http:\/\/www.compassonline.org.uk\/news_comments.asp?n=344\">here<\/a>.<br \/>\nI remained unconvinced of the need to renew the Trident system. It may well have been a deterrent during the Cold War, but that conflict is over. I believe that the military and economic case for renewal is deeply flawed. There is perhaps a political case that possessing such weapons gives us some kind of weight at the international table, but set against that is the encouragement retaining such strategic nuclear weapons would give to those states which do not already possess them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Trident, the UK &#8216;s nuclear weapons system, is a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) system consisting of four British-built Vanguard class nuclear-powered submarines each carrying up to 16 US Trident II D5 missiles. There are around three British-built nuclear warheads mounted on every missile making about 48 warheads carried by each submarine. Each warhead can be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}