Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

The guy on a forum you're talking is one of the few chaps on here whom I genuinely tend to respect the opinion of on modern armaments (working where he does).

You didn't like my thesis "Phased Plasma Rifles (40 Watt Range): Tactics, Strategies, and a Bright Future"?

I for one, found your paper very enlightening Ahtman

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I for one, found your paper very enlightening Ahtman

I would have, but I couldn't read it without the help of an enlisted guy or an ELECTRONIC SCREEN.

Boom. Self-burn.

December 6 1917, the halifax explosion, involving munitions ships off shore colliding

"We didnt hear the explosion, we felt the concussion. Knocked us unconscious. It did come into my mind - is this the end of the world? You couldnt hear a sound. Then of course things cleared off a little and you could hear noises - people screaming and of course you could hear the places burning."

Windows were broken 75 kilometres away and the shock waves felt more than 300 kilometres away. The shaft of the ship's anchor, weighing a half-tonne, was recovered three kilometres away. Shards of iron, wood and steel flew in all directions.

People standing close to the shore were propelled through the air, sucked up in a strange whirlwind and dropped ten metres away. Some people were vapourized by the force of the explosion. Others lost eyes when windows shattered.

Six square kilometres of Halifax was simply wiped out. The explosion killed 2,000 people, and wounded another 9,000.

thats some learning for you all.

I wonder if one of these groups will pull a "blast from the past" type thing and go underground or whatever on a false positive.

 Seaward wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
As for your supposed experience; there's a reason I stopped referring to my own level of knowledge in my own field when discussing things in an anonymous online forum - anyone could be talking out of their so the only rational way to discuss and evidence things is to refer to external sources of information. I've produced concrete evidence to support my statement, can you produce evidence that shows the concerns of those scientists were addressed? That they've changed the layout of the missile, or the composition of the third-stage fuel, or developed some new safety feature?

I can point you to several studies conducted (most by LLNL, I believe) that show detonation of fuel has not actually led to the sort of stuff this panel of yours predicted. I mean, I don't know. Does actual testing trump theoretical scenario-building? I think it does, but given the following comment...

As for the Navy, I can't speak to the mental state of those in charge but try reading that article again, near-misses with nuclear weapons aren't occasional freak events, so you do have to wonder whether governments and admirals that willingly park these monstrosities right next to major urban centres don't consider their populations to be potentially "acceptable losses", or "collateral damage", or whatever euphemism those in charge of militaries are using these days to justify callous disregard for life.

...I have a feeling your mind's already made up. I'm not sure how to rationally argue with someone who genuinely believes this kind of gak.

You can point to them, yet you didn't bother?

Your latter point will be addressed when I reply to Ketara.

 Ketara wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Seaward wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
So in fact, I was correct

There are a lot of highly-qualified individuals claiming to be "correct" on the F-35 today, when I know for a fact they're not. If you're not inside the program and reading only unclass info, you're not getting the whole story. Believe it or not, we generally don't tell the world everything about our nuclear arsenal. You were correct twenty years ago with the C3s - maybe.

Whether you're correct today with the D5s is another question entirely, and the answer's "No."

Yeah, I think I'm going to go with the report in a national newspaper citing a panel of respected physicists appointed by the US government over "guy on forum".

The guy on a forum you're talking is one of the few chaps on here whom I genuinely tend to respect the opinion of on modern armaments (working where he does).

Truthfully? You're quoting twenty three year old report about a top secret nuclear deterrent, which is far from conclusive proof. If you're going to be objectively fair, you have to admit that you genuinely have no idea on how the matter currently stands. And the only way you're going to find out if you're right or not is if Snowden got more than intelligence files to leak.

Personally, I have somewhat more faith in our armed forces than you, and believe that in twenty plus years, they'd be capable of ironing out a minor design flaw. I've seen some of the intricacy of planning that goes into these things, and you'd be surprised what crops up in the initial tests/deployments (which was when that report you pointed out was commissioned) of just about any new piece of hardware. And then once stuff like that does crop up? They try and fix it quickly. Mainly because usually, you don't spend that money on a weapons system and then take a risk that it might not work when you need it.

Then again, if you seriously think the DoD or the Admiralty Board would sit there and go, 'What? Spend a couple of million fixing the third stage launch mechanism after sinking billions in? Nah, that sounds like far too much effort, let those Scotsmen eat hot radioactive lead! Fwahahaha! More port gentlemen?', well......

That would be the same MoD and Admiralty Board who waste so much money buying bespoke rather than off-the-shelf equipment that troops go into combat without sufficient gear? Who sold our Harriers to the US Marines, then spent billions on procurement for two bespoke new aircraft carriers they can't afford to put any aircraft on, and one of which they can't even afford to run so it will be mothballed as soon as it's complete, because their negotiations were so incompetent that it would actually have cost them more money in penalties to cancel the contracts that it would to finish building them? That took years to fix problems with our forces' basic infantry rifle? The same MoD who decommissioned the Nimrod maritime recon aircraft fleet and stations no effective surface-going naval vessels in Scotland, to the point that a Russian fleet anchored off the Scottish coast to shelter from a storm and the Navy's only option was to send a frigate from Portsmouth which took nearly 35 hours to arrive, by which time the Russians had left? I don't think for a moment they were doing anything sinister, but the point is if they had been, by the time our great and vaunted Royal Navy could even have started observing them, nevermind bringing in enough ships to see them off, they could have landed an army unopposed. Forgive me if my confidence in the political and military leadership of this country isn't as high as yours.

Particularly(and here we address why I "believe this kind of gak") since we're talking about the same MoD which has explicitly branded the Trident missile system "too dangerous" to be hosted in England at Plymouth(the only site they would even consider), where it would be "an unacceptable risk", but who consider the thousands of Scots who would perish and the tens of thousands more who would be blighted by high rates of cancer and birth defects in the aftermath if there were a similar accident at Faslane to amount to "societal contamination". That report is also critical of the MoD's own internal safety procedures, particularly in relation to the ridiculous "ship-lift" system they use instead of a normal drydock, which uses pulleys to lift fully-loaded Vanguard-class subs into the air for repairs and maintenance.

EDIT: Spelling.

 Yodhrin wrote:
You can point to them, yet you didn't bother?

They're pretty complex, and when you're quoting tabloid pieces that refer to "Trident bomb killers," I don't know that they'd serve you all that well.

I don't think for a moment they were doing anything sinister, but the point is if they had been, by the time our great and vaunted Royal Navy could even have started observing them, nevermind bringing in enough ships to see them off, they could have landed an army unopposed.

Oh, Christ, no. This...I mean, I don't know where to go with this. It reminds me of listening to anti-gun folks in the US, in that all they know is that they're solidly anti-gun, but don't bother to actually learn anything about firearms, so they're constantly confusing automatic with semiautomatic, shotguns with rifles, etc. If you're against something, that's fine, but why not actually learn about it so that your arguments can be well-informed?

Particularly(and here we address why I "believe this kind of gak") since we're talking about the same MoD which has explicitly branded the Trident missile system "too dangerous" to be hosted in England at Plymouth(the only site they would even consider), where it would be "an unacceptable risk", but who consider the thousands of Scots who would perish and the tens of thousands more who would be blighted by high rates of cancer and birth defects in the aftermath if there were a similar accident at Faslane to amount to "societal contamination". That report is also critical of the MoD's own internal safety procedures, particularly in relation to the ridiculous "ship-lift" system they use instead of a normal drydock, which uses pulleys to lift fully-loaded Vanguard-class subs into the air for repairs and maintenance.

Alright. I'm not even going to attack the source of this information, I'm just going to tell you the problems with it.

1) The only actual quoted parts of this apparent MoD response simply states that "Neither the Devonport naval base nor the dockyard safety case permit the berthing of an armed submarine." I assume that's referring to Plymouth, but hell if I know UK geography. You (and the intrepid writer of this piece) are drawing the conclusion that it's due to safety, which it may well be. That doesn't make the Trident inherently unsafe, it simply could mean, for example, that Devonport doesn't have the facilities to berth a boomer, and thus trying to do so would be less safe.

2) If population density is lower around Faslane, that's where I'd put the subs, too As I said, I'd worry more about the reactors than the ballistic missiles, and I don't worry about reactors. We handle nuclear weapons around significant population centers all the time, however, and we seem to do a pretty good job of it, and we do it considerably less than 40 miles from "major cities." Nevertheless, we do put our land-based missiles in the middle of nowhere, simply because it's just another layer of protection. It's certainly one we could get away with doing without, but if you can, why not do it?

3) The very panel of outsiders you quoted as experts earlier in the thread determined that accidents involving dropped Tridents aren't sufficient to result in nuclear ignition, so harping on about the manner in which the Brits drydock their boats is...confusing, to say the least.

 Yodhrin wrote:

That would be the same MoD and Admiralty Board who waste so much money buying bespoke rather than off-the-shelf equipment that troops go into combat without sufficient gear?

Are you referring to the faulty gear when we went into the Middle East here? Because if so, there's a reason for that one, and buying it 'off the shelf' as it were has nothing to do with it. Not that being 'off the shelf' has anything to do with it anyway, there are complex financial and and economical reasons the British source material in that fashion (and indeed, have done so since the mid nineteenth century with the exception of mid WW1 & 2).

Who sold our Harriers to the US Marines, then spent billions on procurement for two bespoke new aircraft carriers they can't afford to put any aircraft on

The Labour Government IIRC. That wasn't so much down to the Admiralty Board as it was the respective governments of the day. Trust me when I say that if you offer an Admiral of the Fleet an aircraft carrier with planes or one without, he'll take the one with.

So again, not really something within the control of the military.

and one of which they can't even afford to run so it will be mothballed as soon as it's complete, because their negotiations were so incompetent that it would actually have cost them more money in penalties to cancel the contracts that it would to finish building them?

Again, that's the Labour party you want to point the finger to. Their procurement was frankly a mess, but not our current government or the military's department. You keep mixing political/economic screwups and implying that as a result, the military will make mistakes. Not that the military doesn't make mistakes, but you need to illustrate ones belonging to them at the least.

That took years to fix problems with our forces' basic infantry rifle?

Technology problems occasionally do take years of work. Especially as the technology becomes more complicated. But as you've pointed out, attempts were made to fix it.

The same MoD who decommissioned the Nimrod maritime recon aircraft fleet and stations no effective surface-going naval vessels in Scotland, to the point that a Russian fleet anchored off the Scottish coast

Kuznetsov anchored thirty miles off the coast, which technically isn't even within Britain's national waters. I agree it was highly embarassing, but the reason the RN didn't quite cotton on so quickly is because the warship was already en route to the Mediterranean, and they knew it was going to be passing through the area (as we tend to keep each other notified about warship movements so close to home). As a result, we knew it was in the area, we'd already agreed to it, and so when it deviated slightly, we didn't panic too much.

to shelter from a storm and the Navy's only option was to send a frigate from Portsmouth which took nearly 35 hours to arrive, by which time the Russians had left?

We could have sent nothing whatsoever. The size of the fleet was nowhere near the kind or composition that would be able to stage an invasion, and we have aircraft enough capable of repelling anything the Kuznetsov can chuck at us. But we needed to make a token movement, or the Scottish newspapers would have had even more of a field day than they already did.

I don't think for a moment they were doing anything sinister, but the point is if they had been, by the time our great and vaunted Royal Navy could even have started observing them, nevermind bringing in enough ships to see them off, they could have landed an army unopposed.

As someone who professionally studies such things, I can tell you with one hundred percent honesty, that landing an army is completely different to moving a fleet, that supplying an army is completely different to landing it, and providing air cover to it in a hostile territory like Britain is something the Russians are quite simply not currently capable of. Relax.

You might also want to consider that we usually shadow movements like that with an Astute Class submarine or two, which generally keep their movements secret. And a pair of Astutes would quite possibly be capable of sinking the entire Russian Kuznetsov group over a day or two on their own. Naturally, such movements are not published in the paper for your consumption however.

Forgive me if my confidence in the political and military leadership of this country isn't as high as yours.

I'm not surprised given what you've just said. Yet I believe that the reasons you take that stance are somewhat media generated/hyped.

Particularly(and here we address why I "believe this kind of gak") since we're talking about the same MoD which has explicitly branded the Trident missile system "too dangerous" to be hosted in England at Plymouth(the only site they would even consider), where it would be "an unacceptable risk", but who consider the thousands of Scots who would perish and the tens of thousands more who would be blighted by high rates of cancer and birth defects in the aftermath if there were a similar accident at Faslane to amount to "societal contamination". That report is also critical of the MoD's own internal safety procedures, particularly in relation to the ridiculous "ship-lift" system they use instead of a normal drydock, which uses pulleys to lift fully-loaded Vanguard-class subs into the air for repairs and maintenance.

I would be interested in seeing the full report. But the words quoted strike me as completely different to what the report is trying to get across, without even touching the deliberate slant of the Daily Record.

Seaward, Devonport does have a submarine berth suitable for a nuclear sub. The exact wording quoted in the article though, was '“Neither the Devonport naval base nor the dockyard safety case permit the berthing of an armed submarine.” Which is entirely true. We don't berth the subs for any extended period with weapons still on, In Devonport or anywhere else, that's why Yodhrin was talking about unloading them earlier. But it strikes me as entirely strange that saying that apparently somehow supports the idea that there might be an accident/scottish lives are worth less?

I don't know. That article makes a lot of point blank statements about what this freedom for information response supposedly says, but only seems able to generate a single quote, and that single quote is completely unrelated to the matter at hand. It strikes me as a bit of a storm in a teacup.

I get the sneaky feeling though, that the reason they don't unload nukes in Devonport, is because they don't have an appropriate offsite storage/containment facility there, and acquiring one would be vastly expensive when they already have one on the Clyde, one in Argyll, and one in America. Which would make perfect economic sense.

Yodhrin, if you'd like proof the MOD does try and take things like this seriously, I recommend you look at this report here:-

http://nuclearinfo.org/article/operational-berths/scottish-submarine-berths-suspended-following-inadequate-emergency

Far less sensationalist than the Daily Record. It and I agree with the thrust that there could be more done on safety checks in general. But it shows that the MOD does indeed make those checks, and attempt to rectify issues, rather than sitting around swigging rum and catcalling passing ladies. Indeed, they've actually stopped submarines from visiting one berth altogether for the last five years, as the local operators couldn't get their act together.

 Ketara wrote:
Seaward, Devonport does have a submarine berth suitable for a nuclear sub. The exact wording quoted in the article though, was '“Neither the Devonport naval base nor the dockyard safety case permit the berthing of an armed submarine.” Which is entirely true. We don't berth the subs with weapons still on, In Devonport or anywhere else, that's why Yodhrin was talking about unloading them earlier. But it strikes me as entirely strange that saying that apparently somehow supports the idea that there might be an accident/scottish lives are worth less?

Right, bad wording on my part. I should have clarified that I assume it simply meant they didn't have the facility capability to load/offload missiles.