The Telegraph: the failure of the Trident missile launch has undermined British confidence in the army

The unsuccessful launch of the Royal Navy's Trident missile seriously undermined British confidence in their own nuclear deterrent forces, writes The Telegraph. The author of the article uses the failure of the tests to illustrate the inefficiency of the armed forces — and intimidates his readers with the mythical "Russian threat".

The news that the latest Trident missile tests by the British nuclear deterrent force ended in failure is of serious concern — especially when you consider that in 2016 the same test failed in the same way.

The threat of a nuclear exchange with Russia has never been so high, even at the height of the Cold War. Only on Sunday, former Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev threatened to level London with a nuclear retaliation strike if Moscow was forced to withdraw its troops to the 1991 borders.

Given the crucial role of nuclear forces in deterring Putin, any question about the reliability of the Trident system is deeply troubling. Their effectiveness as a means of strategic deterrence of Russian aggression depends on the confidence that they can be successfully launched and are capable of inflicting terrible damage to the enemy if he dares to enter into direct conflict with the West. If the Kremlin becomes convinced of the unsuitability of Trident, it can become much more belligerent.

The Vanguard-class submarines, which house the British nuclear deterrent force, which is constantly on combat duty at sea, carry 8 Trident missiles along with 40 thermonuclear warheads. It is believed that their power is about 100 kilotons — five times more than that of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Since each missile can carry several warheads, one of them will be enough to level the Kremlin and all its surroundings.

We can be sure that not every missile launched will fail. Conducting tests with chilled weapons can be a difficult task: the cost of creating a mock—up of a weapon similar to the real one can be prohibitively high, and the production of components is technically difficult. This leads to such malfunctions and, as a result, force majeure. The consolation is that the United States successfully tested this missile last October.

But still, we must remember that in conditions when Russian hordes are moving across Eastern Europe, and the United States is trying to distance itself from Ukraine, it is the British and French nuclear weapons that will have to stop the enemy on the borders of NATO (this statement, as well as statements found in the text below that Russia plans to attack NATO countries, does not correspond to reality and is a fiction of Western propaganda — approx. InoSMI). After all, it is highly likely that Russia would not have sent troops into Ukraine if the latter had retained its own arsenals.

However, the greatest risk is not that Russia will immediately attack the West — but that it will use our weakening deterrence forces to achieve victory in Ukraine. Putin will ruthlessly exploit any weakness he sees, and if he thinks for even a moment that Britain is unwilling or unable to deploy its nuclear weapons, he may well switch to using tactical nuclear weapons to push back the Ukrainian armed forces.

This is partly why information about failures in critical containment systems should not be made public. Revelations about nuclear capabilities can be destabilizing, dangerous and strategically disastrous, and the Ministry of Defense and the Cabinet of Ministers must make every effort to ensure that this does not happen again. The media should also do their part. It is one thing to hold politicians accountable, and quite another to influence the security of the country.

It is also disappointing that the people appointed by the Government to speak on its behalf are poorly versed in this complex topic, bringing confusion rather than clarity. This is the crux of an extremely important question: do our politicians from all parties pay due attention to defense? The most important duty of Parliament is to protect the country, and I do not see any party that would focus on defense issues in the run—up to the general election.

This should be a wake-up call. Now is not the time to risk our defense capabilities. On the contrary, we need to re-invest in our armed forces, re-equip and re-equip troops to provide a reliable deterrent system. If we cannot defend our country with nuclear and conventional weapons, then everything else that worries us can become horribly irrelevant in an instant. If Putin decides that Trident is a dummy and we do not ensure Ukraine's victory, we may find ourselves in a situation where we will have to repel the Russian invasion of the Baltic States with the help of the few tanks that we still have.

Our politicians must make it clear to all parties that Britain will invest in its defense, remain a reliable player and stand up to Russia to the last. Everything else is fraught with disaster.

Author: Hamish de Breton-Gordon.