Testing Times: Whose Independent Missile Test Anyway?

Testing times again for a Defense Secretary over the latest Trident Program. It was never, ever simple though. Back in the 1960’s everybody understood that the British goal of Nato was to keep the American Empire in, the Germans down, and the Russian Empire out. But it was never clear how the British, sub-launched, ‘independent’, Doomsday weapons contributed to this system.

At that time the American’s made some deals with Russia (Salt 1,2) that they would limit methods of shooting down the incoming missiles. The Russian deployed what anti-ballistic missiles they were allowed to own around Moscow. The problem for the British, who had Polaris, was that it could only deliver 16x2 warheads. Not enough to wipe out the target.

But it may well have been the case that Britain, in Polaris, had an ‘independent’ system. Because we quickly made clever party balloons that would deploy in space and spoof the Soviet counter missile control systems around Moscow (Christ comrade! It looks like 16x10 ish warheads). So keeping the end of the world in our hands too. The Americans had to admit that we were very clever. But they had to make sure we couldn’t do that again.

Why? The British ‘independent’ system, Washington knew, was never designed to scare the Russians, but was always designed to scare them. We threated to trip the exchange between American and the USSR by making the attack look big enough to be the first American wave on Moscow. That’s it then: a 1960s ‘independent’ British system actually targets the American political elite, because, in the end, we did not trust them much more than we trusted the Russians.

Now Trident D3,4,5 does not need to spoof (I bet it does though). But is it independent? Thinking about the headlines; who really tested the missile? I conjecture, given the non-classified history above, that the British test was actually a deeper American test. The Americans were showing the Russians and the Chinese that there is no independent British deterrent, and that they will be the ones who decide the fate of the world not the British. 'All telemetery old chap, don't you know'.

So what is all the smoke and fire about an Independent Nuclear Deterrent? Simple. I suspect that, by chance, the British and Americans have alighted on this hugely expensive mechanism as our particular method of paying our tribute to the American Empire. We are just servants to the empire, but everybody in the US and UK Military Industrial complex is happy, are they not?