nuclear-news

Nuclear weapons no longer serve a military purpose

The Irish Times TONY KINSELLA 2 March 09

Two modern dinosaurs flirted with catastrophe last month – nuclear submarines each armed with 16 ballistic missiles

THE child in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes told it like he saw it, leaving the surrounding adults to address the consequences……………….

France and the UK each possess four of these ballistic missile-launching submarines, one of which is always on patrol. They are “Doomsday” weapons, designed to slip undetectably through the oceans. According to the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) logic of nuclear warfare, they would fire their missiles long after Paris and London had been reduced to rubble. Being “undetectable”, they cannot be eliminated and thus act as a deterrent to potential assailants.

They cost around €2 billion each to build and equip, and millions more each year to operate. Silence is their primary defence and billions have been spent coating their hulls with anechoic materials, and making their reactors, turbines and pumps as noiseless as possible.

Missile submarines rarely use active sonar as it is relatively easy to locate the origin of its sound pulses. They rely on passive sonar, or inordinately expensive underwater microphones, to listen out for others’ sounds.

HMS Vanguard and Le Triomphant are, dinosaur-like, so successfully over-specialised in silent slinking that neither heard the other – until they collided in the Bay of Biscay. Damaged, they both limped home to their respective bases for expensive repairs.

The incident would almost be funny, in a Martin McDonagh form of black humour, were the potential consequences not so lethal. ……………There are still over 20,000 useless, dangerous and arguably immoral nuclear warheads on our planet. They leave us, in the words of Sinéad O’Connor, “exposed, with a severe case of the emperor’s new clothes”.

It’s time to get rid of them before they get rid of us. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0302/1224242083298.html

March 2, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, weapons and war