nuclear-news

Britain will test fire Trident nuclear missile for the first time since 2016 as fears of World War Three grow

• HMS Vanguard is reported to have sailed into the Atlantic earlier this week
• It is expected to test-fire a Trident missile 3,500 miles from the US

Daily Mail, By CHRIS JEWERS, 2 February 2024 

Britain is primed to test a Trident nuclear missile for the first time since 2016 amid growing fears of a global conflict, according to reports.

Officials are said to have issued a warning to shipping in the region of the test as nuclear submarine HMS Vanguard sailed into the Atlantic earlier this week.

The test will be the first time the UK has test fired a Trident missile since a botched launch in 2016 on sister sub HMS Vengeance which left the navy red-faced.

HMS Vanguard has undergone a seven-year refit in Plymouth since then, and is now set to fire an unnamed missile, The Sun reports.

The tests are understood to be the final hurdle the £4 billion submarine must clear in order to re-enter service as part of the UK’s nuclear deterrent force. ……..

HMS Vanguard has been hailed as a 491-foot ‘colossus’ that can patrol under the surface of the seas for months at a time.

On board, she can carry up to 16 Trident 2 D5 missiles, a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), built by American firm Lockheed Martin.

They also share the name with the UK’s nuclear programme (the Trident nuclear programme) the purpose of which is to ‘deter the most extreme threats to our national security and way of life, which cannot be done by other means,’ according to the mission statement by the Ministry of Defence.

Each missile is armed with British-made thermonuclear warheads that are 20 times more powerful than the Oppenheimer-developed weapons dropped during the Second World War on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

The warheads are delivered by multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs), or – in other words – exoatmospheric ballistic missiles.

Citing a Royal Navy source, The Sun said Britain’s nuclear submarines can carry more explosive power than was dropped in the entirety of the Second World War. 

In the coming test, HMS Vanguard is expected to launch a single missile that will not be armed with nuclear warheads, about 55 miles off the US coast……………………

The missiles are designed to blast to the edge of space and track their position against the stars, before re-entering the atmosphere (hence exoatmospheric), plummeting to earth and raining warheads down on its target.

The maximum range of the missile is 12,000km (7,400 miles), which is roughly the distance from London to Indonesia one way, or Hawaii the other.

A warning was issued by the US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency to shipping that could cross the missile’s expected course, The Sun said.

The ‘hazardous operations’ warning also plots areas closer to the launch site where debris is expected to fall into the ocean…………………………….

Reports of the test come amid rising fears that Britain and her allies could be pulled into a conflict in the coming years.……………………………………………………………………

The test also comes after it was reported last year that a Royal Navy nuclear submarine and its crew were mere moments from being crushed after its depth gauge suddenly failed.

Reports said the Vanguard class sub, which had been carrying 140 crew and Trident 2 missiles, suffered the huge malfunction while on a mission in the Atlantic.

It caused a frantic scrabble with engineers managing to stop the submarine and its nuclear reactor from plunging further and being crushed by underwater pressure just minutes before disaster struck. …………………………………………………… more https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13034029/Britain-test-fire-Trident-missile.html

February 3, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | UK, weapons and war