The reason this is posted here again is that there was recently a Trident "accident" which May did not disclose to Parliament.
Oh, except apparently it 'veered' towards the US. And this was before the vote to renew, so naturally people are trying to call it a cover up.
It's like an executive team discussing whether to adopt a mobile-first strategy and then someone blurts 'but Galaxy 7 phones caught fire!'.
It's more like an executive team discussing whether or not to equip the entire company with Galaxy Note 7 phones, and the CEO not mentioning the fires.
I would also expect a politician to mention that failure mode is a possibility when politicians are considering spending £30b on renewing it.
Missiles will go wrong, Trident actually has a fairly reasonable level of success and probably is far more reliable than equivalent weapons from other countries.
It's a political mess not a military/technical one.
It's also worth pointing out that if the UK ever needed to use Trident then the resultant nuclear fallout would probably cause that anyway.
Yes, in the "test" last year (that is, the missile luckily didn't carry the real nuclear bomb) the missile was launched to arrive around the coast of Africa but it flew toward Florida! There's no more obvious miss than that.
That's the very "Trident "accident" which May did not disclose to Parliament" from the top post of this thread.
And the reason we should really press all the politicians for the reduction of nuclear weapons. It's not the question of if but when and what the consequences will be of the "accidental" detonations.
The best protection is to have at least a very limited number of weapons. The balance of power can be held even with a little of them.
If you hear anything else, it's from those that don't want the balance but to "win."
For some perspective the new Russian Bulava ICBM has a 50% error rate, Minuteman had a 97.1% success rate, Trident II was on 97.27% (128 successes, 5 failures) - increasing that number to 6 doesn't really alter the confidence factor that the system works.
If your concern is large rockets being fired that might hit the southern US and cause casualties then I suggest you contact NASA about Cape Canaveral.
So how can you claim that everything is OK or that my point is inaccurate? Or that "it can't fail"? You literally asked "is there any evidence whatsoever that the missile could fail" ... "obliterating tens of thousands of people in the wrong country." That it didn't happen during the test without the nuclear head and when there are additional safety measures is not a proof it can't once the head is in place and the "regular procedure" is followed.
The quote around the test means only that I am aware that what's for some people an "accident" is "just a test" for another, like your view.
I don't claim anything more than the public doesn't understand how brittle the whole system is, different parts of it failing all the time. I've written that once the public understands that, knowing that is "the reason we should really press all the politicians for the reduction of nuclear weapons. It's not the question of if but when and what the consequences will be of the "accidental" detonations."
I also wrote: "The best protection is to have at least a very limited number of weapons. The balance of power can be held even with a little of them." I've meant "nuclear" weapons of course, that's the whole topic. See: http://thebulletin.org/doomsday-dashboard There were 6 times more warheads in 1983 than now, and the number should be reduced much more.
> fail safes built into the system
How does that fail safe knows the rocket is wrong when the rocket decided it's right? Do you have any information about these particular fail safes? Isn't it that it existed there at all because it was a test, and it wouldn't if it hadn't been? The coverage of the "accident" that I've had an access to wasn't technical enough. It was presented as "it has to remain secret."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_nuclear_programme#Trid...
According to the Sunday Times, the unarmed Trident II D5 missile was intended to be fired 5,600 miles (9,012 km) from the coast of Florida to a sea target off the west coast of Africa - but veered towards the US.
Do you have a story that backs up the claim?
Specifically this part describing how May dodged the question multiple times. The 'vote' being the vote by Parliament on whether to renew funding for the Trident system:
Questioned by the BBC's Andrew Marr on Sunday, Prime Minister Theresa May refused four times to say if she had known about the test firing ahead of the vote.
Mrs May said: "I have absolute faith in our Trident missiles. When I made that speech in the House of Commons, what we were talking about was whether or not we should renew our Trident."
https://brusselsdiplomatic.com/2017/01/22/trident-accident-p...