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Comment by girvo | Hacker News Reader

Out of curiosity, if some nuclear adversary decided to first-strike and wipe out England, how messed up would the UK be? It's a small, dense country, and (call me stupid), one armed nuclear sub could be wiped out fairly easily if we're talking about a power like this, right? Would all four, if armed, be able to do much damage back? I find the idea of letters of last resort fascinating...

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> one armed nuclear sub could be wiped out fairly easily if we're talking about a power like this, right?

The one that's in dock for service and repair, yes. But the others could be at sea anywhere in the world, in an unknown location.

> Would all four, if armed, be able to do much damage back?

Each sub can carry 16 x Trident D5 ballistic missiles, with a range of 6,000 mi. Each missile carries multiple warheads, each with much higher yields than those used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So certainly the potential to do lots of damage.

The US has a similar setup with their Ohio-class submarines, though I don't believe they carry such letters or equivalent.

To elaborate: each submarine carries 48 warheads (they can carry much more, but don't). I can't find much info on the warheads with a cursory search, but Wikipedia suggests a yield of 100kt, which is entirely plausible. The missile is able to put the warhead into a circle with a radius of about 100 meters.

For a "last resort" use like this, counterforce (i.e. attacking the enemy's military) is probably pointless. I imagine you'd go for cities if you wanted to cause as much hurt as possible.

A single 100kt warhead detonated over, for example, Manhattan would devastate Manhattan and significantly damage surrounding areas. Deaths would probably be in the millions. Add in a few more scattered around intelligently and that's the entire metro region wrecked. If we figure four is enough to do NYC in decently, that means one of these submarines could wreck twelve cities that way. More (up to 48) if you just wanted to smash the core areas. Or you can mix and match.

If it was targeted at the US (don't ask me why), imagine DC, NYC, LA, Chicago, all completely flattened, along with a bunch more. Most of the population of the country as a whole would survive, but the country itself would be pretty thoroughly wrecked.

The old UK V-bomber fleet was definitely targeted at Soviet cities and any air defense sites that would stop them getting there.

The UK 'independent' nuclear deterrent isn't. Unlike the French one, it uses US missiles whose targets and strike pattern is set if North Carolina.

Can you reword that? I didn't understand it.

The US sets the targets for UK cruise missiles. The French set the targets for French cruise missiles. The Frogs could bomb NY, the Brits, not so much...

Nitpick: the British submarines carry ICBMs (technically, SLBMs, which is mostly just an ICBM launched from a submarine), not cruise missiles.

(In case anyone is wondering what the difference is, a cruise missile is basically a suicidal unmanned drone that flies like an airplane, while an ICBM is a rocket that goes into space and then falls back down on its target after burning its fuel.)

Only in the same way that Honda loads your GPS at the factory in Japan, but you can drive it wherever you like.

I would find it hard to believe that USN submarines do not have equivalent "standing orders" on what to do if after an attack the command hierarchy is unavailable.

Whether these are in the form of sealed handwritten letters from the President, I don't know.

Worth noting that the UK's nuclear deterrent is based in Scotland, not England.

To get some idea of the likely outcome of a nuclear war for the UK I can suggest watching Threads:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads

One interesting thing about Threads is that it is based on a rather optimistic attack scenario based on an exercise called Square Leg:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Leg

"Worth noting that the UK's nuclear deterrent is based in Scotland, not England."

As a "Yes" voter I'm hoping we'll be able to send them back to England, preferably somewhere on the south coast.

I doubt the voters in the constituency's in the areas hosting the bases will be very happy at losing a very well paid jobs

And I am sure that some of the depressed areas of southern England woudl welcome these jobs with open arms - theres already suspicion that English dock workers where made redundant to protect Scottish jobs.

The people of Argyll and Bute (the Scottish Parliament constituency containing the Coulport and Faslane bases) have voted for the SNP in recent Scottish Parliament elections:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyll_and_Bute_%28Scottish_Par...

The MOD itself says that a total of only 520 civilian jobs would be lost if Trident was moved - and only 310 of those are definitely locals:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/political-news/labour...

And finally, don't you think some things are more important than money and jobs?

I really liked Charlie Stross's account of how he changed his views on an "independent" nuclear deterrent:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/on-the-u...

Personally, I changed my mind from being a reluctant supporter for the need for nuclear weapons while wandering round, of all places, Auschwitz-Birkenau, our guide made a comment about how although Auschwitz-Birkenau remains the very worst that we have achieved as as species a lot of countries, including the UK, calmly contemplate the use of weapons that would have far worse results. From that day I have felt very strongly about trying to remove nuclear weapons from my country and independence seems the most viable route to achieving that goal.

My understanding is that nuclear submarine bases need to be close to very deep water. Faslane is great from that point of view. A look at a hydrographic map of the UK suggests the only options south of the border are Barrow-in-Furness and the Isle of Man. The Vanguard-class missile submarines in question were actually built in Barrow, so there's a good chance the locals would be happy enough to see them come home.

one armed nuclear sub could be wiped out fairly easily if we're talking about a power like this, right?

No. The idea of ballistic missile submarines like this (and those also operated by the US, France and Russia) is that they should be impossible to find when on patrol.

It's a bit embarrassing that a UK and French ballistic missiles submarines actually collided while on patrol:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Vanguard_and_Le_Triomphant_...

A US missile submarine also collided with a Russian attack submarine in 1992:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_Incident_off_Kildin_i...

That suggests they are hard to find, if they can't even see each other?

From the Wikipedia page for the French-UK incident:

'Hervé Morin, France's Minister of Defence, said that they "face an extremely simple technological problem, which is that these submarines are not detectable".'

On the contrary. If they were just wandering randomly around the oceans, you would expect collisions between two subs to be impossibly rare. In fact it's known that, at least during the Cold War, nuclear subs often played cat and mouse games with each other, using passive sensor technologies to stalk each other to keep tabs on them. Every now and again though someone slams on the brakes or makes an unexpected turn and bam, collision. Obviously very embarrassing for all concerned, and I wouldn't be surprised if it happens more often than we hear about, and only incidents with serious damage get reported.

The USS Baton Rouge was an attack submarine (SSN) itself, not a ballistic missile submarine (SSBN).

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