Revealed: UK Develops SECRET Nuclear Warhead

[kpete]

The Sunday Times March 12, 2006


Revealed: UK develops secret nuclear warhead
Michael Smith

Full text of Trident report by Foreign Policy Centre
BRITAIN has been secretly designing a new nuclear warhead in conjunction with the Americans, provoking a legal row over the proliferation of nuclear weapons.


The government has been pushing ahead with the programme while claiming that no decision has been made on a successor to Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent. Work on a new weapon by scientists at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire has been under way since Tony Blair was re-elected last May, and is now said to be ahead of similar US research.

The aim is to produce a simpler device using proven components to avoid breaching the ban on nuclear testing. Known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), it is being designed so that it can be tested in a laboratory rather than by detonation.

“We’ve got to build something that we can never test and be absolutely confident that, when we use it, it will work,” one senior British source said last week.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2081800,00.html

[Terran1212]

1. Blair's going to get his ass kicked

[Greeby]

2. If the Labour party had any guts

Which it doesn't :eyes:

[Terran1212]

7. Still, their PM gets roasted during Question Time

Not enough, but a lot more than Dubya.

[ThomWV]

3. Why On Earth Would This Suprise or Alarm Anyone

Every nation that has any sort of weapons program what so ever continuously updates its equipment. We do it, the British do it, Israel, Pakastan, India, China, France, North Korea, China. everyone does it.

[meganmonkey]

4. At a time when the US/UK is threatening a nation who is pursuing

a legal (so far) nuclear program, this just looks pretty shitty.

[tocqueville]

6. exactly it's a lot of hot air

the only interesting thing in the article is that the Brits would become really independent from the US regarding nukes. From an European perspective it's not a bad thing.

then if you need the supercomputer to treat the results :

http://www.wcm.bull.com/internet/pr/rend.jsp?DocId=73845&lang=en

[tocqueville]

5. so what's new ?

laser simulation has existed for the major nuclear countries since the mid 90-ies. The only new thing is that some better lasers and better computer programs have recenttly been taken in use in Europe.

http://www.cea.fr/gb/defenses/simulation.htm