Secret Nuclear Warhead - UK

[RedOnce]

Revealed: UK develops secret nuclear warhead

The Sunday Times - March 12, 2006

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.

Developing a new weapon would also, according to expert advice from Cherie Booth’s Matrix chambers, be a material breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The office of Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, refused to comment on whether it had been asked for legal advice by No 10.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C2087-2081800%2C00.html

[Eric J in MN]

1. The Blair Administration follows Bush time and again, no

matter how slimy for the planet Bush's plans are.

[ladjf]

3. They work for the same company.

[5X]

2. Notice he says 'when we use it', nof if....

'when we use it, it will work,” one senior British source said last week.'

[Ufomammut]

4. "We CANNOT afford a mineshaft gap!"

Kubrick's darkly comical masterpiece seems more grimly prophetic all the time ...only I'm not laughing, these psychotic fuckwits are serious. ...and that's really the biggest, most stark division in this country ..it's not between repugs and dems or DINO's, it's between how many can connect the dots, read the writing on the wall, in other words, discern what is flagrantly obvious, versus those, left or right, who either will not or can not, realistically gauge what's happening in this potentially terminal phase of our existence.

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

5. Bush's legacy encapsulated: "I made the world a nuclear playground"

What an idiot. People plunging into poverty, AIDS raging around the world, forests disappearing, and Bush and his fellow idiots in the US and UK can't do anything but wank about the possibility of a new nuke that would break the NPT? Maybe they won't know until the nuke explodes in whatever lab they're testing it in-- guess that'd be nice confirmation, huh?

I wonder what the idiot British in this case could have accomplished with the money they spent on this foolish project, had it been devoted to peaceful purposes. Better AIDS therapies? More nutritious strains of rice and wheat for the poor? Cleaner fuels?

[Ufomammut]

6. Evangelical Apocalypse

Since it's not in the mainstream, many people simly don't understand the apocalyptic "faith based" approach inherent in every policy of the ruling power structure.

[RedOnce]

7. Sad...but true!

[TheBaldyMan]

8. The British have been using US designed weapons for decades now

When the government has the chance to ditch them it bows down and dutifully buys second-hand technology from the US. My view is if you can't afford to build and develop them yourself - don't.

The price tag for this luxury, £25 billion, is a lot of money and I am certain that the money would be better spent on conventional weaponry or civil programmes.