- So it comes back to Trident? - When it comes. - If it works. - If it wor... - What do you mean? - Normally, when new weapons are delivered, the warheads don't fit the ends of the rockets. That's what happened to Polaris. You know the sort of thing, wiring faults, microchip failure. We couldn't fire Polaris for some years. Cruise is probably the same. Trident might be too.

> "The issue that occurred during the test was specific to the event and would not have occurred during a live armed fire," the source said.

Right! That's what I keep telling our QA engineers, too.

This seems hugely destabilizing.

Is one of the US nuclear triad non-functional? — how would we know?

Edit:

Apparently the US can successfully launch them — and lets everyone know.

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2023/09/u-s-navy-ssbn-u...

https://www.stratcom.mil/Media/News/News-Article-View/Articl...

https://www.stratcom.mil/Media/News/News-Article-View/Articl...

The thing is mission critical. The test is extremely expensive so test will not conducted regularly. The whole process is highly sensitive but opaque at best.

Why do I see a recipe for utter failure?

> The Ministry of Defence said the "nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure and effective".

The test that we did to show that it would work, didn't work but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't work. Of course!

When you make a change to a complex software/hardware system, you should expect something to go wrong the first time you test it.

Clearly they changed something for this test in particular and it broke the system. It is likely something fairly minor that just doesn't work when part of it is removed.

Also, if it just went through a retrofit and has actually never fired a missile, then it's not unlikely for something to have been not quite placed back where it was supposed to be.

This is the difference between doing a release with a QA process that takes some time and testing versus doing development and just launching the new version into production.

They changed the code or hardware for this particular test. That not working does not prove that the system has fundamental flaws or that other systems that have been tested and not modified will have the same issue.

Most people do not understand the inherent brittleness in engineered systems. Even those that are designed to be fault tolerant. That can cause confusion about outcomes and the necessity of testing every release.

I'm usually a fan of government transparency. But I'm not sure it helps with deterrence to be public with this. Maybe it wasn't possible to cover it up?

Off topic: usually british websites are pretty good but apparently the bbc website has become absolute garbage. I had to confirm 5 or 6 times that no thank you I don't want cookies, at which point the fine site is still constantly nagging me in a third of the display to accept them or go configure them in yet another page, which fixes nothing. People accepting to implement such bullshit should be ashamed.

Seems somewhat related to the miserable paint and preservation on the hull.

(former US Boomer sailor here)

Regrettable from a PR perspective but realistically, there are going to be some dud rockets.

I assume in a real nuclear war, some number of US ICBMs fail in boost and come down the US, likewise for Russia. These have been sitting in silos for decades.

Somebody stole the fuel to boil tea /s ?

Say Trump wins in 2025 - he pulls the US out of NATO, Putin threatens the EU with nukes, and only the UK and France can offer any kind of resistance.

If the UK is out that leaves France, and if Le Pen wins France will be in the Putinist camp.

My guess is Putin would nuke some US cities too just to make a point, and his fans in the US will be very surprised when that happens.