OK Lets look at a bit of Governmental Misrepresentation… caused by conflating 2 separate questions so as to get the answer you want.. A bit like “when did you stop beating your wife?”

The UK Government has decided that the Trident System needs to be replaced.

Nuclear Weapons .. you either love or loathe them (I might discuss that later)… but that is only part of the “Trident System”. There are also these rather large and very expensive submarines that go with it. 

The argument in Parliament … do we renew our nuclear deterrent.. yes or no?

So we are replacing Trident … complete … Why?

In the old days the RAF had the job of delivering nuclear weapons … a proven technology see Hiroshima for details …

In the 1950’s someone worked out that if you knew where the opposition hid their bombs and missiles … and lets face it RAF Scampton is hard to hide! … if you went first there would be nothing left to retaliate with. So they came up with the idea of hiding missiles in big submarines that could hide under the sea for a long time and strike back even if all that was left of the UK was a sheet of glass.

In the year 2007 we still face a treat of first strike nuclear attack but unless Iran or North Korea make huge investments in delivery systems they are not going to be able to reduce the entire UK land mass to glowing ashes. Terrorist organisations will only ever be able to hit one or 2 targets (otherwise their organisations get to be to big and start to leak..)

So why are we spending billions to hide our nukes from people who couldn’t take them all out in one hit unless we put them all in a field with a big X to mark the spot …

What is needed is a big, visible delivery system that shouts “you get nasty with us and we will drop something just as nasty in your backyard” … a Vulcan Bomber perhaps?  Maybe a few Stealth Bombers bought from our nice American allies?

Lets face it the air-defence systems of most terrorist organisations find it hard to bring down a low flying helicopter … Iran and North Korea do have sophisticated systems but given the space for Electronic Counter Measure equipment in an airframe the size of the Vulcan’s, and little bit of support from the rest of the Air Force, there should be no problem of getting within range to launch a stand-off missile.

Even at $1Billion each the cost are bound to be less the £20 Billion that is the opening bid for the new submarines