Current Nuclear Weapons Development

I am wondering what happens if war does break out who has the right to give the order to launch the nuclear missiles from Royal Navy SSBNs?
 
The RN. The U.S. exerts no control over them, though when not on a RN submarine, I believe they are all stored in the states. I believe the U.S. does supply ballistic parameters to the RN as well.
 
Sferrin said:
I would think getting your own SLBMs would be high on the list. Right now, as I understand it, the US and UK draw D-5s from a common pool? While that is convenient for both parties, if you want to go your own way, I'd think you'd want to cut that leash.
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Yes, it would take buying a % of the missile pool off the US or developing your own not-Tridents.


FighterJock said:
I am wondering what happens if war does break out who has the right to give the order to launch the nuclear missiles from Royal Navy SSBNs?
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The UK has that authority. Not the US.

Warheads are UK, missiles are US-made.
 
Then having our own SSBNs armed with our own ballistic missiles would remove that problem of having them stored in the US and not the UK.
 
Odd I thought we stored some while boats underwent maintenance?
 
But I take it that the rest are stored in the US, that would make it particularly difficult if a war situation ever broke out for real. How would we get all the rest of the missiles into the submarines in time to retaliate, we should build more storage facilities in the UK so that we could store them here instead.
 
Agreed that we seem to have the absolute minimum storage for Trident available. Not ideal but obviously driven by minimising the costs to the greatest extent.

In these times, transit across the Atlantic is a weakness irrespective of US perfidy over access. Which hasn't yet happened.....at least to our knowledge.

Arguably then increases in storage is a logical and moderate cost option.
Because if all else fails, a submarine can be towed to the loading facility and towed out to launch it's missiles. As some kind of last ditch effort.

All very worrying stuff.
 
FighterJock said:
But I take it that the rest are stored in the US, that would make it particularly difficult if a war situation ever broke out for real. How would we get all the rest of the missiles into the submarines in time to retaliate, we should build more storage facilities in the UK so that we could store them here instead.
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?

Trident subs carry their full missile load basically at all times.

The UK has storage space for one sub's worth when it's going into drydock for an extended period. 4 warheads per missile times 16 missiles per sub times 4 subs = 256 UK warheads ready to fly
 
Thanks Scott Kenny, I did not know that the UK Trident subs carried their full load of missiles at all times, makes sense really.
 
JTR said:
Storable liquids did not have any significant or detectable prep time. As long as the guidance systems were kept spun up, then the only limiting factor was the time to open the silo door and go through the launch sequence, which was extremely short for both storable liquids and solid propellants.

For example, the (storable liquids) Titan II could be hot launched from within the silo in under 60 seconds (some sources say under 58 seconds).

Similarly, the (solid propellant) Minuteman III can also be hot launched from within its silo in under 60 seconds.

The Soviets developed the technique of "ampulization" of their storable liquids ICBMs to allow leaving them fueled for extended periods of time (initially 5 years, then 10 years, and eventually as high as 15 years). This was deployed starting with the second generation of Soviet ICBMs, which were deployed in the 1965–1973 period.

There was no "couple of hours" warning once solids and ampulized storable liquids became mainstream, which happened quite rapidly.

For the Soviets, their ampulized storable liquid missiles were every bit as good as a solid propellant missile when it came to missile launch times.
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As far as I'm aware, "storable" is only relative to cryogenic liquid propellants, as a lot of the oxidizers had a tendency to oxidize the missile itself if left alone for too long. I didn't see this soon enough, but I had some documents open last week that claimed three weeks was the maximum time some of these things could be stored and after that the missile had to be defuelled and inspected for damage caused by the oxidizer (RFNA is nasty, high-test Hydrogen Peroxide is not all that much better; and some of the fuels used were just as bad).

The main problem with warning was location. The previous TBMs used by the Soviets had short enough ranges that they had to be on the border to hit strategic targets like the Atlantic ports, and their bases were "scoutable" - you could see if the roadmobile TELs were there or not from aircraft on the right side of the border. "Oh shit all their bases are empty" is a pretty decent warning.

SS-20/Pioneer could hit Rotterdam or Brest from the far side of the Caucasus. If employed in the same locations that the old missiles were they could hit Keflavik. And when NATO tried to negotiate them away, Dmitry Ustinov went "you don't have anything worth trading my missiles away for." Which is why Pershing II and GLCM were developed, effectively - to be something scary enough that the Soviets would be willing to trade away SS-20. (Russian wikipedia on the INF treaty goes into much greater depth about the historical situation and previous attempts at treaties than the English one, and chrome's translator makes it pretty readable).
 
Scott Kenny said:
?

Trident subs carry their full missile load basically at all times.

The UK has storage space for one sub's worth when it's going into drydock for an extended period. 4 warheads per missile times 16 missiles per sub times 4 subs = 256 UK warheads ready to fly
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There are only 48 missiles as far as I'm aware.
 
Winchester said:
As far as I'm aware, "storable" is only relative to cryogenic liquid propellants, as a lot of the oxidizers had a tendency to oxidize the missile itself if left alone for too long. I didn't see this soon enough, but I had some documents open last week that claimed three weeks was the maximum time some of these things could be stored and after that the missile had to be defuelled and inspected for damage caused by the oxidizer (RFNA is nasty, high-test Hydrogen Peroxide is not all that much better; and some of the fuels used were just as bad).
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First generation storable propellant missiles were limited to 30 days for those reasons.

The Soviets then invented the technique of "ampulization", which allowed extending that to 5+ years in the second generation (and later to even longer in subsequent generations – 10+ years in the third generation, and 15+ years in the fourth generation).

Ampulization involved the use of special seals and membranes to isolate the propellant/oxidizer tanks from the delicate engines. This is part of why ampulized missiles could be left alone without maintenance for so long – the delicate components were totally isolated from the corrosive fuel.

Additional measures were taken to stabilize the oxidizer in order to allow for extended storage lives. There are at least two known methods of stabilizing the oxidizers in such a way that largely inhibits its ability to damage the tank that it's stored in. One of these has the disadvantage that it modifies the freezing point of the oxidizer enough to require that silos be steam heated during the winter, but this was hardly a dealbreaker to the Soviet Union. The other method has no such downside.

Another measure that was taken was to use corrosion resistant meals for the oxidizer tanks, which significantly increases service life.

The propellant used in many of the first generation storable missiles was somewhat prone to degradation over extended periods of time. This issue was resolved by the switch to UDMH in second generation and later missiles.

Ampulization was rapidly deployed starting with second generation storable propellant missiles.

Here is a list of Soviet storable liquid missiles by generation and service life, with their commissioning dates listed. Many of these missiles entered into combat duty prior to their official commissioning dates.

First generation storable (30 days): RT-12/RT-12U (1959/1964), RT-14/RT-14U (1961/1963), RT-16/RT-16U (1961/1963)

Second generation storable (5+ years): R-36 (1967/1968/1970), UR-100/UR-100M/UR-100K/UR-100U (1967/1971/1971/1974)

Note that the R-36 initially had a storage life of 5 years, which was later extended to 7.5 years. The UR-100 service life is not specified beyond "several years", so it is possible that it may have been less than 5 years, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary I will assume that it was at least 5 years (similar to the R-36), if not even longer.

Third generation storable (10+ years): MR UR-100/MR UR-100UTTH (1975/1980), R-36M/R-36MUTTH (1975/1980)

Fourth generation storable (15+ years): R-36M2 (1988/1990/1991), UR-100N/UR-100NUTTH (1975/1980)

Note that the UR-100NUTTH had its service life extended to a staggering 21 years.
 
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Another way to extend storage-life of a corrosive oxidiser such as RFNA was to add a small quantity of hydrogen fluoride to it (Turning it into IRFNA) as this would then form a corrosion proof fluoride layer coating the tank walls.
 
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16 silos per Vanguard class SSBN

12 for the Dreadnought class SSBN

So it's logical to have one full set of silos for storing Trident on land. As there should only be one submarine in dock for maintenance.

But 4 SSBN implies a maximum of 64 Trident missiles currently.

Much talk in peacetime of having just 8 silos filled. Unclear if actually true.
But 8 implies you could store two such half load outs.

Older documents imply 16 is a more military number and 8-12 is political interference.

Equally ABM defence studies suggested it needs roughly 200 RVs to overwhelm the sort of defence Moscow ABM has and deliver sufficient effects.

All of which carries implications for the parsimony of not have a fifth SSBN.
But back when target SSN number was 20.....
 
zen said:
16 silos per Vanguard class SSBN

12 for the Dreadnought class SSBN

So it's logical to have one full set of silos for storing Trident on land. As there should only be one submarine in dock for maintenance.

But 4 SSBN implies a maximum of 64 Trident missiles currently.

Much talk in peacetime of having just 8 silos filled. Unclear if actually true.
But 8 implies you could store two such half load outs.

Older documents imply 16 is a more military number and 8-12 is political interference.

Equally ABM defence studies suggested it needs roughly 200 RVs to overwhelm the sort of defence Moscow ABM has and deliver sufficient effects.

All of which carries implications for the parsimony of not have a fifth SSBN.
But back when target SSN number was 20.....
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Warhead numbers were 225 but I think that got increased to 240, but with some talk of 260. I'd guess there's probably about 5 MIRVs per missile at present - 48x5.
 

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