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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday January 24 2017, @08:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the failure-to-launch dept.

A missile test involving Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent system ended in failure off the coast of Florida last year, a US defense official with direct knowledge of the incident told CNN on Monday.

The official told CNN that the incident, which happened last June in an the area off the Florida coast used by the US and the UK for missile tests, did not in involve a nuclear warhead.

Britain's Sunday Times newspaper reported that the missile veered towards the US coast, but the US official told CNN that this trajectory was part of an automatic self-destruct sequence. The official said the missile diverted into the ocean -- an automatic procedure when missile electronics detect an anomaly.

A month after the test, the UK parliament approved the renewal of Trident at a cost of £40 billion. Unaware of the failure, members of the House of Commons voted by 472 votes to 117 in favor of renewal.

On Sunday, British Prime Minister Theresa May was asked four times during an interview with the BBC's Andrew Marr Show whether she knew of the missile failure before the vote. May refused to answer.

Source:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/23/europe/trident-missile-failure-theresa-may/index.html

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @03:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @03:27PM (#458109)

    Why is it important that she refused to answer the question? Obviously nuclear missile testing is a sensitive topic, and the PM may have a broad policy of not discussing specifics. And why is it a big deal that there was a failure during testing? If the things were guaranteed to always work, there would be no reason to test.

  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday January 24 2017, @06:50PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday January 24 2017, @06:50PM (#458200)

    That's the problem with politicians, on sensitive topics.
    "Yup, we tested, we found an issue which means we might be limited to nuking only 90% of Russia, including about 170% of Moscow and Murmansk. It's being fixed. Timeline is classified. Next question."

    When will they learn to simply provide an engineering-grade answer?

  • (Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Tuesday January 24 2017, @06:55PM

    by purple_cobra (1435) on Tuesday January 24 2017, @06:55PM (#458205)

    It was already hard enough to justify spending vast tracts of taxpayers' money on Trident, now we learn that it can't even find the right target *country*, never mind the right target area. It is a weapon of spite, not deterrence; it would only be used if the UK had been reduced to ash, i.e. as close to MAD as we can accomplish with one functioning "deterrent" (four subs, one in an active state at any given time IIRC). It is a colossal waste of money, money that could be better spent on health, education and *real* defence, i.e. the armed forces that have had their budgets reduced year on year for a long time. The most pressing threat we face (Wahabist loons) can't be reasoned with or frightened off, so any attempt to win the nuclear pissing contest with this succession of metal knobs is pure waste.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @09:22PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @09:22PM (#458271)

      But.... can make Britain great again? Ra ra ra etc. WW2? Sun never sets? I don't understand.