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Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)

256 points by aburan28 10y ago

rl3 10y ago
The title should be updated to reflect that this is from 2015.
- JesseAldridge 10y ago
  Hmm, I wonder what happened to him... > The navy described his dossier as “subjective and unsubstantiated” and launched an inquiry that concluded by dismissing his allegations as “factually incorrect or the result of misunderstanding or partial understanding”...He was discharged “on the claim that my sole aim was to discredit their public image”, he says. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/17/trident-whistleblower-william-mcneilly-discharged-from-royal-navy https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/17/trident-whis...
  - OJFord 10y ago
    > He was discharged “on the claim that my sole aim was to discredit their public image”, he says. I mean, I don't know what he expected... Part of me wonders if WikiLeaks is the modern-day Blighty wound: want to leave, can't leave for X months, make something up, get discharged for discrediting public image.
    - roryisok 10y ago
      Have you read the document? There's a lot of awfully specific detail for "making things up"
      - OJFord 10y ago
        I haven't, I don't really agree with it: there's whistle-blowing, and then there's WikiLeaks, with its absurd scale. I certainly don't subscribe to "I pay my taxes; I've a right to know ...!" which is incorrect, silly, and less secure for all of us.
        roryisok 10y ago
        Please don't be put off by this being on Wikileaks. This is not just some disgruntled British soldier dumping a few hundred secret documents. This is a single, very thorough report he wrote himself, describing in detail all the horrible lapses in security and safety he personally witnessed around Britain's nuclear deterrent. He has censored some of the most sensitive information for security reasons. This is not about "I have a right to know", this is about the risk of a nuclear accident or terrorist attack because of gross negligence, and the chain of command attempting to silence it.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  Makes me wonder if Assange was less of a sock-puppet then
cylinder 10y ago
The reason this is posted here again is that there was recently a Trident "accident" which May did not disclose to Parliament.
- DigitalJack 10y ago
  I read some stories about the this, but nothing definitive. Just what some unnamed source claimed. Nothing to corroborate. Do you have a story that backs up the claim?
  - tritosomal 10y ago
    Here's something I quickly scraped out of a google search: https://brusselsdiplomatic.com/2017/01/22/trident-accident-pressure-mounts/ https://brusselsdiplomatic.com/2017/01/22/trident-accident-p...
  - NamTaf 10y ago
    This is the latest from the BBC over it: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-38714047 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-38714047 Specifically this part describing how May dodged the question multiple times. The 'vote' being the vote by Parliament on whether to renew funding for the Trident system: Questioned by the BBC's Andrew Marr on Sunday, Prime Minister Theresa May refused four times to say if she had known about the test firing ahead of the vote. Mrs May said: "I have absolute faith in our Trident missiles. When I made that speech in the House of Commons, what we were talking about was whether or not we should renew our Trident."
- misnome 10y ago
  I've read a couple of articles, and as I understand it a missile veered off course. During a test. Which is kind of the point of a test. Oh, except apparently it 'veered' towards the US. And this was before the vote to renew, so naturally people are trying to call it a cover up.
  - NamTaf 10y ago
    The test had intended to fire the missile towards the Atlantic. After launch, it turned around and flew the other way towards Florida. From the sibling posts's response I made: According to the Sunday Times, the unarmed Trident II D5 missile was intended to be fired 5,600 miles (9,012 km) from the coast of Florida to a sea target off the west coast of Africa - but veered towards the US.
pizza 10y ago
This part was just great: Just weeks after passing out of training I had a draft for HMS Victorious. My work mates started calling me a terrorist robot because I remembered everything and I have a Northern Ireland accent. This reputation would have undoubtedly made it difficult for me to gather information. I needed to create distance between them, and create a knew persona; I aimed for mixture of dumbness and eagerness to learn for simple curios reasons. Within days of being on patrol I was no longer the terrorist robot, soaking up all the information for terrorist reasons. Playing dumb came easy for me, I've been doing it and been it most of life. It makes people open up and explain a lot more. If someone assumes you know something they might leave that part out of the conversation, meaning you've just lost information which might have been valuable. It also helps with getting out of certain situations. I watched a lot of Columbo when I was a kid. On a similar armament note, from edge's "2006: What is your dangerous idea?" [0] > "The idea that we understand plutonium" > The most dangerous idea I have come across recently is the idea that we understand plutonium. Plutonium is the most complex element in the periodic table. It has six different crystal phases between room temperature and its melting point. It can catch fire spontaneously in the presence of water vapor and if you inhale minuscule amounts you will die of lung cancer. It is the principle element in the "pits" that are the explosive cores of nuclear weapons. In these pits it is alloyed with gallium. No one knows why this works and no one can be sure how stable this alloy is. These pits, in the thousands, are now decades old. What is dangerous is the idea that they have retained their integrity and can be safely stored into the indefinite future. [0] https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10660 https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10660
- codecamper 10y ago
  This is the scariest thing I've read in a while. Plutonium itself inside of nuclear warheads is unstable?
  - XorNot 10y ago
    Is it? This is completely unverifiable information (it's outside his area of expertise - operators are not nuclear physicists). He's extremely vague about what the danger is supposed to be (i.e. wikipedia has some notes on aging - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium%E2%80%93gallium_alloy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium%E2%80%93gallium_allo... - it's not like there's a danger of an uncontrolled nuclear detonation.) Frankly: this is wikileaks. I'm giving it the side-eye these days.
exabrial 10y ago
The only reason to have nuclear weapons is a deterrent, but how do we modernize our nuclear systems for Safety and Security without escalating tensions?
- EGreg 10y ago
  Tweet about it. Then Putin will say it's no big deal. And in fact you can make a deal trading nuclear disarmament for lifting sanctions.
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    And the invaded stay occupied?
    - loafa 10y ago
      If you're talking about Crimea then... well yeah, wasn't that going to happen anyway? Not sure why Trump gets the blame for things that already happened on Obama's watch.
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        Because politics. Nobody cares about facts or things making some sort of sense. All that matters is a good soundbite.
      - lostlogin 10y ago
        Who's blaming Trump for Putin's invasion?
        marcosdumay 10y ago
        The people that usually push that line. They are mostly blaming Trump for Obama not stating WWIII. I dunno what they really expect. There is a huge pile of problems anybody must settle before the US can demand Russia to free the Crimea (and one of them is actually establishing that Crimea wants to be freed).
marze 10y ago
Reminiscent on NASA and the two shuttle losses. Many near misses which were monitored over the years (of the problem that ultimately doomed them), but no action to eliminate the near misses.
- PaulKeeble 10y ago
  Very much a similar issue and their were multiple silenced whistleblowers to that as well. I am glad my whistleblowing moment passed because recent history (last 30 years) tells me you do not want to become one.
  - i336_ 10y ago
    > my whistleblowing moment Can you go into further detail? Not asking to reveal what you don't want to, but I am of course curious what you mean.
    - PaulKeeble 10y ago
      I was asked the impossible, to write a complex piece of software with no ability to test it and it had to work first time without defects, and I had no specification, no one to talk to about it and no idea what hardware it would even run on. There is the impossible and then there is just the "are you even serious" type of impossible, they were serious although I still think its funny because its obvious insane to spin up a team of hundreds of engineers on that basis but that is what they did! The moment passed because I chose to leave. I took the easy route to solving the problem for me, but its still costing people billions.
      - sten 10y ago
        That's incredible.
      - i336_ 10y ago
        Wow. That is insane, yeah. I'm wondering what this software did, or what sector this was in. Obviously I'm just curious for curiosity's sake, but I guess the actionable bit of what I'm asking is whether what you experienced was endemic to the industry it was in, or if (more broadly) there's anything I can file away (other than the major red flags you described) to help me know whether I'm on a path that will lead to this type of insanity.
gaius 10y ago
Delay, delay, delay replacing it - then complain when it starts to show signs of wear and tear. But that is what they do for civilian nuclear too...
- Nexxxeh 10y ago
  I think the lax incompetence is the thing causing most alarm.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
arca_vorago 10y ago
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if it was not an actual failure but a warning, and the public is just getting fed the "it *veered" line. Never forget that GB opposed US naval supremecy and as recently as post WW2 we have come close to war for similar reasons, but due to the 47UKUS agreement most people but old sailors and generals have forgotten it all and now were permabestfriends.
- RugnirViking 10y ago
  Can you give sources for such a surprising statement? I mean I am aware of war plan red, but there are a great number of such plans for each major power, it doesn't mean that it is deemed in any way likely
  - arca_vorago 10y ago
    Ok, so this is a sensitive subject for a variety of reasons, not the last of which the fact that Americans in particular have such a short attention span when it comes to history in general, and in geostrategy in particular. Nevertheless, you asked genuinely for response so I am giving it. To much of the US and even the UK, have this idea of the monarchy as vestigle forms of the state required only for ceremonious pomp and ceremony, but I would venture to say this is not much more than a well placed propaganda myth. I say this because understanding the history of relations between the US and the UK, I propose, can never be understood properly until one gets past this first point. To review a timeline of relations between the two countries, allow me to refresh your memory of times in which then GB opposed the US. Of course, the revolutionary war, and the war of 1812 with the burning of the whitehouse and the capitol, but the one I feel most misunderstood and mistaught in schools is the civil war, in which Britain openly sponsored the confederate states in an effort to undermine it's traditional enemy. After this is where the "mainstream history" goes off the rails and, due to WW1/2, pretends there was little animosty remaining due to the great alliance needed to defeat the enemy. King Edward VII, often mistold in the histories as a gallavanting playboy, was actually instrumental in establishing the encircling alliances leading up to the first (and hence the second) world war. Through Sir Edward Grey (Yes, the tea), who controlled Edward House, Woodrow Wilson was pushed into the war despite the fact he had campaigned on not doing so. Of course after WW1 the issue of naval supremecy was a primary pain for both, which is why in naval parlance the Paris Peace conference is referred to as the Naval Battle of Paris. Admiral Benson of the US, during a meeting in which a British Sea Lord was found proding a secretary for information about the US's postwar naval building plans, said of Britains desire to maintain naval supremecy; “[...]it will mean but one thing[...] war between Great Britain and the United States.”[1] Of course, you mention war plan red, but the mistake is to dismiss it as a dusty old plan never intended for use. It was very much part of a real potential response to the entangled alliances developing. It was worked on up to 1936, by none other than Douglass McArthur. As for WW2, the propaganda primarily centerred around anglo-american unity centered on the Atlantic Charter and it's four freedoms, even though Churchill later said the four freedoms did not apply to the British Empire, or even outside of Europe. This is where it gets more complicated, because it's mostly all about old war plan maps and the military pushback of the US against plans laid out by the UK. Only a handful of generals were able to comprehend the game GB was playing at manipulating how bloody the pacific campaign would be in order to influence the post war balance of power. McArthur was one of them, and his initial pushback against the proposed Brisbane line was only the first in many such political-strategic military moves to counter the traps set by Churchill. This pushback is what moved the lines of battle into New Guinea and the Owen Stanely mountain range. I come from a long line of military men, and a great uncle of mine was wounded on Guadalcanal and later died on the second push of Iwo Jima. Gudalcanal was an essential defensive victory which helped in reversing the Japanese "invincibility" by defeating them in the Battle of the Coral Sea. McArthur also avoided Churchills plan of full frontal assault of each fortified island by conducting leapfrogging instead, gaining control of lightly held islands to establish air bases and supply routes, which allowed him to get all the way to Tokyo with less than 90,000 casualties. The point of me droning on about this is that Churchill was most defenitly not a true ally of the United States, and the hero worship of him I see in modern media disgusts me. If he had his way the US would have bled out people for many more years than happened, and he was a scoundrel for it and more. After WW2, the British plans for Pacific balance of power were shattered because of this, which is why they supported Mao Tse-tung inssurection as a counter against the American friendly Chiang Kai-Shek’ nationalists and their allies in the inner areas that were against the British colonialism. In order to reinforce this move, they used the Harriman (from which the Bush dynasty emerged) faction, including General Marshall and eventually Henry Kissinger, internally in the US against those resisting it. One of the telling moves was that after Mao's march in 49, the British were extremely quick to recognize his government and supply him with strategic goods through Hong Kong. As a matter of fact my old Marine Corps unit to this day still has symbols on the unit logo from it's China Marines days. To further restore the balance, they entangled the US in Korea, and it was McArthurs brilliance that created victory with inferior numbers and supplies, stunning the British, as they expected a different outcome. Since that play had backfired, the triple-agents in waiting were activated (though some had been used already during Korea), including Kim Philby, Guy Burges, Donald Mcclean, Anthony Blunt, Lester Pearson, and Victor Rothschild. They were triples because at first glance they were British agents, at the second layer they were recruited by the KGB (the Cambridge 6, yes, that's right, 6, not 5) but behind it all, they were ultimately loyal to the British monarchy. Plausible deniability you see. Eventually, the Harriman faction pushed Truman to finally get rid of McArthur for being such a pain in the imperialsts ass. Now we get to Vietnam. After Diems assasination, the best option for the US would have been to stay out of that war, but a Saigon military advisor by the name of Sir Robert Thompson was at the time billed as the number one expert in counterinsurgency (shades of Patreaus anyone?), and later Robert Macnamaras book, the Pentagon Papers, et al, showed that it was his influence that was used to get LB Johnson to "take the plunge" in Vietnam once JFK was no longer around to veto it. It was Thompson who pushed for COIN operations in the south via US divisions in the Mekong delta doing nation building, despite the fact that the south Vietnamese defense minister had a superior plan in cutting off the Ho Chi Minh in the north near Laos with just a few US divisions by building a wall, and if the NVA tried to amass and attack, an amphibious assault from the rear would destroy them, and the nation building in the south would be left up to the Vietnamese themselves. [1]https://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/5a2b52ff-831d-446b-b41f-0ea1ffc27b03/The-Naval-Battle-of-Paris---Jerry-W--Jones https://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/5a2b52ff-831d-446b-b41f-...
indifferentalex 10y ago
We've run too quick, too far, trying to maintain systems with, in HN jargon, too much technical debt. There are not enough people with solid knowledge, not enough people with solid principles, not enough people willing, to maintain the systems people in power have insisted on building. Frankly it's a miracle and a true testament to human greatness and luck that things aren't as bad as they very well could be. Over the long run however things usually end poorly, and history is littered with such shipwrecks. We need to slow down, refactor what we can, rewrite what we cannot, the costs will be huge but the consequences of not doing it worse.
- rb808 10y ago
  The alternative is we could send our best and brightest developers to write social media apps, online shopping & high frequency trading algos. :)
- Arizhel 10y ago
  >...not enough people willing, to maintain the systems people in power have insisted on building. >We need to slow down, refactor what we can, rewrite what we cannot, the costs will be huge but the consequences of not doing it worse. What's this "we" business? Are you volunteering for the job? There's not many people willing to work on such systems because there's obvious moral problems with them, and this means that the people you can get to work on them are probably not the most competent people around. I don't really see a solution for this. Either you force the "best and brightest" to leave Silicon Valley and go to someplace they don't want to live and work on WMDs that they are morally opposed to (doesn't sound like a recipe for quality work to me), or you have not-so-competent people working on them (also not a recipe for quality work). Maybe we should be rethinking our use of these things. Of course, that's not going to happen; our leaders insist on having them (and now want many more of them apparently), and the half of the population that voted for these leaders want them too (even though they're not smart enough to build them themselves).
oftenwrong 10y ago
Somewhat related New Yorker article, World War Three, by Mistake (2016, approx. 6000 words): http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/world-war-three-by-mistake http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/world-war-three-by-m...
zerooneinfinity 10y ago
For what it's worth the general sentiment on UK military sites and forums is that the guy hasn't got a fucking clue what he's talking about and most seem to reckon someone's upset him or he's been passed up for promotion or something and is retaliating by writing sensationalised shite that makes the Navy look bad.
highaltitude 10y ago
Nuclear warheads have multiple safeguards against detonating without intention. While there are actually quite a few not specifically mentioned this article is a good start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link Even in the event of fire, explosion, etc warheads are unlikely to detonate unintended. Missle failures are quite common and a few have happened during atmospheric nuke tests and no detonation occured and many of these test weapons had few of the safeguards on duty weapons have.

256 points by aburan28 10y ago

rl3 10y ago

The title should be updated to reflect that this is from 2015.

JesseAldridge 10y ago
Hmm, I wonder what happened to him... > The navy described his dossier as “subjective and unsubstantiated” and launched an inquiry that concluded by dismissing his allegations as “factually incorrect or the result of misunderstanding or partial understanding”...He was discharged “on the claim that my sole aim was to discredit their public image”, he says. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/17/trident-whistleblower-william-mcneilly-discharged-from-royal-navy https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/17/trident-whis...
- OJFord 10y ago
  > He was discharged “on the claim that my sole aim was to discredit their public image”, he says. I mean, I don't know what he expected... Part of me wonders if WikiLeaks is the modern-day Blighty wound: want to leave, can't leave for X months, make something up, get discharged for discrediting public image.
  - roryisok 10y ago
    Have you read the document? There's a lot of awfully specific detail for "making things up"
    - OJFord 10y ago
      I haven't, I don't really agree with it: there's whistle-blowing, and then there's WikiLeaks, with its absurd scale. I certainly don't subscribe to "I pay my taxes; I've a right to know ...!" which is incorrect, silly, and less secure for all of us.
      - roryisok 10y ago
        Please don't be put off by this being on Wikileaks. This is not just some disgruntled British soldier dumping a few hundred secret documents. This is a single, very thorough report he wrote himself, describing in detail all the horrible lapses in security and safety he personally witnessed around Britain's nuclear deterrent. He has censored some of the most sensitive information for security reasons. This is not about "I have a right to know", this is about the risk of a nuclear accident or terrorist attack because of gross negligence, and the chain of command attempting to silence it.
raverbashing 10y ago
Makes me wonder if Assange was less of a sock-puppet then

cylinder 10y ago

The reason this is posted here again is that there was recently a Trident "accident" which May did not disclose to Parliament.

DigitalJack 10y ago
I read some stories about the this, but nothing definitive. Just what some unnamed source claimed. Nothing to corroborate. Do you have a story that backs up the claim?
- tritosomal 10y ago
  Here's something I quickly scraped out of a google search: https://brusselsdiplomatic.com/2017/01/22/trident-accident-pressure-mounts/ https://brusselsdiplomatic.com/2017/01/22/trident-accident-p...
- NamTaf 10y ago
  This is the latest from the BBC over it: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-38714047 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-38714047 Specifically this part describing how May dodged the question multiple times. The 'vote' being the vote by Parliament on whether to renew funding for the Trident system: Questioned by the BBC's Andrew Marr on Sunday, Prime Minister Theresa May refused four times to say if she had known about the test firing ahead of the vote. Mrs May said: "I have absolute faith in our Trident missiles. When I made that speech in the House of Commons, what we were talking about was whether or not we should renew our Trident."
misnome 10y ago
I've read a couple of articles, and as I understand it a missile veered off course. During a test. Which is kind of the point of a test. Oh, except apparently it 'veered' towards the US. And this was before the vote to renew, so naturally people are trying to call it a cover up.
- NamTaf 10y ago
  The test had intended to fire the missile towards the Atlantic. After launch, it turned around and flew the other way towards Florida. From the sibling posts's response I made: According to the Sunday Times, the unarmed Trident II D5 missile was intended to be fired 5,600 miles (9,012 km) from the coast of Florida to a sea target off the west coast of Africa - but veered towards the US.

pizza 10y ago

This part was just great: Just weeks after passing out of training I had a draft for HMS Victorious. My work mates started calling me a terrorist robot because I remembered everything and I have a Northern Ireland accent. This reputation would have undoubtedly made it difficult for me to gather information. I needed to create distance between them, and create a knew persona; I aimed for mixture of dumbness and eagerness to learn for simple curios reasons. Within days of being on patrol I was no longer the terrorist robot, soaking up all the information for terrorist reasons. Playing dumb came easy for me, I've been doing it and been it most of life. It makes people open up and explain a lot more. If someone assumes you know something they might leave that part out of the conversation, meaning you've just lost information which might have been valuable. It also helps with getting out of certain situations. I watched a lot of Columbo when I was a kid. On a similar armament note, from edge's "2006: What is your dangerous idea?" [0] > "The idea that we understand plutonium" > The most dangerous idea I have come across recently is the idea that we understand plutonium. Plutonium is the most complex element in the periodic table. It has six different crystal phases between room temperature and its melting point. It can catch fire spontaneously in the presence of water vapor and if you inhale minuscule amounts you will die of lung cancer. It is the principle element in the "pits" that are the explosive cores of nuclear weapons. In these pits it is alloyed with gallium. No one knows why this works and no one can be sure how stable this alloy is. These pits, in the thousands, are now decades old. What is dangerous is the idea that they have retained their integrity and can be safely stored into the indefinite future. [0] https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10660 https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10660

codecamper 10y ago
This is the scariest thing I've read in a while. Plutonium itself inside of nuclear warheads is unstable?
- XorNot 10y ago
  Is it? This is completely unverifiable information (it's outside his area of expertise - operators are not nuclear physicists). He's extremely vague about what the danger is supposed to be (i.e. wikipedia has some notes on aging - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium%E2%80%93gallium_alloy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium%E2%80%93gallium_allo... - it's not like there's a danger of an uncontrolled nuclear detonation.) Frankly: this is wikileaks. I'm giving it the side-eye these days.

exabrial 10y ago

The only reason to have nuclear weapons is a deterrent, but how do we modernize our nuclear systems for Safety and Security without escalating tensions?

EGreg 10y ago
Tweet about it. Then Putin will say it's no big deal. And in fact you can make a deal trading nuclear disarmament for lifting sanctions.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  And the invaded stay occupied?
  - loafa 10y ago
    If you're talking about Crimea then... well yeah, wasn't that going to happen anyway? Not sure why Trump gets the blame for things that already happened on Obama's watch.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Because politics. Nobody cares about facts or things making some sort of sense. All that matters is a good soundbite.
    - lostlogin 10y ago
      Who's blaming Trump for Putin's invasion?
      - marcosdumay 10y ago
        The people that usually push that line. They are mostly blaming Trump for Obama not stating WWIII. I dunno what they really expect. There is a huge pile of problems anybody must settle before the US can demand Russia to free the Crimea (and one of them is actually establishing that Crimea wants to be freed).

marze 10y ago

Reminiscent on NASA and the two shuttle losses. Many near misses which were monitored over the years (of the problem that ultimately doomed them), but no action to eliminate the near misses.

PaulKeeble 10y ago
Very much a similar issue and their were multiple silenced whistleblowers to that as well. I am glad my whistleblowing moment passed because recent history (last 30 years) tells me you do not want to become one.
- i336_ 10y ago
  > my whistleblowing moment Can you go into further detail? Not asking to reveal what you don't want to, but I am of course curious what you mean.
  - PaulKeeble 10y ago
    I was asked the impossible, to write a complex piece of software with no ability to test it and it had to work first time without defects, and I had no specification, no one to talk to about it and no idea what hardware it would even run on. There is the impossible and then there is just the "are you even serious" type of impossible, they were serious although I still think its funny because its obvious insane to spin up a team of hundreds of engineers on that basis but that is what they did! The moment passed because I chose to leave. I took the easy route to solving the problem for me, but its still costing people billions.
    - sten 10y ago
      That's incredible.
    - i336_ 10y ago
      Wow. That is insane, yeah. I'm wondering what this software did, or what sector this was in. Obviously I'm just curious for curiosity's sake, but I guess the actionable bit of what I'm asking is whether what you experienced was endemic to the industry it was in, or if (more broadly) there's anything I can file away (other than the major red flags you described) to help me know whether I'm on a path that will lead to this type of insanity.

gaius 10y ago

Delay, delay, delay replacing it - then complain when it starts to show signs of wear and tear. But that is what they do for civilian nuclear too...

Nexxxeh 10y ago
I think the lax incompetence is the thing causing most alarm.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

arca_vorago 10y ago

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if it was not an actual failure but a warning, and the public is just getting fed the "it *veered" line. Never forget that GB opposed US naval supremecy and as recently as post WW2 we have come close to war for similar reasons, but due to the 47UKUS agreement most people but old sailors and generals have forgotten it all and now were permabestfriends.

RugnirViking 10y ago
Can you give sources for such a surprising statement? I mean I am aware of war plan red, but there are a great number of such plans for each major power, it doesn't mean that it is deemed in any way likely
- arca_vorago 10y ago
  Ok, so this is a sensitive subject for a variety of reasons, not the last of which the fact that Americans in particular have such a short attention span when it comes to history in general, and in geostrategy in particular. Nevertheless, you asked genuinely for response so I am giving it. To much of the US and even the UK, have this idea of the monarchy as vestigle forms of the state required only for ceremonious pomp and ceremony, but I would venture to say this is not much more than a well placed propaganda myth. I say this because understanding the history of relations between the US and the UK, I propose, can never be understood properly until one gets past this first point. To review a timeline of relations between the two countries, allow me to refresh your memory of times in which then GB opposed the US. Of course, the revolutionary war, and the war of 1812 with the burning of the whitehouse and the capitol, but the one I feel most misunderstood and mistaught in schools is the civil war, in which Britain openly sponsored the confederate states in an effort to undermine it's traditional enemy. After this is where the "mainstream history" goes off the rails and, due to WW1/2, pretends there was little animosty remaining due to the great alliance needed to defeat the enemy. King Edward VII, often mistold in the histories as a gallavanting playboy, was actually instrumental in establishing the encircling alliances leading up to the first (and hence the second) world war. Through Sir Edward Grey (Yes, the tea), who controlled Edward House, Woodrow Wilson was pushed into the war despite the fact he had campaigned on not doing so. Of course after WW1 the issue of naval supremecy was a primary pain for both, which is why in naval parlance the Paris Peace conference is referred to as the Naval Battle of Paris. Admiral Benson of the US, during a meeting in which a British Sea Lord was found proding a secretary for information about the US's postwar naval building plans, said of Britains desire to maintain naval supremecy; “[...]it will mean but one thing[...] war between Great Britain and the United States.”[1] Of course, you mention war plan red, but the mistake is to dismiss it as a dusty old plan never intended for use. It was very much part of a real potential response to the entangled alliances developing. It was worked on up to 1936, by none other than Douglass McArthur. As for WW2, the propaganda primarily centerred around anglo-american unity centered on the Atlantic Charter and it's four freedoms, even though Churchill later said the four freedoms did not apply to the British Empire, or even outside of Europe. This is where it gets more complicated, because it's mostly all about old war plan maps and the military pushback of the US against plans laid out by the UK. Only a handful of generals were able to comprehend the game GB was playing at manipulating how bloody the pacific campaign would be in order to influence the post war balance of power. McArthur was one of them, and his initial pushback against the proposed Brisbane line was only the first in many such political-strategic military moves to counter the traps set by Churchill. This pushback is what moved the lines of battle into New Guinea and the Owen Stanely mountain range. I come from a long line of military men, and a great uncle of mine was wounded on Guadalcanal and later died on the second push of Iwo Jima. Gudalcanal was an essential defensive victory which helped in reversing the Japanese "invincibility" by defeating them in the Battle of the Coral Sea. McArthur also avoided Churchills plan of full frontal assault of each fortified island by conducting leapfrogging instead, gaining control of lightly held islands to establish air bases and supply routes, which allowed him to get all the way to Tokyo with less than 90,000 casualties. The point of me droning on about this is that Churchill was most defenitly not a true ally of the United States, and the hero worship of him I see in modern media disgusts me. If he had his way the US would have bled out people for many more years than happened, and he was a scoundrel for it and more. After WW2, the British plans for Pacific balance of power were shattered because of this, which is why they supported Mao Tse-tung inssurection as a counter against the American friendly Chiang Kai-Shek’ nationalists and their allies in the inner areas that were against the British colonialism. In order to reinforce this move, they used the Harriman (from which the Bush dynasty emerged) faction, including General Marshall and eventually Henry Kissinger, internally in the US against those resisting it. One of the telling moves was that after Mao's march in 49, the British were extremely quick to recognize his government and supply him with strategic goods through Hong Kong. As a matter of fact my old Marine Corps unit to this day still has symbols on the unit logo from it's China Marines days. To further restore the balance, they entangled the US in Korea, and it was McArthurs brilliance that created victory with inferior numbers and supplies, stunning the British, as they expected a different outcome. Since that play had backfired, the triple-agents in waiting were activated (though some had been used already during Korea), including Kim Philby, Guy Burges, Donald Mcclean, Anthony Blunt, Lester Pearson, and Victor Rothschild. They were triples because at first glance they were British agents, at the second layer they were recruited by the KGB (the Cambridge 6, yes, that's right, 6, not 5) but behind it all, they were ultimately loyal to the British monarchy. Plausible deniability you see. Eventually, the Harriman faction pushed Truman to finally get rid of McArthur for being such a pain in the imperialsts ass. Now we get to Vietnam. After Diems assasination, the best option for the US would have been to stay out of that war, but a Saigon military advisor by the name of Sir Robert Thompson was at the time billed as the number one expert in counterinsurgency (shades of Patreaus anyone?), and later Robert Macnamaras book, the Pentagon Papers, et al, showed that it was his influence that was used to get LB Johnson to "take the plunge" in Vietnam once JFK was no longer around to veto it. It was Thompson who pushed for COIN operations in the south via US divisions in the Mekong delta doing nation building, despite the fact that the south Vietnamese defense minister had a superior plan in cutting off the Ho Chi Minh in the north near Laos with just a few US divisions by building a wall, and if the NVA tried to amass and attack, an amphibious assault from the rear would destroy them, and the nation building in the south would be left up to the Vietnamese themselves. [1]https://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/5a2b52ff-831d-446b-b41f-0ea1ffc27b03/The-Naval-Battle-of-Paris---Jerry-W--Jones https://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/5a2b52ff-831d-446b-b41f-...

indifferentalex 10y ago

We've run too quick, too far, trying to maintain systems with, in HN jargon, too much technical debt. There are not enough people with solid knowledge, not enough people with solid principles, not enough people willing, to maintain the systems people in power have insisted on building. Frankly it's a miracle and a true testament to human greatness and luck that things aren't as bad as they very well could be. Over the long run however things usually end poorly, and history is littered with such shipwrecks. We need to slow down, refactor what we can, rewrite what we cannot, the costs will be huge but the consequences of not doing it worse.

rb808 10y ago
The alternative is we could send our best and brightest developers to write social media apps, online shopping & high frequency trading algos. :)
Arizhel 10y ago
>...not enough people willing, to maintain the systems people in power have insisted on building. >We need to slow down, refactor what we can, rewrite what we cannot, the costs will be huge but the consequences of not doing it worse. What's this "we" business? Are you volunteering for the job? There's not many people willing to work on such systems because there's obvious moral problems with them, and this means that the people you can get to work on them are probably not the most competent people around. I don't really see a solution for this. Either you force the "best and brightest" to leave Silicon Valley and go to someplace they don't want to live and work on WMDs that they are morally opposed to (doesn't sound like a recipe for quality work to me), or you have not-so-competent people working on them (also not a recipe for quality work). Maybe we should be rethinking our use of these things. Of course, that's not going to happen; our leaders insist on having them (and now want many more of them apparently), and the half of the population that voted for these leaders want them too (even though they're not smart enough to build them themselves).

oftenwrong 10y ago

Somewhat related New Yorker article, World War Three, by Mistake (2016, approx. 6000 words): http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/world-war-three-by-mistake http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/world-war-three-by-m...

zerooneinfinity 10y ago

For what it's worth the general sentiment on UK military sites and forums is that the guy hasn't got a fucking clue what he's talking about and most seem to reckon someone's upset him or he's been passed up for promotion or something and is retaliating by writing sensationalised shite that makes the Navy look bad.

highaltitude 10y ago

Nuclear warheads have multiple safeguards against detonating without intention. While there are actually quite a few not specifically mentioned this article is a good start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link Even in the event of fire, explosion, etc warheads are unlikely to detonate unintended. Missle failures are quite common and a few have happened during atmospheric nuke tests and no detonation occured and many of these test weapons had few of the safeguards on duty weapons have.