It wouldn't get spent on conventional forces. It would go on schools and hospitals - and next year they'd be holding their hands out for another £30 billion, and another, and another. Those two bottomless pits are wearing a bit thin these days, I'm afraid. In any case, we don't need to scrap Trident to finance conventional forces. For the past ten years at least, Britain has been spending more on European Compliance that on our military. And that bulls**t is going within two years, thank god. So there's the necessary finance you need.
Maybe I'm missing something here but... Trident is not the nukes, it's the submarines that launch the IBMs with the nuclear warheads attached to them, OK granted without the submarines we have no way of launching them as we have no silos or nukes that can be carried by bombers, but its still not the actual nukes themselves. We have already signed a treaty with the other big 4 to trim our nukes to 180 from 225 we have now by 2020 or so, we also signed another treaty with them to disband all nukes, but this has been put on hold as to see what some rogue states do. Only countries with nukes. UK 225 nukes but only 40 can be fired (1 Trident sub) at one time USA 7100 nukes total, 1600 can be fired. Russia 7700 nukes total, 1600 can be fired. France 300 total China 260 total Rogue states. (Didn't sign the nuke treaty) Pakistan about 100 total India about 100 total Israel 120 total N Korea 8 total but cant fire any. That's it, no other country on earth has any, but they think Iran and Syria are trying, or have tried. I don't really know what the answer is regarding the actual Tridant submarines, it does seem like a huge waste of cash to me, build one silo in Birmingham (it's a ****hole anyway) and let them launch from there, but if we are, and all the big 5 have signed it, going to get rid of them all eventually, what's the point of spending 32b quid (and let's be honest nothing ever costs what they say, probably double that and add another 10b on for good measure).
Correct. Trident is the subs. Before Trident it was Polaris. I still remember the subs names. Reknown. Resolution. Repulse and Revenge. I actually went inside 2 of them. Wouldnt fancy being a submariner for a living.
