No 10 covered up Trident missile fiasco

[bananas]

Source: London Sunday Times

Former navy chief attacks ‘bizarre’ secrecy over failed test launch

A serious malfunction in Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons deterrent was covered up by Downing Street just weeks before the crucial House of Commons vote on the future of the missile system.

The Sunday Times can reveal that a Trident II D5 missile — which can kill millions when armed with nuclear warheads — experienced an alarming failure after being launched from a British submarine off the coast of Florida in June last year.

It was the only firing test of a British nuclear missile in four years and raises serious questions about the reliability and safety of the weapons system. The failure prompted a news blackout by Downing Street that has remained in place until this weekend.

Failure to disclose the error was described as…

<snip>

Read more: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/no-10-covered-up-trident-missile-fiasco-hch3shsrn

[FailureToCommunicate]

1. Wait, what?!? You mean sometimes they don't work? All the billions spent and they

malfuntion? And then it's covered up? Well...



Edited to add: I hope the Brits TOLD us they were testing a launch, or we could've repeated the scenerio we had with Boris Yeltsin in 1995: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident

[Shipwack]

7. Nothing to worry about...

We would have known about it because 1) it's our test range to begin with and 2) we would be providing technical support and manpower.

I used to work with the command responsible for range testing strategic missiles.

[FailureToCommunicate]

8. Thank you. One fewer nightmare to bear.

[tenorly]

2. I noticed a lot of the headlines about this are being scrubbed of the words 'off Florida coast'.

It's appeared as such in many news sites, only to be edited out 5 minutes later.

Well it's good to know their JTRIG still works.

[progree]

3. "off Florida's coast in June veered off course and may have headed toward the U.S."

Missile failure off Florida? British leader won't say, 1/22/17

The prime minister was asked about the missile test after the Sunday Times reported that an unarmed missile launched from a submarine off Florida's coast in June veered off course and may have headed toward the U.S.

The newspaper said top government officials decided to keep the failure of a Trident II D5 ballistic missile out of the public eye

https://www.yahoo.com/news/uks-may-wont-whether-she-knew-reported-missile-125041880.html

That was back in June when we had a sane "no drama" person in command of the U.S. nuclear suitcase....

[bananas]

4. I hate when that happens.

Google for news articles, click on a good headline, and poof it's already changed.
Or minutes to hours later, your post gets locked because the headline doesn't match anymore.

[tenorly]

5. Absolutely.

I once had that happen with one on Paul Singer (the Cayman vulture fundie and Narco Rubio bankroller) for that very reason.

The alerter, who as far as I know is no longer on DU, was one of the most obvious - and aggressive - RW infiltrators here. I've noticed there are a lot fewer of them since the election. Funny that.

[CottonBear]

6. Article from The Guardian ( from much earlier today.)

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jan/22/ltrident-malfunction-cover-up-claims-labour-urges-investigations