Talk:Letters of last resort

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Untitled[edit]

This article should be expanded to include the additional detail found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_the_United_Kingdom#Nuclear_weapons_control

86.7.211.128 (talk) 02:16, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Source for options[edit]

Are there any sources for the stated 4 options? Or are they made up? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.20.106.60 (talk) 10:28, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Callaghan[edit]

I see the edit I just made was previously done with the same explanation, then reverted without explanation. So here is my fuller rationale. Callaghan was clearly talking about whether he personally would "press the button" if he was still alive and in charge. Although the cited article is about these letters, Callaghan was not actually talking about his own letters, and we cannot infer anything about their content. The whole section is therefore irrelevant to this article. – Smyth\^talk 14:42, 3 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Point of information -> as the relevant edits were a long time ago, here is the section which Smyth has removed:

==Past Prime Ministers== − Only one Prime Minister has publicly given any insight on his orders: [[James Callaghan]]. Callaghan stated that, in a situation where nuclear weapon use was required, and thus the whole purpose and value of the weapon as a deterrent had failed, he would have ordered the use of nuclear weapons, if needed: ''If we had got to that point, where it was, I felt it was necessary to do it, then I would have done it (used the weapon). But if I had lived after pressing that button, I could have never forgiven myself.''<ref>{{Cite news| url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7758000/7758347.stm | work = BBC News | title= Finger on the nuclear button | date = 2 December 2008 | accessdate = 20 May 2010 | first=Richard | last=Knight}}</ref>

--Mais oui! (talk) 15:54, 3 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

When are they destroyed?[edit]

It says here (and in Nuclear weapons and the UK) that the letters are destroyed unopened whenever a Prime Minister leaves office.

When a PM leaves office, there will be at least one Trident submarine on patrol with anywhere up to c. 95 days of its patrol period still to go.

So if the letters were actually destroyed when the PM left office, there would be a period when the submarine(s) did not have a letter of last resort.

Alternatively if they actually destroyed the old letter (and replaced it) the next time they were in port then there would be a period when the letter of last resort was written by a different PM who might be from a different party and might well have quite different views.

Does anyone know what actually happens?

FerdinandFrog (talk) 17:36, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I know it's not an answer, but that would be an interesting basis for a thriller. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 21:19, 6 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If priority is given to these letters, then maybe any submarines on patrol would be replaced as soon as the letters are ready so the ones out could go back to port and receive them. Another option maybe is that the letters could be delivered by sea or air, such as by a helicopter (piloted by one of our able Princes, thriller writers). I'm not well informed seeing I'm not British. Ken K. Smith (a.k.a. Thin Smek) (talk) 02:47, 7 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If priority is given to these letters, then maybe any submarines on patrol would be replaced as soon as the letters are ready so the ones out could go back to port and receive them.

That is a reasonable idea and may well be what is done. I suspect that it is not always an option, but life is imperfect and that may be the best that can be done.

Three boats let you have one on patrol, one returning / minor maintenance & repairs / crew leave / etc and one resupplying / crew leave / readying to go out and going out.

However four boats are actually needed to keep one at sea all the time because of major maintenance & repairs and overhauls. Here it says that "during their long-overhaul refit periods, a 'Core H' reactor is fitted to each of the boats", and I would have thought that this will take months to a couple of years.

So for that time there will only be three boats and there may not be one ready to go out for some time.

maybe ... the letters could be delivered by sea or air, such as by a helicopter

At the end of "These are then delivered to the submarines, with the previous prime minister's letters being destroyed without being opened.[6]" the link is to this.

That says

Specifically, she will be told the whereabouts of the Royal Navy's on-duty nuclear submarine.

Although normally on patrol somewhere in the North Atlantic, her exact whereabouts is known only by a handful of people.

Even most of the crew on board are unaware.

And I simply do not believe that this is true. The biggest defensive weapon a SSBN has is the ability to hide in a vast ocean. If anyone on shore knows where she is that would be, IMO at least, a really dumb thing.

I though (read this somewhere but no idea where) that a SSBN was given a large 'box' in which to patrol. The North Atlantic is 40 million km^2, knock off, say, 25% for being too shallow or on shipping lanes, that still leaves 30 million km^2, or 120 boxes each a quarter of a million km^2.

Of course, journalists are notorious for getting details wrong. So all that the Sky piece means may be that a few senior RN officers know which box the SSBN is in.

piloted by one of our able Princes, thriller writers

VG! FerdinandFrog (talk) 13:21, 7 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, FerdinandFrog. I didn't realise about the submarines needing secrecy of location at sea. Probably the guvmint thinks it best we don't know what actually happens. Ken K. Smith (a.k.a. Thin Smek) (talk) 13:33, 7 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Tagging User:Ashley Pomeroy. Ken K. Smith (a.k.a. Thin Smek) (talk) 17:05, 17 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Assumptions[edit]

The whole concept is based on the assumption that there is only one country in the world with the motive and capability to launch a full scale nuclear attack on the UK. While this assumption may have been safe enough during the cold war it could conceivably become obsolete as new states acquire nuclear capability and/or shifts occur in military allegiances/international relations. In which case how would submarine commanders know who they were retaliating against ? As for using the presence (or otherwise) of the BBC Radio 4 longwave signal to as an indication that all was well surely any country having the capability to completely destroy the UK with nuclear weapons would also have the capability to make fake BBC transmissions on the same frequency ? 2.127.211.40 (talk) 18:16, 14 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a bit hesitant about whether I should bother with this one, but - oh, what the ussr, here goes: Faking BBC transmissions believably in that kind of scenario, is actually surprisingly difficult: Language use and accents must fit, the type of news messages and entertainment must fit, - and in the case of longwave transmission, even the transmitter antenna has to be in the same place as the original, or the direction of the transmission (and the signal strength) won't fit with what the sub's people will expect. In short, getting all the aspects of this right, would entail too much work (or luck) to make it a viable proposition*.

Signed: Autokefal Dialytiker (talk) 00:35, 9 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(*Unless you like impossible odds when gambling, that is...)

Not just Language use and accents, but the major programmes from Radio 4 are presented by a small team of well known presenters, whose voices would be familiar to anyone used to listening to them; you'd have to fake a specific voice, and not just record a prior programme - the news changes and there's dating references. Of course, ultimately it's always going to be speculation (albeit well sourced, notable speculation) because for sound operational reasons the government doesn't comment on matters like that! --RedHillian | Talk 01:59, 14 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Nevertheless leaving aside the question of fake radio broadcasts the point remains about how do submarine commanders establish who they are supposed to be retaliating against in a scenario where the UK has been destroyed in a nuclear attack and there is more than one country with the means and motive to do so ? If they are reduced to listening to the archers to establish that Britain has been attacked how do they determine whodunit -especially if the attacking nation also used submarines ? 86.129.209.245 (talk) 20:28, 21 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Trident warheads are pre-targetted and would take days to be re-targetted. A surprise enemy is unlikely, tensions would've built for several days at least for any new actor on the strategic nuclear stage, and at the moment targets in Russia, China and North Korea would be the most likely to be pre-set. 2.31.162.110 (talk) 23:13, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"Trident warheads are pre-targetted and would take days to be re-targetted." Do you have a source for that? It sounds like nonsense to me.

You are saying that they they can be re-targetted whilst the submarine is at sea (because it can be done in days) but that it is not done in software as that would only take seconds. The only thing I can think of that fits what you are saying, is that someone has to alter the control circuitry with a soldering iron and then run extensive tests to make sure the change has been done correctly.

That does not sound at all likely. FerdinandFrog (talk) 23:55, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hennessy Book[edit]

The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War, 1945 to 1970

Is actually entitled

'The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War' for the inital edition

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-State-Whitehall-Cold-War/dp/0141008350/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467197350&sr=1-2&keywords=the+secret+state

and

The Secret State: Preparing For The Worst 1945 - 2010 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-State-Preparing-Worst-1945/dp/0141044691/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467197350&sr=1-1&keywords=the+secret+state — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:3172:9300:B062:5935:2327:BFF4 (talk) 10:54, 29 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've corrected this. The Adept (talk) 20:40, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Asteroids?[edit]

Surely the paragraph on a hypothetical asteroid strike is unencyclopaedic nonsense? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.228.230.192 (talk) 22:43, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The paragraph on asteroids is not credible. The weapons systems on a Trident would have no application in that scenario. 142.166.83.207 (talk) 19:09, 8 September 2018 (UTC)Dogwood[reply]

Another Book/Movie for Fiction[edit]

The book On_the_Beach_(novel) and it's following movie, are another example of this. While the description talks in general, I remember it starting with a US boomer who turned herself into Australia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.153.49.235 (talk) 17:07, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]