{"id":265048,"date":"2016-09-01T19:21:04","date_gmt":"2016-09-01T19:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trident-nuke-renewal-starving-british-armed-forces-of-vital-funding-ex-senior-officer\/"},"modified":"2016-09-01T21:02:28","modified_gmt":"2016-09-01T21:02:28","slug":"trident-nuke-renewal-starving-british-armed-forces-of-vital-funding-ex-senior-officer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/trident-nuke-renewal-starving-british-armed-forces-of-vital-funding-ex-senior-officer\/","title":{"rendered":"Trident nuke renewal starving British Armed Forces of vital funding \u2013 ex-senior officer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.rt.com\/files\/2016.09\/thumbnail\/57c852b3c46188d3048b45b9.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>        No threat facing the UK is sufficient to justify the country\u2019s nuclear arsenal and its budget should be reallocated to other areas of the military, a former senior officer aboard Britain\u2019s last generation of submarines has said.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Commander Rob Forsyth served on British nuclear submarines in the 1960s and 1970s \u2013 including on the Polaris model which was the forerunner of today\u2019s Trident system.<\/p>\n<p>Writing for the Sustainable Security think tank\u2019s website, he reneged on his long-held belief that nukes are a vital part of the country\u2019s defense.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2BAw2LVs5Do\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>He sketched a number of reasons for his change of heart, not least the impact of funding nuclear weapons at a time when the rest of the armed forces\u2019 equipment and personnel are sorely diminished.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>When I was at sea in the 1960s and 1970s the UK invested in both the Polaris force and significant conventional armed military forces in all three services,<\/em>\u201d Forsyth says.<\/p>\n<p>In 1982 \u201c<em>the country was able to send a Task Force as far afield as the Falklands and, more importantly, the armed forces were strong and large enough to withstand the quite considerable attrition\u2014particularly in the Navy\u2014in fighting a full-on war,<\/em>\u201d he pointed out.<\/p>\n<p>Today, Forsyth warned, the services have gradually become \u201cw<em>hittled down to a level in which such a Task Force could not be assembled. By its own admission the Navy does not have enough ships and submarines to meet peacetime commitments \u2013 never mind war.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/czB3iHYANg0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>He partially blames this on the attitudes of senior officer who allowed British troops to be dragged into two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>But the other major factor is budgetary, he claimed, with the cost of building four Successor submarines falling in the region of at least \u00a331 billion (US$41 billion).<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>You can buy quite a lot of aircraft carriers, frigates and hunter killer submarines for that.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Forsyth called for a rethinking of the UK military to reflect modern threats considering \u201c<em>it is highly unlikely that the UK will ever come under nuclear attack from an enemy remotely susceptible to a threat of nuclear retaliation.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/uk\/357921-nuclear-trident-renewal-cost\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=RSS\">RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No threat facing the UK is sufficient to justify the country\u2019s nuclear arsenal and its budget should be reallocated to other areas of the military, a former senior officer aboard Britain\u2019s last generation of submarines has said. Commander Rob Forsyth served on British nuclear submarines in the 1960s and 1970s \u2013 including on the Polaris [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":265049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-265048","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}