Information about every Trident missile the US supplies to Britain will be given to Russia as part of an arms control deal signed by President Barack Obama next week.
Defence analysts claim the agreement risks undermining Britain’s policy of refusing to confirm the exact size of its nuclear arsenal.
The fact that the Americans used British nuclear secrets as a bargaining chip also sheds new light on the so-called “special relationship”, which is shown often to be a one-sided affair by US diplomatic communications obtained by the WikiLeaks website.
Details of the behind-the-scenes talks are contained in more than 1,400 US embassy cables published to date by the Telegraph, including almost 800 sent from the London Embassy, which are published online today. The documents also show that:
• America spied on Foreign Office ministers by gathering gossip on their private lives and professional relationships.
• Intelligence-sharing arrangements with the US became strained after the controversy over Binyam Mohamed, the former Guantánamo Bay detainee who sued the Government over his alleged torture.
• David Miliband disowned the Duchess of York by saying she could not “be controlled” after she made an undercover TV documentary.
• Tens of millions of pounds of overseas aid was stolen and spent on plasma televisions and luxury goods by corrupt regimes.
A series of classified messages sent to Washington by US negotiators show how information on Britain’s nuclear capability was crucial to securing Russia’s support for the “New START” deal.
Although the treaty was not supposed to have any impact on Britain, the leaked cables show that Russia used the talks to demand more information about the UK’s Trident missiles, which are manufactured and maintained in the US.
Washington lobbied London in 2009 for permission to supply Moscow with detailed data about the performance of UK missiles. The UK refused, but the US agreed to hand over the serial numbers of Trident missiles it transfers to Britain.
Professor Malcolm Chalmers said: “This appears to be significant because while the UK has announced how many missiles it possesses, there has been no way for the Russians to verify this. Over time, the unique identifiers will provide them with another data point to gauge the size of the British arsenal.”
Duncan Lennox, editor of Jane’s Strategic Weapons Systems, said: “They want to find out whether Britain has more missiles than we say we have, and having the unique identifiers might help them.”
While the US and Russia have long permitted inspections of each other’s nuclear weapons, Britain has sought to maintain some secrecy to compensate for the relatively small size of its arsenal.
William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, last year disclosed that “up to 160” warheads are operational at any one time, but did not confirm the number of missiles.
Wait the cable simply stated that US will provide Russia with notification of Trident 2 transfers to UK. There is no mention in the cable that UK government was unaware of this agreement.
But if the forces of evil should rise again, to cast a shadow on the heart of the city.
Call me. -Batman
No, it says that America has given Russia information on the missiles that Britain already has (not on new transfers), after they'd already lobbied London for permission to do so and been denied.
No it stated that US lobbied to giver Russians data on the performance of missiles and UK refused. The data to be given here are simply identifiers for the missiles not performance.
But if the forces of evil should rise again, to cast a shadow on the heart of the city.
Call me. -Batman
This is what can happen when a very important part of your nation's military is entirely beholden do another nation. Don't like it? Go build your own goddamn missiles.
That said, Obama... Seriously, man, what the fuck, over?
Goddammit, now I'm forced to say in public that I agree with Mr. Coffee. - Mike Wong
I never would have thought I would wholeheartedly agree with Coffee... - fgalkin x2
Honestly, this board is so fucking stupid at times. - Thanas GALEForceCarwash: Oh, I'll wax that shit, bitch...
Kane Starkiller wrote:No it stated that US lobbied to giver Russians data on the performance of missiles and UK refused. The data to be given here are simply identifiers for the missiles not performance.
Are you fucking stupid? Oh wait, rhetorical question.
The US hands over identifiers of every missile they have sold and will sell to the UK. This gives Russia an exact headcount of UK nuclear warhead delivery vehicles, which also gives them an exact hard number on the absolute upper limit of the UK's nuclear strike capability. As far as the performance goes, if most of the qualities of that missile are known or can be derived from observation and possible technical data, together with the number of such missiles it will paint a very, very accurate picture of what the UK's real deterrent is.
Your inability to comprehend the significance of this fact is nobody's problem but yours.
Warwolf Urban Combat Specialist
Why is it so goddamned hard to get little assholes like you to admit it when you fuck up? Is it pride? What gives you the right to have any pride?
–Darth Wong to vivftp
GOP message? Why don't they just come out of the closet: FASCISTS R' US –Patrick Degan
The GOP has a problem with anyone coming out of the closet. –18-till-I-die
Man, while the Americans might fantasize about revenge shit on Assange, I think the Brits might just about Knight him for this.
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
Edi wrote:Are you fucking stupid? Oh wait, rhetorical question.
The US hands over identifiers of every missile they have sold and will sell to the UK. This gives Russia an exact headcount of UK nuclear warhead delivery vehicles, which also gives them an exact hard number on the absolute upper limit of the UK's nuclear strike capability. As far as the performance goes, if most of the qualities of that missile are known or can be derived from observation and possible technical data, together with the number of such missiles it will paint a very, very accurate picture of what the UK's real deterrent is.
Your inability to comprehend the significance of this fact is nobody's problem but yours.
Since you didn't state anything that contradicts my own posts I don't see the need to insult me. Honestly is it just me or is this board incapable of reaching 5 posts in a thread without resorting to insults when none are warranted?
You have no idea what data about "performance" of the missile entails nor how precise it needs to be to be useful to the other side your assumptions notwithstanding.
Furthermore you completely ignored my point that cables don't reveal anything about whether UK government knew and agreed for US to give this information to the Russians. If they did agree to give that information in return for START which will benefit UK as well as US and Russia then there is no problem is there?
But if the forces of evil should rise again, to cast a shadow on the heart of the city.
Call me. -Batman
Since you didn't state anything that contradicts my own posts I don't see the need to insult me. Honestly is it just me or is this board incapable of reaching 5 posts in a thread without resorting to insults when none are warranted?
You have no idea what data about "performance" of the missile entails nor how precise it needs to be to be useful to the other side your assumptions notwithstanding.
Furthermore you completely ignored my point that cables don't reveal anything about whether UK government knew and agreed for US to give this information to the Russians. If they did agree to give that information in return for START which will benefit UK as well as US and Russia then there is no problem is there?
Dude, it's been British nuclear policy since day one not to confirm how many missiles and how many warheads we have. It is wildly unlikely that that policy would be changed out of the blue.
Keeping the number of missiles in secret along with technical parameters has been a long-standing method of strategic deception. It is a significant fact.
START benefits nobody, actually, except the nuclear arms reductionists. More nuclear weapons and less conventional weapons mean a safer world.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...
...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
How much can you ascribe to a supposed personal dislike for the UK and how much to a willingness to make hard decisions to get something important done? I'm not saying I support the decision or anything, but I'm just curious how much decision-making at this level is affected by personal feelings.
Phantasee wrote:How much can you ascribe to a supposed personal dislike for the UK and how much to a willingness to make hard decisions to get something important done? I'm not saying I support the decision or anything, but I'm just curious how much decision-making at this level is affected by personal feelings.
It's a part of a pattern.
iPod for the Queen
DVDs and plastic toy planes from the White House Gift Shop for the PM
Trident Serial Numbers
Secretary of State Clinton making rather poor comments on the Falklands
The UK is one of our closest allies around the world, and President Obama has seemed to try and snub them when convenient.
"I believe in the future. It is wonderful because it stands on what has been achieved." - Sergei Korolev
Phantasee wrote:How much can you ascribe to a supposed personal dislike for the UK and how much to a willingness to make hard decisions to get something important done? I'm not saying I support the decision or anything, but I'm just curious how much decision-making at this level is affected by personal feelings.
It's a part of a pattern.
iPod for the Queen
DVDs and plastic toy planes from the White House Gift Shop for the PM
Trident Serial Numbers
Secretary of State Clinton making rather poor comments on the Falklands
The UK is one of our closest allies around the world, and President Obama has seemed to try and snub them when convenient.
You know, when you mention the gifts with everything else...it makes you sound a bit paranoid. Like, ascribing meaningfulness to really random shit. A pattern? What is this, an Oliver Stone movie or something?
Psychic_Sandwich wrote:
Dude, it's been British nuclear policy since day one not to confirm how many missiles and how many warheads we have. It is wildly unlikely that that policy would be changed out of the blue.
The UK didn’t give exact specifics no, but the maximum number of Trident missiles it could ever have is public law in the US and isn’t that high, and it’s given its nuclear arsenal as ‘less then 160’ not that long ago. So in all reality this is only removing an ambiguity of a few weapon at most. Fuck all that it really matters since once the UK gave up nuclear gravity bombs it gave up any real uncertainty it could have maintained. Note that the Tridents are only loaded and unloaded in US ports; the UK CANNOT maintain the Trident missile itself, so the UK deterrent is now purely an extension of US capabilities and whatever the US wants to do.
In all reality the number of missiles on a deployed submarine can't be secret anyway, because you have to load them out in the open and good satellite coverage can count them going into the tubes. Knowing the total size of the UK assigned missile stockpile doesn't seem very meaningful for me really. They have more then enough to fully load one submarine, but not all of them, this was always known.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Trick the UK into going into a wasteful war in some shithole country over non-existent WMDs,
thus needlessly getting British people (soldiers) killed in a miserable waste of lives,
which later gets Tony Blair, a formerly respectable and very eloquent guy, ending up getting seen as a total loser and later getting his ass grilled,
over a wasteful ar which also does not help when the UK's economy goes down the shitter years later
Screw up their VTOLOL Joint Strike Fighter variant with CLEAR GLASS CANOPIES and fucks their carrier program, just like how MCNAMARA screwed skybolt (???)
iPod for the Queen
DVDs and plastic toy planes from the White House Gift Shop for the PM
Trident Serial Numbers
Secretary of State Clinton making rather poor comments on the Falklands
The UK is one of our closest allies around the world, and President Obama has seemed to try and snub them when convenient.
There, added some supplemental stuff to your list, Tim.
I can't believe you'd forget leading the UK into getting its own people uselessly killed in a useless war in a list of hateful things the US could do to the British.
I think Zerobamasamabinladenaramamcnamara is just continuing The Decider's policies, beginning with the aforementioned indirectly killing British people. Which is why I think Barry on the Hill should be renamed Herobamagammafuturama instead.
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
And how is the UK negatively by this. We don't have to tell the TRUTH, I mean... Hi welcome to Espionage.... The US can still provide undocumented Tridents to the UK OR inflate the number being provided to make it look like the UK is more strategically effective, and now Russia has less of a reason to justify espionage.. I imagine that if the UK has been guarding its capability for years Russia must have an intelligence program to discern their capability anyway.. Now the UK has a huge tool for misdirection.
You're welcome.
"Since when is "the west" a nation?"-Styphon "ACORN= Cobra obviously." AMT
This topic is... oh Village Idiot. Carry on then.--Havok
In light of this, and the years of kowtowing to the USA, the UK should really take a cue from one of their own romcoms, Love Actually.
Press Conference Reporter: Mr. President, has it been a good visit?
The President of the U.S.: Very satisfactory indeed. We got what we came for and our special relationship is still very special.
Press Conference Reporter: Prime Minister?
Prime Minister: I love that word "relationship". Covers all manner of sins, doesn't it? I fear that this has become a bad relationship. A relationship based on the President taking exactly what he wants and casually ignoring all those things that really matter to, erm... Britain. We may be a small country but we're a great one, too. The country of William Shakespeare, Churchill, the Beatles, Sean Connery, Harry Potter. David Beckham's right foot. David Beckham's left foot, come to that. And a friend who bullies us is no longer a friend. And since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward, I will be prepared to be much stronger. And the President should be prepared for that.
Anyway, this might be further incentive for the UK to go with France in developing SLBMs? Sarkobama!
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
Tom, the UK has no such tool for spreading disinformation. The US has it, and the US is notoriously bad at using its intelligence tools in ways that foreign nations would approve of.
Moreover, there seems to be no evidence that the British got any buy-in on this. Essentially, the US made a unilateral decision to reveal a secret, when keeping that secret was a large chunk of the British strategic posture. Even if, in theory, the secret could have been deduced by other means, that's a problem. It tends to reinforce the idea that Britain's alliance with the US is a subservient one, in which their interests can and will be compromised whenever it is convenient for the US to do so.
Then it is good that Wikileaks brought this to light then. The treachery of that rogue nation America and its deceitful acts of leaking classified British information, which may be potentially used by Britain's enemies against it, is unspeakable. Thanks to the information Wikileaks provided, particularly of such grave tactico-strategic import as matters on thermonuclear war, they may actually help save countless British lives - lives that the USA carelessly endangered by how they disseminated compromising unfiltered information to the Russians!
America is guilty of treason! Why, the way America so carelessly leaked information, I wouldn't be surprised if one day America finds itself having an unfortunate accident.
EDIT:
America leaked the identities of Britain's nuclear weapons!
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
Phantasee wrote:How much can you ascribe to a supposed personal dislike for the UK and how much to a willingness to make hard decisions to get something important done? I'm not saying I support the decision or anything, but I'm just curious how much decision-making at this level is affected by personal feelings.
It's a part of a pattern.
iPod for the Queen
DVDs and plastic toy planes from the White House Gift Shop for the PM
Trident Serial Numbers
Secretary of State Clinton making rather poor comments on the Falklands
The UK is one of our closest allies around the world, and President Obama has seemed to try and snub them when convenient.
You are making it sound like America treating its allies like dog shit is something new. Have you been hiding under a rock for the last 10 years?
"This statement, in its utterly clueless hubristic stupidity, cannot be improved upon. I merely quote it in admiration of its perfection." - Garibaldi
"Problem is, while the Germans have had many mea culpas and quite painfully dealt with their history, the South is still hellbent on painting themselves as the real victims. It gives them a special place in the history of assholes" - Covenant
"Over three million died fighting for the emperor, but when the war was over he pretended it was not his responsibility. What kind of man does that?'' - Saburo Sakai
bobalot wrote:You are making it sound like America treating its allies like dog shit is something new. Have you been hiding under a rock for the last 10 years?
This is the current US president taking a shit on a what should be our closest ally (they are not is his book apparently) for no good reason.
My working theory is that President Obama himself is naive, has a dislike for the UK (as his father's homeland was a British colony for quite some time), and he doesn't have a good enough staff to tell him "No, Mr. President, that is a bad idea."
"I believe in the future. It is wonderful because it stands on what has been achieved." - Sergei Korolev
Yeah, he's definitely making major geopolitical decisions based on the events in his father's onetime homeland, all of which occurred before he was born.
"
- PeZook
