Osbourne's 'Nuke in a Poke'?

The Pentagon is discussing not running the Trident Weapon development program past 2030 and opting for a joint USN/ USAF nuclear weapon project instead. This means if Osbourne goes ahead with the purchase of Trident 3 he could well be buying a pig in a poke.

Further problems occur if the Pentagon joint strategy goes ahead because all development on Trident 3 will stop immediately as there will be no need of it and the USN will just operate a modified Trident 2 up to 2030.

We currently just rent the Trident 2 missiles and the support teams (fueling and maintenance) from Lockheed-Martin (aka USN) they not only own the missiles but all the launch tube equipment in the UK subs.

This used to be a neat way around START and other nuclear weapon reduction treaties but now the Pentagon is not that interested in UK having 'nukes' and would rather the UK Government spent the money on UK conventional forces. The Pentagon is lobbying the US President hard to prevent the UK from getting the next generation of Trident, even if it goes ahead.

Of course unless you follow international defence issues you would never know this because the UK media are not going to cover this nor is Osbourne going to let on there may well be no Trident 3 system to purchase. Osbourne's announcement on the £500 million to be spent on nukes at Faslane is as full of holes as any other of his 'announcements' as there may well be no 'new' system to purchase.

Navy wants to work with Air force on new nukes