No slush fund for New Trident - Urgent ACTION ALERT!!!

Nuclear ballistic missile submarines are pretty easy to hide beneath the briny deep as they patrol the seven seas ready to launch their nuclear-armed missiles, each loaded with multiple (and large yield) thermonuclear warheads. Then again, it takes some slippery members of congress to hide 12 of these behemoth subs from the accepted Congressional budgetary funding method.

Our colleagues at Physicians for Social Responsibility think its time to call the newly created National Sea-Based Deterrence Fund what it is - a sham!!!

PSR opposes the nuclear modernization programs now underway in all nine nuclear weapon states. They believe it's time to stop wasting taxpayer money on modernizing these arsenals, and instead, start focusing on disarmament efforts.

The Navy plans to build a whole new fleet of 12 ballistic submarines to replace the current Trident subs. Recognizing that this is a budget buster, some members in Congress have created a new slush fund to pay for it. Instead of incorporating the funds needed for these subs in the Navy's budget, they have proposed a separate fund called the "Sea-Based Deterrence Fund". This will allow it to avoid the cap currently on all federal spending since it will cost roughly $100 billion for all 12 submarines.

Exempting ballistic missile submarines from budget caps sets a very bad precedent. The Navy needs to prioritize its budget, just like any other government agency. The money for new submarines shouldn’t be coming out of a special fund.

In fact, the Navy shouldn't be building new ballistic missile submarines at all; the President should be in active negotiations with President Putin to ramp back both nations current nuclear modernization and lead the way to disarmament!

The current House Defense Appropriations bill includes language that forbids putting any money into this Sea Based Deterrence Fund. This is a very good thing. But we are expecting an amendment on the floor to strike that language. Please ask your U.S. Representative to oppose any such amendments.

Please take action RIGHT NOW since this amendment could be voted on as early any day now. Email and tell your Representative to enforce budget discipline and encourage the Navy to live within its own means, just as it has historically been required to do.

But don't take our word for it; you can read about this in Taxpayers for Common Sense recently published "TCS analysis of National Defense Authorization bill for Fiscal Year 2016." In it TCS takes aim at the "budgetary shell game" being played here to get New Trident built at all (taxpayer) costs! Click here to download the TCS infographic shown above.

Royal Navy submariner says Trident is a nuclear “disaster waiting to happen”

NEWS RELEASE

June 1, 2015

For Immediate Release


The risk of accidental detonation of Trident nuclear missiles surfaced in recent allegations by a British submariner.

William McNeilly, an Engineering Technician Weapons Engineer Submariner for the UK's Trident II D5 Strategic Weapons System disclosed this and other allegations in a document released early last month (see McNeilly's statement at Wikileaks: https://wikileaks.org/trident-safety/)

The most serious of McNeilly's allegations is the risk of a catastrophic failure of the system's nuclear-armed missiles, the Trident II D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missile, deployed on both UK and US ballistic missile (Trident) submarines.

A Royal Navy instruction manual, referenced by McNeilly, states that the “chief potential hazard” from a live D-5 missile is “accidental ignition” of the first, second or third stage rocket motor propellant.

The thermonuclear warheads on the D-5 missile “clustered around the third stage rocket motor are at risk from a rocket motor propellant fire.” The intense heat of a rocket propellant fire would likely cause the warheads' conventional high explosives to “cook to (non-nuclear) detonation, releasing radioactive materials and aerosols over a wide area,” according to the manual.

Such an event occurring at sea would likely cause the pressure hull to rupture resulting in the catastrophic loss of the submarine and crew. The same event occurring while the submarine is in port would likely release plutonium and other radioactive substances over surrounding areas, putting base personnel and the public at substantial risk.

Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, Silverdale, Washington, where 8 of the US Navy's 14 Trident submarines are home-ported, is just 20 miles West of Seattle, and many other cities are even closer to the base. The other 6 Tridents are based at Kings Bay, Georgia.

A radiation release from Bangor would cause an increased cancer risk to people living in surrounding areas, while any attempt at cleanup would be highly problematic and run into the billions of dollars.

The risk of a Trident missile third stage rocket fire was raised in a report to Congress on nuclear weapons safety by physicist Sidney Drell in 1990. More recently, it has been highlighted by journalist Eric Schlosser, the author of a book, “Command and Control”, exposing nuclear weapons safety issues.

Schlosser spoke specifically to this same concern with the sensitive rocket propellant, saying that it is “relatively easy” to ignite. “A fire or explosion involving the third stage could cause the dispersal of plutonium - and perhaps a nuclear detonation with a small yield."

Schlosser added: "These extracts from the Royal Navy safety manual on Trident, if they are authentic, seem to confirm the danger. To my knowledge, there has never been a serious accident with a Trident missile. But improper handling, a fire, or a terrorist act could be catastrophic."

In a 2003 missile handling accident at Bangor, a ladder, accidentally left in a submarine's missile tube while the missile was being winched out, came within inches of a warhead before operators discovered the error and stopped the winching process.

Glen Milner, who won a decision in the US Supreme Court in 2011 regarding the public's right to know the dangers posed by the Navy’s Indian Island munitions facility near Port Townsend, Washington, said, “If there was a accident involving missile propellant at Bangor, it would be a disaster affecting much of the Puget Sound region, and the repercussions would be felt far beyond.”

Milner has voiced concern about the risks inherent to the D-5 missile, particularly in light of the Navy's construction of a Second Explosives Handling Wharf at Bangor. Because of the proximity of the two wharves, if two Trident submarines were being serviced simultaneously and an accidental ignition occurred on one, there is a substantial risk of the second submarine's missiles being put at risk of propellant detonation.

Captain Tom Rogers, USN Ret., a former submarine commander, explained that the Navy chose the more volatile rocket propellant in order to fit the large payload (up to eight warheads) in the available space and to ensure the missile's range requirement. Rogers calls this "Trident's dirty little secret."

Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action believes the information shared by McNeilly is in the interest of public safety, and calls on the British government to immediately release him from prison and appoint an independent board of inquiry into his allegations.

Whereas independent scientific experts in the US have previously rendered their opinion regarding the risks inherent in the Trident II D-5 missile, Ground Zero calls urges the US Congress to immediately review the earlier recommendations and conduct an inquiry into why the Navy purchased and deployed an inherently unsafe missile system.

Leonard Eiger, spokesperson for Ground Zero's NO To NEW TRIDENT Campaign, asks why, besides the serious safety concerns, the US government has continued to conduct Trident patrols at near Cold War levels in the decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall. “Trident is a Cold War relic, and the government continues to justify its existence based on an obsolete doctrine of strategic deterrence. What security is provided by a weapon system designed to hold the (then) Soviet Union under the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction? Continued deployment of Trident and progress towards a replacement fleet of ballistic missile submarines only serves to drive a new Cold War nuclear submarine arms race. It is time to scrap Trident.”

Additional References:

NUCLEAR WEAPONS SAFETY: THE CASE OF TRIDENT, in Science and Global Security, 1994

TRIDENT MISSILES NEED SAFER DESIGN, STUDY SAYS 

TRIDENT WARHEAD HAZARDS: CONSIDERATIONS AND CONSEQUENCES, Pacific Life Research Center, Compiled by Bob Aldridge

Report to Congress: Assessment of the Safety of U.S. Nuclear Weapons and Related Nuclear Test Requirements, R.E. Kidder, 1991

Contact: Leonard Eiger, Media and Outreach
Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action
www.gzcenter.org
http://www.notnt.org
subversivepeacemaking@gmail.com
(425)445-2190

Trident missile propellant a disaster in waiting

Editor's Note: Glen Milner of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action has previously written about the danger inherent in the sensitive rocket fuel used in the Navy's Trident II D-5 submarine launched ballistic missile (a "design flaw"). Now British whistleblower William McNeilly has leaked a top-secret manual in which the British Navy addresses the potential "accidental ignition" of the Trident rocket fuel and the disastrous consequences.

If submerged... goodbye submarine and crew. If an accident occurred in port, plutonium and other radioactive substances would likely contaminate surrounding areas putting the public at great risk.

On November 7, 2003 a missile handling crew preparing to unload a Trident missile from the USS Georgia accidentally left an access ladder in the missile tube when a crewmember switched on the crane, which began hoisting the missile out of the tube. The missile contacted the ladder, which punctured the nose fairing, coming within inches of the warheads and third stage rocket motor before someone noticed the error and stopped the hoist. I'll let you imagine the potential consequences had someone not stopped the hoist!!!

An insider's view of the Bangor Second Explosives Handling Wharf
where Trident missiles are loaded and off-loaded.

Finally, I have uploaded the full statement by whistleblower William McNeilly; click here to read it.

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Trident missile flaw could cause explosions and radioactive contamination, reveals whistleblower

By Rob Edwards, Originally published in HeraldScotland.com on Sunday, May 24, 2015


An INHERENT flaw in Trident missiles could lead to fires, explosions and widespread radioactive contamination, according to a top-secret safety manual leaked by the naval whistleblower, William McNeilly.

The Royal Navy's official instructions on how to take care of nuclear weapons reveal that the "chief potential hazard" from a live missile is the "accidental ignition" of solid rocket fuel.

This could cause the warheads' conventional high explosives to detonate and scatter plutonium and other toxic materials "over a wide area", it says.

The Trident D5 missile, used by both the UK and US, is designed with nuclear warheads closely wrapped around the third stage rocket motor. This has been highlighted as a design flaw by US experts in the past, but has not previously been acknowledged by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

The results of a rocket fuel fire at sea or on land could be "catastrophic" for submariners and the public, critics warned last night. The MoD, however, said it had to train for every scenario "no matter how extreme and unlikely".

McNeilly, as well as alleging 30 Trident security and safety concerns in an 18-page dossier revealed by the Sunday Herald last weekend, says he filmed the weapons safety manual on his smartphone. Code-named CB8890, it is a book kept in a safe in the submarine missile control centre, he says.

Extracts quoted by McNeilly disclose that the warheads "clustered around the third stage rocket motor are at risk from a rocket motor propellant fire". Exposed to heat, the warheads' conventional high explosives "could cook to (non-nuclear) detonation, releasing radioactive materials and aerosols over a wide area," the manual says.

If warhead containment is breached, "several radioactive and/or toxic materials may be exposed to the atmosphere," it says. "These include plutonium, uranium, lithium compounds, tritium gas and beryllium. If mixed with water, fumes or toxic gases will be generated."

The navy manual paints a dramatic picture of what could happen. "The chief potential hazard associated with a live missile is the accidental ignition of the first, second or third stage rocket motor propellant," it says.

"If this were to happen in the missile tube with the muzzle hatch shut and locked, the pressure hull and bulkheads of the missile compartment would burst within a matter of seconds," it continues.

"The missile contains a number of subsidiary propulsive and ordnance items that could cause damage to the missile and/or release toxic gases into the missile compartment if initiated prematurely. In some cases, this could also result in ignition or detonation of one of the rocket motors."

The manual also warns that warheads could be ruptured by an accident and cause "radioactive contamination." Serious damage "could also result from a successful terrorist attack", it says.

The risk of a third stage rocket fire was raised in a report on nuclear weapons safety by the eminent physicist, Sidney Drell, for a US congressional committee in 1990. More recently, it has been highlighted by Eric Schlosser, the US author of a book, Command and Control, exposing safety problems with nuclear weapons.

He pointed out that Trident's solid rocket fuel was a high-energy propellant that was "relatively easy" to ignite. "The conventional explosives used in the American and British warheads designed for Trident are vulnerable to fire," he said.

"The third stage of the missile - where the warheads surround the rocket motor, instead of sitting on top of it - combines both risks. A fire or explosion involving the third stage could cause the dispersal of plutonium - and perhaps a nuclear detonation with a small yield."

Schlosser added: "These extracts from the Royal Navy safety manual on Trident, if they are authentic, seem to confirm the danger. To my knowledge, there has never been a serious accident with a Trident missile. But improper handling, a fire, or a terrorist act could be catastrophic."

Peter Burt from the Nuclear Information Service, which is critical of nuclear weapons, pointed out that Trident was designed 40 years ago to deliver a huge destructive force to the maximum range possible. Mounting the warheads next to a rocket motor was "a short cut which has created an inherent design flaw and drastically increased the risks from an accident involving the missile," he said.

The MoD stressed that the Royal Navy had safely operated the nuclear deterrent for over 40 years without a nuclear weapons accident. "This is a safety record it is vital to maintain, which is precisely why we prepare and train for every scenario no matter how extreme and unlikely," said a spokesman.

But the SNP's new defence spokesman in Westminster and MP for Argyll and Bute, Brendan O'Hara, thought that the new revelations would shock the public. "It makes for very chilling reading and reinforces just how dangerous these weapons are," he said.

"It starkly lays out what could potentially happen in various scenarios all of which would be catastrophic for the crew and potentially the public, with the release of radiation."

Original article URL:  http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/trident-missile-flaw-could-cause-fires-explosions-and-radioactive-contamination-revea.1432463191

Activists Make Statement at Nuke Base: Our Children Deserve Better!

Activists briefly blockaded the entrance to a West Coast nuclear weapons base in a statement against U.S. Nuclear modernization efforts on the eve of Mothers Day.

On Saturday, April 9, 2015 anti-nuclear weapons activists gathered at the main entrance gate to Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, Silverdale, Washington, home to eight of the nation's fourteen OHIO Class (Trident) ballistic missile submarines. Carrying signs saying “Our children deserve better”, five protesters walked into the roadway and blocked traffic entering the base. Washington State Patrol officers moved in and escorted the protesters off the roadway.

Anthony DeLorenzo, Seattle, WA; Tom Karlin, Tacoma, WA; Mona Lee, Seattle, WA; Brenda McMillan, Port Townsend, WA; and Alice Zillah, Olympia, WA were cited for being in the roadway illegally, released and escorted back to the designated protest zone where others were protesting. Other activists on the overpass over the entrance road held a large banner that read: "Abolish Nuclear Weapons."

The Mothers Day eve protest and nonviolent direct action was an annual event held by Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action at the Bangor Trident base. This year's event was held at a time when the U.S. Government continues to modernize its nuclear weapons, their delivery systems and the infrastructure that builds and maintains them at a cost estimated at roughly a trillion dollars over the next three decades. At the same time nations are meeting at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in New York.

Brenda McMillan being escorted off the roadway

As Leonard Eiger, spokesperson for the NO To NEW TRIDENT Campaign put it, “We can't have it both ways. The rhetoric coming out of The White House is simply not in accord with good faith negotiations towards total nuclear disarmament as required by the NPT. Our nation's actions, rather than slowing nuclear proliferation, are driving it and creating a new nuclear arms race.”

Alice Zillah (left) and Anthony Delorenzo awaiting their citations

Eiger points out that the U.S. Navy's plans for a new fleet of ballistic missile submarines, costing nearly $100 billion in construction, is at the center of the rapidly developing submarine nuclear arms race. “The U.S. has deployed Trident at near Cold War levels since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Do we seriously think that other nations have not taken notice of this?”

In a statement announcing the Mothers Day eve action event organizer Mona Lee said that, “The world's children deserve better than to struggle to live under the threat of a renewed nuclear arms race. Increasing militarization steals resources desparately needed to mitigate global warming and improve living conditions worldwide.”

Event co-organizer Mona Lee

Ground Zero Center calls on the U.S. government to change course on Trident and its overall nuclear posture, and begin to live up to its obligations as a member of the United Nations and as a signatory to the NPT. Anything less is a theft of our children's future.

The Trident submarine base at Bangor, just 20 miles from Seattle, contains the largest concentration of operational nuclear weapons in the US arsenal. Each of the 8 Trident submarines at Bangor carries up to 24 Trident II (D-5) missiles, each capable of being armed with as many as 8 independently targetable thermonuclear warheads. Each nuclear warhead has an explosive force of between 100 and 475 kilotons (up to 30 times the force of the Hiroshima bomb). It has been estimated that by the time the new generation of ballistic missile submarines are put into service, they will represent 70 percent of the nation's deployed nuclear warheads.

Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action is currently engaged in legal actions in Federal court to halt the Navy’s construction of an unnecessary Second Explosives Handling Wharf at Bangor. Ground Zero's NO To NEW TRIDENT Campaign (notnt.org) is working with other organizations to de-fund the Navy’s plans for the next generation ballistic missile submarine, also known as the OHIO Class Replacement or SSBN(X).

For over thirty-seven years Ground Zero has engaged in education, training in nonviolence, community building, resistance against Trident, and action toward a world without nuclear weapons.

Contact: Leonard Eiger, Media and Outreach
Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action
www.gzcenter.org
subversivepeacemaking@gmail.com
(425)445-2190

Another vision of "Apocalypse" by Kate Hudson

Editor's Note: In the United Kingdom there is open and significant debate about whether to build a replacement fleet of Trident ballistic missile submarines to replace their current fleet of four Tridents. Interestingly enough, the British Tridents carry U.S. designed and built Trident II D-5 missiles just as the 14 Trident subs in the U.S. fleet. What is noteworthy is that there is absolutely NO public debate about whether we should build the 12 Trident replacements currently in research and development by the U.S. Navy. The only "debate", and it is not much of a debate, is how to fund the massive, budget-busting $100 construction price tag!!!

Trident is a bad idea, no matter on which side of The Pond one resides (or for the rest of the world for that matter). It is a Cold War relic, a first-strike tool of mass destruction beyond anyone's worst imagination. Should just one of those subs unleash just one missile (with it's multiple thermonuclear-armed warheads) it would mean instant death for upwards of a hundreds of thousands to a million (or possibly more) people in a large city. Of course, that is not how it will likely work should Trident actually be used. Even a limited nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, still a possible scenario) would mean the end of civilization as we know it; a humanitarian disaster incomparable in human history.

As debate intensifies about the future of Britain's nuclear weapons, it's worth remembering that Trident isn't just an increasingly unpopular, expensive status symbol - it is also a weapon of mass destruction. Britain's own stockpile could kill hundreds of millions of people and current global nuclear weapons stocks have the capacity to destroy human civilization and the environment many times over.

We who resist Trident here in the U.S., and work to prevent a new generation of Trident, support our colleagues in the UK as they push for "Bairnes [children] Not Bombs!" This struggle is a global one, and we can only hope that (as the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference continues at the UN) the voice of the people will drown out the voices of the nuclear weapons status quo. The world can ill afford it.

Dr. Kate Hudson, who wrote the following article, is General Secretary of the UK-based Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).

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Visions of Apocalypse

By Dr. Kate Hudson, published in The Huffington Post UK, May 6, 2015

Yet this truth does not really figure in the current debates over Trident in the way that it has in the past. It seems as if we know it in the abstract, but the knowledge of that no longer holds the same terror, the same imminent sense of destruction beyond our control, that it held in decades gone by.

Perhaps the reality of modern day warfare and our extensive exposure to it via our screen-dominated culture has inured us to the potential horrors of nuclear use, whether by accident or design. Scenes from Fallujah or Gaza are far more immediate than the risk of nuclear Armageddon. As deaths through small arms reach exponential proportions, discussion of nuclear bomb deaths from seventy years ago seem like ancient history to the younger generation. And when it comes to end-of-history scenarios, climate change with its tsunamis and extreme weather events, or risk of mass starvation, global pandemics or mass population movements, seem much more powerful, indeed already present.

A message you don't see on buses in the U.S.

Our vision of the apocalypse, simultaneously terrifying and compelling, has shifted to these seemingly more contemporary threats which have certainly taken over the fear factor in popular culture - as I'll be discussing in a session on 'Visions of Apocalypse' at HowTheLightGetsIn festival in May. And these threats have displaced earlier preoccupations with the impact of atomic science, whether through weapons use or experimentation, through blast, radiation or mutation. During the Cold War, fear of the bomb and fear of the unknown impact of scientific experimentation took hold on people's imaginations. Then as now, film was a mirror of society's anxieties, and Hollywood paved the way with the developing science fiction genre. Them!, directed by Gordon Douglas in 1954 featured giant radioactive ants on the rampage, the result of an atomic test in New Mexico. Stanley Kramer's On the Beach, a 1959 film adaptation of the novel by Neville Shute, was set after a nuclear apocalypse as a group of people await death from radiation.


This film affected audiences strongly and a subsequent generation was equally affected by Threads and When the Wind Blows. No doubt, if viewed today, they would not have the same impact. Yet the same reality would ensue, if nuclear weapons were used. Radioactive fallout would render parts, if not all, of the planet uninhabitable. There would be no place to run to, no place to hide; in the event of a nuclear war, you may escape the blast but you cannot shut the door on radiation. It will poison and destroy, bringing sickness, cancers, birth deformities and death. No one is exempt.

That is what makes nuclear weapons uniquely terrible, and a foretaste of that is already with us, not only through the experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the catastrophic health and environmental impacts of nuclear weapons testing, but also through the fallout from nuclear power disasters at Chernobyl, Fukushima and elsewhere.

When we debate Trident's future, we would do well to recognise that although we no longer live in direct fear of nuclear weapons, as the older ones of us may remember from the Cold War, the risk and threat still remain as powerful as ever. The nuclear danger has not dissipated, the weapons are still there, and unless they are dispensed with, we may all yet disappear into a mushroom cloud of our worst imagining.

Kate will be speaking at HowTheLightGetsIn, the world's largest philosophy and music festival, running from 21st May - 31st May in association with The Huffington Post UK.

Follow Dr Kate Hudson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kate4peace2015

Article source URL:  http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-kate-hudson/trident_b_7223612.html

Shadows and Ashes: Remembering Dorothy Day

"They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war any more." Isaiah 2:4

I'm at the Isaiah Wall that is directly across the street from the United Nations building. It is 8:30 AM, and across the street delegates to the NPT Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference are entering the building as it begins its second day.

Police vans are pulling and making their preparations for the expected onslaught of nuclear abolitionists who will soon arrive for the 9:30 vigil here and the subsequent nonviolent direct action at the US Mission to the United Nations just down the block.

The sun is shining and the tree in front of the Isaiah Wall is bursting with the beauty of Spring. In an instant all this could disappear in a blinding flash and, quite ironically, Isaiah's words just might remain while every living thing around it would be vaporized or incinerated, the shadows created from their ash etched into the stone surface.

The letters etched into the stone of the wall are a relatively permanent reminder of the words of the prophet Isaiah who, like most prophets, have been ignored through the centuries by leaders of so many nations and those who follow them blindly into the madness of war.

Yet many people have resisted and called humanity to something better. As I walked up the steps circling up by the wall I saw, at the top of the stairs, an icon of the Cold War - the days of duck and cover, of bomb shelters and mutually Assured Destruction. It was a rusting fallout shelter sign over a nondescript door.

It was a stark reminder of my childhood, when students at my elementary school would walk from the school roughly a mile or two to the nearest official fallout shelter during the many Civil Defense drills held in those days.

It was also a reminder of Dorothy Day and other resisters who, during the Cold War, refused to enter the fallout shelters in New York during the drills, and were arrested for doing so. 

Yes, this actually is a photo (taken with an ancient iPhone) I took
 this morning above a doorway overlooking the Isaiah Wall.

 Some of the participants in today's action will engage in active resistance to the nuclear weapons policies of the US, and in the spirit of Dorothy Day and so many others, blocking the entrances to the US Mission to the United Nations, risking arrest for their actions. The name of today's action is "SHADOWS AND ASHES: Direct Action for Nuclear Disarmament."

We go forward together this morning in the spirit of nonviolence, with Isaiah's words etched on our hearts. May those words reach those gathered at the UN, and may we beat our swords into plowshares, and may we make war no more!

Damn the funding; it's full speed ahead for New Trident

Editor's Note: This just in from the Russian media (as if we didn't know already) - Congress will be sure to find the money to build the full complement of 12 new ballistic missile submarines currently in research and development by the Navy. Of course, they are doing it outside the normal budgetary process so as to not sink the Navy's shipbuilding budget. What that old expression about having their cake and eating it too???  

Of course, Congress is being soooooo fiscally responsible these days in its slashing of unnecessary spending - like cutting food stamps, deeper cuts to Medicaid, ending the Affordable Health Care Act's subsidies, and that's just for starters. Of course those tax cuts for the 1% are absolutely critical to get the economy jump-started!!! After all, many of those one percenters are running the huge weapons makers like General Dynamics, whose Electric Boat division will likely end up profiting handsomely from its contract to build the Navy's new ballistic missile subs.

The problem is that subsidizing huge weapons makers is NOT the kind of economic stimulus the country needs. And in the case of New Trident, it's something the world does not need. The continuing deployment of Trident and plans for a new generation sends a clear message to the Russians that they need to keep up with the US, and that is just what they are doing. So while the US and it's nuclear dance partner keep playing this dangerous game, other nations are also upgrading their memberships in the nuclear club. And that's definitely NOT good!!!

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New Nuclear Sub's Funding to Start on Time Despite Media Reports - US Navy

Sputnik International (sputniknews.com), March 25, 2015

Earlier in March, media reported that the US Navy and Congress had not managed to find the funds to pay for the procurement of the Ohio Replacement Program, in charge of replacing the aging Ohio-class submarines with 12 more advanced subs.

MOSCOW (Sputnik), Alexander Mosesov — Procurement funding for the US next-generation strategic nuclear submarine will start in 2017 as expected, despite earlier media reports claiming the funds have not been found yet, a US Navy spokeswoman told Sputnik on Wednesday.

Compared to its predecessor — the third-generation Ohio-class strategic nuclear submarine, which was built from 1976 till 1997 — the fourth-generation replacement submarine is expected to feature fewer launch tubes, state-of-the-art sonar, optical imaging and weapons control systems, a new electric drive and a nuclear fuel core able to power the ship for its entire service life.

"[Advanced] procurement for the Navy's top programmatic priority, the Ohio replacement program, begins… in fiscal year 2017 and leading to the procurement of the first boat construction in fiscal year 2021," Nicole Schwegman told Sputnik.

The first replacement submarine is expected to cost $12,4 billion, including $4,8 billion in design and engineering costs and $7,6 billion in construction costs. The first submarine is expected to enter service in 2031.

As of 2015, Russia is the world's only country with fourth-generation strategic nuclear submarines in service — the Borey-class submarines, which are to become the mainstay of the naval component of Russia's strategic nuclear deterrent.

Original Source URL:  http://sputniknews.com/military/20150325/1020001327.html