On 23 Dec 2003 16:07:42 GMT, Alistair Gunn wrote:
In sci.military.naval John twisted the electrons to say:
UK trident-II missiles can 8 475kT warheads ...

Operative word there being *can* - by all accounts, they only carry 3
warheads per missile. This being done to defuse the peace-niks in the UK
by saying it's not a massive upgrade over Polaris because it only has the
same number of warheads ...

Possibly. Another interpretation is that it's in continuation of
british policy of getting bad value for money in military equipment.
Another example of the same policy is the MRAV armoured vehicle:
Britain spent large amounts of money developing an 8x8 wheeled
vehicle (why? there are plenty of others on the market, and its a
mature technology so no big breakthroughs are possible), then
decided it didn't want the thing after all.

The UK has very small armed forced considering the size of the
country's defence budget. Compare the UK (Population 59
million, spends 2.5% of GDP on arms) ordering 220 Typhoons whereas
Sweden (population 9 million, spends 2% of GDP on arms) can order
almost as many (204) Gripens. Even taking into account that Britain
spends a larger proportion of its defense budget on its navy, and
the Typhoon's unit cost is larger than the Gripen's, there's
something wrong here.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: , but first subtract 275 and reverse
the last two letters).