Alba Party have called on the UK Government to scrap the Trident Nuclear weapons programme before “disaster” strikes.
Alba’s comments come as Trident-carrying submarine HMS Vengeance was spotted returning to its base on the Clyde recently, completing a patrol that lasted nearly seven months – over double the period the crews are expected to undertake.
Vengeance was last observed sailing out to patrol on 29th August last year, making its patrol length an eye-watering 201 days long.
Alba Party’s General Secretary Chris McEleny, a former defence worker, says that a seven month patrol is extremely dangerous for a Vanguard submarine and that “serious questions need to be asked as to how unsafe the stretched to breaking point submarines are.”
McEleny says that the record for the longest patrol is 207 days, which HMS Victorious achieved in 2021. He says that in the last three years, the average time at sea for a Vanguard Class submarine has been 163 days—a huge increase from the 3-month standard of the past.
Commenting, Alba Party General Secretary Chris McEleny said:
“Vanguard was laid down the week after I was born and now obsolete DVD players hadn’t even yet been invented when Vengeance was launched. These Submarines are long past their safe life span and quite clearly something is seriously wrong if they are being stretched to breaking point by being left out on patrol for seven months. Not only is this unacceptable for the well-being of the submariners, it is simply not safe to have such lengthy patrols.
Ridding Scotland of weapons of mass destruction is a priority that may only be realised with independence but if the UK Government had any fiscal sense or moral compass they would scrap Trident. For some this may be an abstract point of principle but for people living in Inverclyde, we look at the submarines going out to and returning from patrol. It’ll cost over £200 Billion to renew trident whilst one in four children are living in poverty and families are going hungry. We don’t want the best defended foodbank in the world, we want Trident scrapped, Scotland to be free of Nuclear weapons and the money to be spent improving our society as opposed to paying for weapons that can destroy it.”
Nonsense. They are there to deter. Keeping everyone safe.
The question that needs to be asked is why the longer deployments. If it is because the vessels are coming back in really bad states then we do have an issue, a failure could happen. The crews don’t deserve that risk and the nation can’t afford the loss of even one of them.
If the MOD answers that the risk level hasn’t increased then its a non story.
Not sure that question does need to be asked. She went out on patrol – she returned. Perhaps in need of a bit a a scrub down, the crew in need of some leave and a little maintenance. No surprise there. There will be an optimum number of days at sea – and they might make adjustments (or maybe not).
It’s the length of the deployment that raises questions. If all is fine then nothing to see here move on, but not asking questions is putting our defence at risk.
If they are aging faster than expected and extra risks are having to be taken to keep the 365 coverage then maybe the replacements need to be speed up.
Nothing to see here let’s move on. CASD can and will be maintained.
Not sure I follow your logic. You say that…Longer deployments might be because the vessels are coming back in really bad states? If they did and poor condition was because of a long deployment, surely RN would switch to shorter deployments?
Depends if they can. We know due to cost cutting every maintainance being undertaken across the navy is taking way longer than years before and so can’t send another boat out if they aren’t ready.
And I want to win the lottery, I think we will both be disappointed.
Who do these people thinks keep them safe? who died for their freedoms? do they even know or care?
Alba what or a whole? Nobody gives a****
Well put.
Who or what are Alba?
Never heard of it/them!
One only needs to ask two questions. Firstly, if the UK abandons its Nukes, in the event of nuclear blackmail from the Russians, could the UK rely totally on the backing of some other Western Power? If not, can you ever envisage the likes of Russia and North Korea abandoning their nukes? If you answer NO to both questions then you leave the UK at the mercy of the Putins of this world. Also, if you do secretly rely on others for nuclear protection then you become the worst of hypocrites.
There’s already talk about the UK replacing the American nuclear umbrella for NATO because of this risk (ie. Can you really trust the Americans to counter with nuclear weapons when an ally is attacked?).
Cancelling Trident would be an act of self-sabotage on par with Suez and Brexit.
Brexit?
Has the U.K. being doing much better since brexit. Nope. Where was all the control immigration, world wide economy to enter blah blah blah. Nowhere. The pound lost value and exporting to the biggest trading bloc got harder.
If there are any positives let me know.
Sure. Brexit got rid of David Cameron and Osborne. Architects of the disastrous 2010 defence review. The brexit vote stopped anti nuclear, anti NATO, pro another Scottish referendum Jeremy Corbyn from winning the last election. Given the pre brexit rhetoric about economic disaster, I think we have done pretty well. That brexit cliff edge turned out be about 4ft high. Covid and a major war in Ukraine and the pound has held up better than alot of currencies, according to Bloomberg. Its certainly true its lost value but that’s being going on since 2008. If you take a look at… Read more »
We’ve got to move on from blaming everything on Brexit, it happened, th people democratically voted and the nation has to. Look forward, no backwards
What would NATO and the rest of the free world think of us? Weak ineffective and if no military worth and best just left out of everything.we’ll be a third world tier three military nation at the level of the Canadian navy
And if you could rely on the backing of another Western power would Alba be condemning them for retaining their nuclear deterrent? It’s a wonder these people can even dress themselves.
Putin would throw the party of the century if the U.K ditched the CASD.
We get it. You don’t like British nuclear weapons and you’ll roll out any old excuse to say they should be abolished.
Scrapping them isn’t an option. I wouldn’t trust the US to have our backs if we were under threat. That special relationship is only special when the US benefit from it.
I’ve lived in the US 18 years and have heard the term special relationship used exactly zero times. Nobody here knows what it is. It’s just used by POTUS here and there to placate the British.
It’s not even than…can you really expect any nation to hold to a treaty when to do so will trigger the assured total destruction of your nation. after all in reality the NATO treat does not require the three NATO nuclear powers to respond with Nuclear weapons against a nuclear attack on another NATO member…..we and the U.S. and France all retain a level ambiguity and do not have a no first use posture ( only china of the five powers have a no first use posture) we state they would or could be used as a weapon of last… Read more »
The Alba party is headed up by Alex Salmond. In 2019, Police Scotland arrested Salmond, he was charged with 14 offences – including two counts of attempted rape, nine of sexual assault, two of indecent assault and one of breach of the peace. He was found not guilty after a lengthy Scottish trial. In a widely criticised development, Salmond then moved to Russia for three years. Working for the Russian state television outlet RT, formerly known as “Russia Today”, Salmond produced vitriolic anti-English, pro-Scottish independence propaganda which was broadcasted as “The Alex Salmond show” What a surprise to read here… Read more »
I don’t think he moved to Russia for 3 years. He had a show on RT for an. Few years until he cancelled it when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Can you say where you saw that he lived in Russia? I couldn’t find anything
Why do you drag up the sexual offences charges. As you say he was found not guilty.
Well this IS click bait at its best.
Agreed 👍
Worthwhile if it provides an opportunity to remind everyone of the strong connections our armed services have built with local communities and schools – but that’s not Alba’s point. They wish to embrace moral superiority as have many others across western Europe and beyond who can do so as long as the U.S.A.is on hand ready to intervene. Not on my dollar?
It worked😂😂😂
I have noticed this website has a bias of publishing views or comments from the fringe parties in Scotland. Several clickbait stories in the past few months have appeared on here.
Well the site owner is based in Scotland and it’s normally to do with defence.
I’m sure if the Cornwall alliance or the Yorkshire separators were putting out scrap trident messages as much as the groups covered it would be newsworthy
Unlike the Cornish National Party, the Yorkshire Party is for devolution, not independence, and not of defence in any case. A search for Defence on their website brings up no documents. I’m sure having the least defence industrial spend of any region, Yorkshire would like a little more involvement in MOD’s levelling up agenda, but the Yorkshire Party don’t seem to have any defence policy at all. Not even that.
Quite
The whole party? Enough said.
God preserve us from idiots. Let’s keep the bombers just in case though.
Although the one serious point is that these patrols are crazy long as it is essentially being operated on a two boat system as the other two are out of service for maintenance.
What happens if there is a major fault on one of the two boats?
What is this doing to crew retention or are they being massively bonused to do this?
CASD is too important for security for margins to be paper thin.
The delay is in getting Vanguard back in the loop. She has now completed all her post refit trials,testing and work up package. She will now probably have a maintenance period, with the crew coming back away on leave.
Once the maintenance period is over She will sail on a pre deployment work up and then sail on patrol. Expect that to be anytime in the next 8-10 weeks. All things being equal the three boats should then revert to a 10-12 week patrol cycle.
I really hope so.
CASD is soooo important in these strange times.z
Yes it’s a bit of a concern, but does that mean in the future we need a 5 boat deterrent or do we just need to make sure we replace the boats in a more timely way…..
do we need a more diffused deterrent…say 2 smaller boats at sea at all times with 8 missiles each…that way we could more safely graduate the strategic response…we could probably maintain that with 6-7 smaller boats….or maybe we need an air launched strategic system like the French as well as the CASD.
Vanguard boats only carry 8 trident any way so you would not really be downscaling.
So The Govt says, not necessarily true though is it? It’s not as if you can go and check that they are only carting 8 missiles. The same applies to the number of warheads each missile has.
That’s not true, 2010 nuclear posture was that only 8 missiles each with 5 warheads would be carried…that posture changed in 2021..the UK upped its number of available warheads and made the statement that in future it would not be published how many missiles and warheads would be carried…to increase ambiguities around the exact level of threat the UK strategic deterrent held at any specific time…so you and I do not know how many missiles and warheads are on the boats at present…very few people will know.
Hi mate, 4 works perfectly well if they are maintained iaw their schedules and replaced when they should be.
Messers Cameron band Osbourne caused this by trying to save £750 million short term in the late 00s, delaying the start of the Dreadnought build cycle.
The original intention going back Polaris was 5, boats which is the optimum minimum number to allow for maintenance, refit etc and some contingency.
IMHO the logical move would be to add a 5th Dreadnought, and I suspect that if we did, then French honeur would make them do likewise. So 10 European SSBN matches Russia and would be even more effective if we coordinated our boats refit schedules etc.
With 10 SSBN you can actually have 3 at sea on a joint rotation, sometimes it would be RN2/MN1 followed by RN1/MN2 and so on.
If we went to six each would that allow three at sea with a good safety margin and the ability to switch to four for a couple of years with rising tension?
I think at the moment that could be popular in both countries and now is the time to add two to the order.
This would have to be conditional on an increase to the total budget of course.
Announce to the public we are going to need to half the NI and tax cuts to increase the defence budget. Not going to get many complaints when there is a war on with a nuclear power.
Five would work well and they may last a bit longer. Really fitting an extra one in build schedule perhaps could be done and it may allow more SSNs to be built quicker after.
I want more spend on conventional deterrence, not nuclear. We want to spend money in a way that we deter threats if possible and fight only if that fails. However, if we fight, we fight to win. Nuclear deterrence is different. We can’t afford to fight a nuclear war. Nuclear isn’t war that you can win, just a binary last-ditch action. So it doesn’t matter how “well” we can fight it. The only thing that matters is have we a credible deterrent or not. As long as we can maintain a continous nuclear deterrent, the effect of four, five or… Read more »
Perhaps his point should be taken on board, and one or two more Dreadnoughts built. Maybe three more. That should help address his supposed concerns.
On a more serious note though….. Alba party. Headed by Alex Salmond, a Putin mouthpiece on Russia Today who never calls for Russian disarmament. He should take a trip to Bucha to see what society is like when the Russians come calling.
Child poverty is not an easy subject to completely grasp as some think. Having seen child disadvantage as a professional, it has more complex causation that finance alone. To see child poverty once again wheeled out in debates as a sort of unanswerable argument is dispiriting. It trivialises much. Some very nasty regimes who care less about us and our children, and not at all about the world, in general have lots of nuclear weapons. One has to notice the well meaning only ever appeal to those who will listen, never those who won’t regardless of how many children are… Read more »
Scrap the unaffordable Welfare System which is killing the UK and get those lazy spongers into real work so they can keep themselves rather than others working to do so, folks working should NOT need help from the state to live. Then the state will have money to do as needed, who’s first duty id to defend the population. Alex S needs to do one as he and his like have never done anything positive and without the dosh from South of the Border Scotland would be on its knees in seconds. They get more per head than any other… Read more »
Doubt scrapping welfare system is a vote winner. Lots of angry pensioners. For anyone working whose income is low the top up benefits are small and don’t allow a comfortable life. For unemployed basic benefit is £300 a month. That’s barely enough for food and electric. Housing benefit is mostly due to the lack of housing. Disability benefits are for people who can’t work. The welfare has been cut for anyone working age over the past 14 years with more checks and hoops to get through. Is it perfect? No but I can’t think of any first world country that… Read more »
Scrap the welfare system and pay it to the criminal justice system instead?
Welfare benefits are the price the rich pay to minimise riots and burglaries. Perhaps you’d publish your address so the desperate will know who to rob. Why not? Your MP’s house is easy enough to find. One reason why your “policy” won’t get off the ground.
Hi Jon, have read your polemic on my post about Civilian Ferries ⛴️ Scotland. And just so you know, Smartphone would seem to have been Subjected-to Over-the-Internet Interfering With Messaging for getting on for Three (3) Years, continuing to the Present Time, It would seem. Reference your post on Criminality and Criminal Justice System versus Benefits Claimants and the Costings for the Various Welfare Budgeting of the UK Government with Reserved Powers over and above what Devolution achieves ~ It would seem that there are some in the British (UK) Population, Generally, whom have had Difficulties in their Working Years… Read more »
Pointing out that I find random capitalisation hard to read is hardly polemic. Sorry to hear about your smartphone woes. Of course there are other reasons for paying benefits, and I believe in a just and ethical society we should be doing so regardless. I’m well aware that many years of work can be interspersed with periods where for whatever reason somebody can’t work, and it’s a practical concern that they be helped in order to find their way back into work. I also believe in more universal and fewer means-tested benefits. However, for those who think welfare is scrounging,… Read more »
I do hope Alba manage to get their act together and get a reasonable vote share as Scottish politics really needs a rebalance…at present the independence vote is highly focused on one party but the unionist vote is split between two…it would make Scotland a bit more representative if there were two main independent parties and two main unionist parties.
It can all change at election time. The SNP increased its seats a lot and can probably lose them just as easily
Pretty certain they will but not to Alba, Labour are gunning for them and the best they can do it is come up with “Vote SNP to make Scotland Tory Free”.
As for how they lost the plot it’s just incompetence, scandal followed by more of the same.
It’s not about the SNP losing seats to Alba, that will not happen…but it’s about vote share in contested seats..Sometimes even a few votes can make all the difference…where you have a SNP Labour contest a few hundred votes going to the tories could mean an SNP victory and a few hundred votes to Alba could give Labour the win….it’s the same with the SNP Tory seats…..
So I would love to see Alba get stronger.
I think as much as folks love to think all multiculturalism etc yousf will I think lose votes. He’s had some questionable decisions and some people just don’t like brown people.
To be honest I think the key issue for the SNP is that many Scottish people now think the Labour Party can win an election…and what many of them want is to not have a Tory government…plus the fact the SNP have spent a lot more money than every other UK government and have simply not got the results you would expect.
Well Alba is entitled to its view even if it is a little party in U.K. politics. While it’s a lovely idea that everyone in the world gets rid of Nukes and lives in peace unfortunately the reality is different. Ukraine got rid of its nukes and look what happened there. No country is going to get rid of there’s now and most who don’t have them will want them. For them to say the long patrols are dangerous and shouldn’t happen goes against their stance on keeping the nukes out of Scotland. While the subs are out the nukes… Read more »
Given that the Putin regime openly boasts of obtaining influence on both sides of the pond, you gotta wonder sometimes what are the dirty little secrets they have, or slush funds, and understand the influence that sort of thing can have. Ditto China as the UK Gov is slowly waking up about.
Totally agree about the length of time on patrol, it’s a national disgrace, the result of defence cutbacks and a disastrously long maintenance program. As for not having a nuclear deterrent can someone explain to the uninitiated of what happens when your enemy has nuclear weapons and your county doesn’t? For those who can’t figure out the answer ask the Ukrainians?
ALBA?? Are any of these people actually IN Government or been elected? No I didn’t think so! I am sure the people of Barrow and Faslane will be very interested in your comments and make sure they do NOT vote for you!
The answer is no I’m a Scot but raised in England and if you want someone to have good belly laugh just ask them how they think ALBA will do in the next GE.
No one has ever been elected on an ALBA ticket, just defectors and has been wind bags.
Why give a platform to such drivel?
Ignoring Alba’s rant, the point about the number of boats is important.
Beyond that, I’m not sure if the UK shouldn’t consider having an extra way for delivering nuclear weapons.
The French don’t only rely on their 20+ old nuclear subs.
Someone appears to be commenting on a subject they have no clue about. That just makes the comment by Alba Party’s General Secretary, Chris McEleny, noise.
If he believes the ship is too old, I’m sure the people of Scotland will fund a shiney new one for the people of the UK.
Well, Ex-Marine, Just Out of Curiosity, Exactly Where might Any “Shiney New Ship” Be BUILT?? The Present Time Scottish Government with Control of Decision Making through the Holyrood Parliament, Edinburgh Scotland would seem to be RATHER HAPHAZARD in reference to Consideration of the Distant From Scottish CENTRAL BELT POLITICS AND (ULTIMATELY) LEVERS OF POWER Remotely Located Hebridean/Orcadian/Shetland ISLES that It would seem majority of ISLANDERS NEED TO DEPART FROM OR RETURN TO BY (CAR/COACH/HAULAGE/Foot-Passenger/Motor-Cycle/Pedal-Cycle/ETC.) MOTOR FERRIES ~ That Would Seem To Have VERY LENGTHY TIMESCALES FOR REPLACEMENT TENDERING With Deliveries being Subject-to SNAGGING POLICIES ~ As At Present: Civilian FERRIES… Read more »
Your use of random capitalisation makes your post considerably harder to read. Just so you know.
Yaaaaaawn….
its amazing to me how anyone can see whats happened to ukraine and say ‘yeah we should give up our nuclear weapons too!’. how does someone with such poor IQ and logic make it that far in life? even bill clinton came out and said one of his biggest regrets as president was getting ukraine to get rid of their nuclear weapons.
I seem to recall that Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons voluntarily. That didn’t end well for Ukraine. There’s a lesson to be learned from that experience.
Of course Alba raises concern because they are nationalists and totally anti UK and Anti Westminster. If they had their way they would have the Vanguards barred from Scotland. But they would be quite happy to have them as a deterrent if it stopped Putin from attacking Scotland.
You could, theoretically, rid Scotland, even the UK of nukes, but Russia & China will never get rid of theirs. So do you want to live in a free democracy or become another province of Russia or the CCP?
You’d never be able to speak your mind, criticise your rulers, worship freely & your neighbours & friends would be duty bound to report any infraction or dissent. Everything you do online will be monitered & resticted.You’d live in fear & terror. That’s after many had been executed or exiled to concentration/”Re-education” camps during takeover.
Maritime AI will solve this issue immediately, retaining the nuclear deterrent even better, but eliminating the need for hulls (submarines or surface hulls). For any mariner that has been away for 200 days (8 months) then your incentive to do another ‘tour’ is so small as you have become distanced from family & relationships. Back to hulls, Sir Walter Raleigh produced the first ‘Ark Raleigh’ (renamed Ark Royal by Elizabeth 1 in 1589) with 59 guns. You can see in 500 years the technology of hulls (manning, tech, adversary knowledge, maintenance) etc is crippling, and we haven’t really gone far.… Read more »
Al who, are they islamic?
How does a political party that is not and probably will not be in Government, know that ‘a seven month patrol is extremely dangerous for a Vanguard submarine’? Why would it be?
Ah, Chris McEleny, the submarine, nuclear, psychological, and defence expert!
Who knew.