
Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015) - aburan28
https://wikileaks.org/trident-safety/
======
pizza
This part was just great:

 _Just weeks after passing out of training I had a draft for HMS Victorious.
My work mates started calling me a terrorist robot because I remembered
everything and I have a Northern Ireland accent. This reputation would have
undoubtedly made it difficult for me to gather information. I needed to create
distance between them, and create a knew persona; I aimed for mixture of
dumbness and eagerness to learn for simple curios reasons. Within days of
being on patrol I was no longer the terrorist robot, soaking up all the
information for terrorist reasons. Playing dumb came easy for me, I 've been
doing it and been it most of life. It makes people open up and explain a lot
more. If someone assumes you know something they might leave that part out of
the conversation, meaning you've just lost information which might have been
valuable. It also helps with getting out of certain situations. I watched a
lot of Columbo when I was a kid._

On a similar armament note, from edge's "2006: What is your dangerous idea?"
[0]

> "The idea that we understand plutonium"

> _The most dangerous idea I have come across recently is the idea that we
> understand plutonium. Plutonium is the most complex element in the periodic
> table. It has six different crystal phases between room temperature and its
> melting point. It can catch fire spontaneously in the presence of water
> vapor and if you inhale minuscule amounts you will die of lung cancer. It is
> the principle element in the "pits" that are the explosive cores of nuclear
> weapons. In these pits it is alloyed with gallium. No one knows why this
> works and no one can be sure how stable this alloy is. These pits, in the
> thousands, are now decades old. What is dangerous is the idea that they have
> retained their integrity and can be safely stored into the indefinite
> future._

[0] [https://www.edge.org/response-
detail/10660](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10660)

~~~
codecamper
This is the scariest thing I've read in a while. Plutonium itself inside of
nuclear warheads is unstable?

~~~
XorNot
Is it? This is completely unverifiable information (it's outside his area of
expertise - operators are not nuclear physicists). He's extremely vague about
what the danger is supposed to be (i.e. wikipedia has some notes on aging -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium%E2%80%93gallium_allo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium%E2%80%93gallium_alloy)
\- it's not like there's a danger of an uncontrolled nuclear detonation.)

Frankly: this is wikileaks. I'm giving it the side-eye these days.

~~~
nothrabannosir
The quote about plutonium comes from Jeremy Bernstein, on edge.org:

 _Jeremy Bernstein_

 _Professor Emeritus, Stevens Institute of Technology; Former Staff Writer,
The New Yorker_

\- [https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10660](https://www.edge.org/response-
detail/10660)

and:

 _Bernstein studied at Harvard University, receiving his bachelor 's degree in
1951, masters in 1953, and Ph.D. in 1955, on electromagnetic properties of
deuterium, under Julian Schwinger. As a theoretical physicist, he worked on
elementary particle physics and cosmology. A summer spent in Los Alamos led to
a position at the Institute for Advanced Study.[2] In 1962 he became a faculty
member at New York University, moving to become a professor of physics at
Stevens Institute of Technology in 1967, a position that he continues to hold
as Professor Emeritus.[3] He has held adjunct or visiting positions at the
Brookhaven National Laboratory, CERN, Oxford, the University of Islamabad, and
the Ecole Polytechnique.[4]_

 _He was also involved in Project Orion, investigating the potential for
nuclear pulse propulsion for use in space travel._

\-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bernstein#Education_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bernstein#Education_and_career)

I didn't check wikipedia's references, but it looks to be worth more than the
side-eye.

------
cylinder
The reason this is posted here again is that there was recently a Trident
"accident" which May did not disclose to Parliament.

~~~
misnome
I've read a couple of articles, and as I understand it a missile veered off
course. During a test. Which is kind of the point of a test.

Oh, except apparently it 'veered' towards the US. And this was before the vote
to renew, so naturally people are trying to call it a cover up.

~~~
fidget
It was before the vote to renew, and was not disclosed to people making that
vote.

~~~
dingaling
But the test and its result was orthogonal to the issue before Parliament.

It's like an executive team discussing whether to adopt a mobile-first
strategy and then someone blurts 'but Galaxy 7 phones caught fire!'.

~~~
onion2k
_It 's like an executive team discussing whether to adopt a mobile-first
strategy and then someone blurts 'but Galaxy 7 phones caught fire!'._

It's more like an executive team discussing whether or not to equip the entire
company with Galaxy Note 7 phones, and the CEO not mentioning the fires.

~~~
arethuza
Only if your expectation is that missiles work 100% of the time - which nobody
really expects an individual component of any weapons system to work 100% of
the time and is explicitly allowed for in the way nuclear weapons are
targeted.

~~~
onion2k
I don't expect anything to work 100% of the time. I do expect a missile to
fail in a way that wouldn't mean accidentally obliterating tens of thousands
of people in the wrong country though.

I would also expect a politician to mention that failure mode is a possibility
when politicians are considering spending £30b on renewing it.

~~~
arethuza
Personally I'm actually against the UK having nuclear weapons - but I can't
get too excited about this _particular_ incident.

Missiles will go wrong, Trident actually has a fairly reasonable level of
success and probably is far more reliable than equivalent weapons from other
countries.

It's a political mess not a military/technical one.

~~~
rys
"probably" isn't a good enough standard when the weapon system can end
hundreds of thousands of lives and is paid for by the taxpayer. And really
it's the second thing that people are upset about. If renewing Trident cost a
few hundreds of millions say, it'd likely be a non-issue. But it doesn't, so
it isn't. That it might be unsafe is worth investigating given what's on the
line.

------
gaius
Delay, delay, delay replacing it - then complain when it starts to show signs
of wear and tear. But that is what they do for civilian nuclear too...

~~~
Nexxxeh
I think the lax incompetence is the thing causing most alarm.

------
marze
Reminiscent on NASA and the two shuttle losses. Many near misses which were
monitored over the years (of the problem that ultimately doomed them), but no
action to eliminate the near misses.

~~~
PaulKeeble
Very much a similar issue and their were multiple silenced whistleblowers to
that as well.

I am glad my whistleblowing moment passed because recent history (last 30
years) tells me you do not want to become one.

~~~
i336_
> _my whistleblowing moment_

Can you go into further detail? Not asking to reveal what you don't want to,
but I am of course curious what you mean.

~~~
PaulKeeble
I was asked the impossible, to write a complex piece of software with no
ability to test it and it had to work first time without defects, and I had no
specification, no one to talk to about it and no idea what hardware it would
even run on. There is the impossible and then there is just the "are you even
serious" type of impossible, they were serious although I still think its
funny because its obvious insane to spin up a team of hundreds of engineers on
that basis but that is what they did!

The moment passed because I chose to leave. I took the easy route to solving
the problem for me, but its still costing people billions.

~~~
yummypaint
f22 raptor

~~~
i336_
Hmm. Interesting theory.

------
indifferentalex
We've run too quick, too far, trying to maintain systems with, in HN jargon,
too much technical debt. There are not enough people with solid knowledge, not
enough people with solid principles, not enough people willing, to maintain
the systems people in power have insisted on building. Frankly it's a miracle
and a true testament to human greatness and luck that things aren't as bad as
they very well could be. Over the long run however things usually end poorly,
and history is littered with such shipwrecks. We need to slow down, refactor
what we can, rewrite what we cannot, the costs will be huge but the
consequences of not doing it worse.

~~~
rb808
The alternative is we could send our best and brightest developers to write
social media apps, online shopping & high frequency trading algos. :)

------
zerooneinfinity
For what it's worth the general sentiment on UK military sites and forums is
that the guy hasn't got a fucking clue what he's talking about and most seem
to reckon someone's upset him or he's been passed up for promotion or
something and is retaliating by writing sensationalised shite that makes the
Navy look bad.

------
highaltitude
Nuclear warheads have multiple safeguards against detonating without
intention. While there are actually quite a few not specifically mentioned
this article is a good start.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link)

    
    
      Even in the event of fire, explosion, etc warheads are
     unlikely to detonate unintended.  Missle failures are quite
     common and a few have happened during atmospheric nuke
     tests and no detonation occured and many of these test
     weapons had few of the safeguards on duty weapons have.

------
exabrial
The only reason to have nuclear weapons is a deterrent, but how do we
modernize our nuclear systems for Safety and Security without escalating
tensions?

~~~
PaulKeeble
The Russians built the largest nucleur weapon of all time just a year or two
ago. Its hardly an escalation when other countries are doing the same thing.

~~~
arethuza
If your thinking about the "Tsar Bomba" that wasn't really a weapon and it was
exploded in 1961:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba)

[NB And making really big H-bombs isn't that difficult or indeed very useful
other than for bragging rights - which was the point of this device].

~~~
biaib
I think he was talking about this one:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-28_Sarmat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-28_Sarmat)

~~~
grw_
I think it's more likely to be this: [https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-
from-chaos/2015/11/18/r...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-
chaos/2015/11/18/russias-perhaps-not-real-super-torpedo/)

Interestingly, it appears to be propaganda only intended for internal
consumption in former USSR.

~~~
ivan_gammel
That's minor PR event which likely purpose is to send some message to the
West, while also delivering some "good news" to the audience of state TV. If
you'll ask anyone in Russia, noone will remember it. Meanwhile, RS-28 is real
and Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces do perform the upgrade of the whole
triade at this moment.

~~~
grw_
I agree- weapons that actually exist are of far greater significance to this
discussion. I just thought this was a better fit to the GP's original comment
than the other suggestions posted.

------
oftenwrong
Somewhat related New Yorker article, _World War Three, by Mistake_ (2016,
approx. 6000 words):

[http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/world-war-three-
by-m...](http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/world-war-three-by-mistake)

------
rl3
The title should be updated to reflect that this is from 2015.

~~~
JesseAldridge
Hmm, I wonder what happened to him...

> The navy described his dossier as “subjective and unsubstantiated” and
> launched an inquiry that concluded by dismissing his allegations as
> “factually incorrect or the result of misunderstanding or partial
> understanding”...He was discharged “on the claim that my sole aim was to
> discredit their public image”, he says.

[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/17/trident-
whis...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/17/trident-
whistleblower-william-mcneilly-discharged-from-royal-navy)

~~~
OJFord
> _He was discharged “on the claim that my sole aim was to discredit their
> public image”, he says._

I mean, I don't know what he expected...

Part of me wonders if WikiLeaks is the modern-day Blighty wound: want to
leave, can't leave for X months, make something up, get discharged for
discrediting public image.

~~~
roryisok
Have you read the document? There's a lot of awfully specific detail for
"making things up"

~~~
OJFord
I haven't, I don't really agree with it: there's whistle-blowing, and then
there's WikiLeaks, with its absurd scale.

I certainly don't subscribe to "I pay my taxes; I've a right to know ...!"
which is incorrect, silly, and less secure for all of us.

~~~
roryisok
Please don't be put off by this being on Wikileaks. This is not just some
disgruntled British soldier dumping a few hundred secret documents. This is a
single, very thorough report he wrote himself, describing in detail all the
horrible lapses in security and safety he personally witnessed around
Britain's nuclear deterrent.

He has censored some of the most sensitive information for security reasons.

This is not about "I have a right to know", this is about the risk of a
nuclear accident or terrorist attack because of gross negligence, and the
chain of command attempting to silence it.

------
arca_vorago
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if it was not an actual failure but a
warning, and the public is just getting fed the "it *veered" line. Never
forget that GB opposed US naval supremecy and as recently as post WW2 we have
come close to war for similar reasons, but due to the 47UKUS agreement most
people but old sailors and generals have forgotten it all and now were
permabestfriends.

~~~
RugnirViking
Can you give sources for such a surprising statement? I mean I am aware of war
plan red, but there are a great number of such plans for each major power, it
doesn't mean that it is deemed in any way likely

~~~
arca_vorago
Ok, so this is a sensitive subject for a variety of reasons, not the last of
which the fact that Americans in particular have such a short attention span
when it comes to history in general, and in geostrategy in particular.
Nevertheless, you asked genuinely for response so I am giving it.

To much of the US and even the UK, have this idea of the monarchy as vestigle
forms of the state required only for ceremonious pomp and ceremony, but I
would venture to say this is not much more than a well placed propaganda myth.
I say this because understanding the history of relations between the US and
the UK, I propose, can never be understood properly until one gets past this
first point.

To review a timeline of relations between the two countries, allow me to
refresh your memory of times in which then GB opposed the US. Of course, the
revolutionary war, and the war of 1812 with the burning of the whitehouse and
the capitol, but the one I feel most misunderstood and mistaught in schools is
the civil war, in which Britain openly sponsored the confederate states in an
effort to undermine it's traditional enemy. After this is where the
"mainstream history" goes off the rails and, due to WW1/2, pretends there was
little animosty remaining due to the great alliance needed to defeat the
enemy.

King Edward VII, often mistold in the histories as a gallavanting playboy, was
actually instrumental in establishing the encircling alliances leading up to
the first (and hence the second) world war. Through Sir Edward Grey (Yes, the
tea), who controlled Edward House, Woodrow Wilson was pushed into the war
despite the fact he had campaigned on not doing so. Of course after WW1 the
issue of naval supremecy was a primary pain for both, which is why in naval
parlance the Paris Peace conference is referred to as the Naval Battle of
Paris. Admiral Benson of the US, during a meeting in which a British Sea Lord
was found proding a secretary for information about the US's postwar naval
building plans, said of Britains desire to maintain naval supremecy; “[...]it
will mean but one thing[...] war between Great Britain and the United
States.”[1] Of course, you mention war plan red, but the mistake is to dismiss
it as a dusty old plan never intended for use. It was very much part of a real
potential response to the entangled alliances developing. It was worked on up
to 1936, by none other than Douglass McArthur.

As for WW2, the propaganda primarily centerred around anglo-american unity
centered on the Atlantic Charter and it's four freedoms, even though Churchill
later said the four freedoms did not apply to the British Empire, or even
outside of Europe. This is where it gets more complicated, because it's mostly
all about old war plan maps and the military pushback of the US against plans
laid out by the UK. Only a handful of generals were able to comprehend the
game GB was playing at manipulating how bloody the pacific campaign would be
in order to influence the post war balance of power. McArthur was one of them,
and his initial pushback against the proposed Brisbane line was only the first
in many such political-strategic military moves to counter the traps set by
Churchill. This pushback is what moved the lines of battle into New Guinea and
the Owen Stanely mountain range. I come from a long line of military men, and
a great uncle of mine was wounded on Guadalcanal and later died on the second
push of Iwo Jima. Gudalcanal was an essential defensive victory which helped
in reversing the Japanese "invincibility" by defeating them in the Battle of
the Coral Sea. McArthur also avoided Churchills plan of full frontal assault
of each fortified island by conducting leapfrogging instead, gaining control
of lightly held islands to establish air bases and supply routes, which
allowed him to get all the way to Tokyo with less than 90,000 casualties. The
point of me droning on about this is that Churchill was most defenitly not a
true ally of the United States, and the hero worship of him I see in modern
media disgusts me. If he had his way the US would have bled out people for
many more years than happened, and he was a scoundrel for it and more.

After WW2, the British plans for Pacific balance of power were shattered
because of this, which is why they supported Mao Tse-tung inssurection as a
counter against the American friendly Chiang Kai-Shek’ nationalists and their
allies in the inner areas that were against the British colonialism. In order
to reinforce this move, they used the Harriman (from which the Bush dynasty
emerged) faction, including General Marshall and eventually Henry Kissinger,
internally in the US against those resisting it. One of the telling moves was
that after Mao's march in 49, the British were extremely quick to recognize
his government and supply him with strategic goods through Hong Kong. As a
matter of fact my old Marine Corps unit to this day still has symbols on the
unit logo from it's China Marines days. To further restore the balance, they
entangled the US in Korea, and it was McArthurs brilliance that created
victory with inferior numbers and supplies, stunning the British, as they
expected a different outcome. Since that play had backfired, the triple-agents
in waiting were activated (though some had been used already during Korea),
including Kim Philby, Guy Burges, Donald Mcclean, Anthony Blunt, Lester
Pearson, and Victor Rothschild. They were triples because at first glance they
were British agents, at the second layer they were recruited by the KGB (the
Cambridge 6, yes, that's right, 6, not 5) but behind it all, they were
ultimately loyal to the British monarchy. Plausible deniability you see.
Eventually, the Harriman faction pushed Truman to finally get rid of McArthur
for being such a pain in the imperialsts ass.

Now we get to Vietnam. After Diems assasination, the best option for the US
would have been to stay out of that war, but a Saigon military advisor by the
name of Sir Robert Thompson was at the time billed as the number one expert in
counterinsurgency (shades of Patreaus anyone?), and later Robert Macnamaras
book, the Pentagon Papers, et al, showed that it was his influence that was
used to get LB Johnson to "take the plunge" in Vietnam once JFK was no longer
around to veto it. It was Thompson who pushed for COIN operations in the south
via US divisions in the Mekong delta doing nation building, despite the fact
that the south Vietnamese defense minister had a superior plan in cutting off
the Ho Chi Minh in the north near Laos with just a few US divisions by
building a wall, and if the NVA tried to amass and attack, an amphibious
assault from the rear would destroy them, and the nation building in the south
would be left up to the Vietnamese themselves.

[1][https://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/5a2b52ff-831d-446b-b41f-...](https://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/5a2b52ff-831d-446b-b41f-0ea1ffc27b03/The-
Naval-Battle-of-Paris---Jerry-W--Jones)

~~~
arca_vorago
I took too long so I stopped being able to edit,comment continued here:

In the end, 18 NVA divisions took over the south anyway. So, the postulation
is that Sir Thompson, friend of Kissinger, did this on deliberatly, once
again, to maintain the "balance of power".

Now, last but not least, we get to my war, the Global War on Terrorism. I have
spent years since I got out trying to understand what happened there, so I
will give you my terse summary. GWOT, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and including
Africa in Libya, Somalia and Sudan, is all about the coming resource wars and
prepositioning the, you guessed it, "balance of power". It wasn't about
Saddam, (well, maybe a bit for ol Bushy Jr to go along with his masters
Rumsfeld and Cheney), nor about Al Queda (which we had down to <100 in
Afghanistan years and years ago. It wasn't even about the oil for the west to
have. It was about the resources in aggregate, including the oil, _to
control_. It's a distinction that needs to be made to the leftists who just
repeat the war for oil slogan. Who did we learn this from? You guessed it, the
British.

It was the British who first invaded Baghdad in 1917 for the same reasons, to
prevent a new arab-europe rail-line that would threaten their inherently naval
trading supremecy. It was the British MI6 and London's WallStreet cronies who
taught and formed the OSS/CIA. It was the British who helped the CIA conduct
it's first coup in Iran in 53, and tought the vicious SAVAK/SAVAMA their
tricks of the trade. The blowblack of that one is still something felt to this
very day. It was the British who established the Baathist party in the first
place and propped Saddam up!

It's hard to find the sources, but I highly suspect the common understanding
of the UKUS relationship in the middle-east is much different than most
realize, and that the US was pushed into war by Tony Blair, as the Chilcot
report helps verify, for very similar reasons as all the above wars I mention.
This includes the Iraq-Iran war in which the UK and US supplied weapons to
Saddam, and the first gulf war.

I could go on and on, but this matter still needs more research on my part.
Suffice it to say, that after reading enough Carroll Quigley, and of Cecil
Rhodes, and the resulting myriad of round-table think tanks and their
influence on US policy, I have come to the conclusion that the British
monarchy and oligarchy has never forgiven the US for the original revolution,
which Christopher Hitchens called "the only revolution with a fighting chance
of survival and success", that they have been involved in entangling the US in
war after war, and that it continues to seek, as Cecil Rhodes put it, "the
ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the
British Empire".

Despite the pretend friendship on a superficial level, the disdain for
Americans by the British elite was palpable to me on a recent visit, and I
think the UKUS 47 agreement is the primary legislative method that will be
used to usher in the totalitarian surveillance state in the US, and I highly
suspect that the UK has been playing the US as a fall guy in the upcoming move
to global governance. I half expect a new Neuremberg to pop up sooner or
later.

That sir, is why I say, not only have we been near war multiple times in the
past, but I would venture to say the British Empire, carefully disguised as
the commonwealth, has never ceased being at economic and political war with
the United States of America since its inception.

~~~
RugnirViking
Thank you for taking the time to write this up. I agree with some of your
points, especially on Churchill. I have generally found that the more I learn
about what he actually did the less I like about him. I also suppose some of
the earlier naval threat came from fears over some kind of a resurgence of the
Anglo-Japanese alliance that was only a couple decades before around the time
of ww2

~~~
arca_vorago
My pleasure, and you are right about to Anglo-Japanese alliance. As a matter
of fact I have heard it said the formerly German controlled southeast Asian
islands were given to Japan at the behest of Britain as a sort of WW2
_preprogramming_ , but thankfully MacArthur saw through it. I also think it
was Warren Harding who pushed for the 5-5-3 American British Japanese fleet
ratio in some agreement or other that delayed WW2.

