UK to conduct nuclear missile test
The U.K. is conducting its first nuclear missile test in eight years, according to The Sun.
The HMS Vanguard submarine plans to fire the Trident 2 missile off Florida’s Port Canaveral coast in the coming days. The warhead, which is 20 times more powerful than the weapons dropped in World War II on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, is expected to travel around 3,720 miles before touching down in the ocean between Brazil and West Africa.
The HMS Vanguard can carry up to 16 Trident 2 missiles and patrol undetected for months at a time, according to The Sun.
U.K. Defense Secretary Grant Shapps warned in a Jan. 15 speech that “our adversaries are now more connected with each other.”
“Back in the days of the Cold War, there remained a sense that we were dealing with rational actors. But these new powers are far more unstable and irrational,” he said.
“So we find ourselves at the dawn of a new era, the Berlin Wall a distant memory. And we have come full circle, moving from a postwar to pre-war world. An age of idealism has been replaced by a period of hard-headed realism,” he added.
