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The UK’s Trident nuclear missiles capability should not be called into question, despite reports that a missile malfunctioned and targeted the wrong direction during a routine test, according to a nuclear weapons expert.
The comments come after a US official told a TV channel that the missile experienced problems with telemetry data and was diverted into the ocean off the coast of Florida to self-destruct last June.
Paul Ingram, executive director at the British American Security Information Council, said there have been 159 successful tests of the Trident missile system since 1989. “These missiles are highly reliable. They are highly likely to work and work reasonably accurately. What we can’t say is that they are 100% guaranteed,” said Ingram. “While I think we should rethink Trident I don’t think that this incident is the reason that should tip people over the top. If people thought this system was 100% guaranteed they were living in an illusion – there is always possibility of a failure in a test like this. Basing a decision on a single incident would not be rational.”
In the Commons, defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon was questioned on the details surrounding the Trident II D5 ballistic missile malfunction. The failure occurred before a vote in parliament to determine the future of the nuclear deterrent programme.
Brendan O’Hara, Scottish National Party minister, said: “Deterrence has to be both credible and capable. It is safe to assume that Trident is neither. Given that one of the missiles veered off towards the US, it is an insult to our intelligence to try to claim, as the government have, that Trident’s capability and effectiveness are unquestionable.”
But Fallon maintained that the capability of the UK’s nuclear deterrent is not in doubt.
While Ingram said it is clear there was a malfunction, it is unclear whether it was a software problem or human error during data input or even the less likely option of a hardware problem.
“We don’t even know whether they know what caused the error as they blew the rocket up. All we know is that they know there were anomalies with the data,” said Ingram. “We don’t know whether the missile was already on a different trajectory to the one that was planned. We do know that the phrase ‘it was diverted into the sea’ was used. Some people have concluded that that implied it was going towards, or was already over, land. I think the phrase is ambiguous – we do not know whether it was going towards the US.”
Ingram said the evidence around data anomalies is consistent with a possible “deliberate intervention”, or cyber attack.