Britain could use nuclear weapons against emerging technology threats such as cyber and AI
Government s Integrated Review announces plans to expand UK s nuclear weapons stockpile by over 40 per cent
16 March 2021 • 1:47pm
The current fleet of four Vanguard-Class nuclear-powered submarines are due to be replaced by a similar number of Dreadnought-Class boats in the 2030’s
Credit: PA Wire
Britain could use nuclear weapons if faced with a threat from devastating “emerging technologies” such as cyber and artificial intelligence, the Government’s landmark foreign policy review has warned.
The Government has long stated that the UK would not conduct a nuclear strike against any non-nuclear weapons state that complies with a 1968 non-proliferation treaty. The guarantee does not apply to states that break the terms of the agreement.
Ten COs of Courageous, with Best fifth from right
Commander Rupert Best, who has died aged 77, was Britain’s most highly decorated midshipman, and a cider-maker who revived Portland harbour.
On the night of December 11/12 1962, after an insurrection had broken out in Brunei, 19-year-old Midshipman Best, while still under training, was made second-in-command of one of two Z-craft or motorised barges, which ferried L company of 42 Commando, Royal Marines, commanded by Captain Jeremy Moore (the future Commander, Land Forces in the Falklands War), upriver to Limbang in Sarawak.
There, Communist-inspired rebels were holding hostage the district officer, his wife and a dozen others. At dawn, all appeared quiet on the final approach to Limbang, when “all hell let loose”. The well-armed insurgents, positioned on rooftops and in trees, fired down on the barges, and the first attempt to land the marines had to be aborted when the petty officer at the wheel was shot.
Royal Navy submarine seen in Gibraltar with silent ‘sub sniffer kit to track Russians in the Mediterranean
The sophisticated system can detect changes in water pressure indicating the passage of other submerged vessels
6 February 2021 • 6:30am
The Royal Navy s Trafalgar-class attack submarine HMS Talent arrives in Gibraltar sporting new sensors on either side of the fin and on the bow. Feb 2, 2021.
Credit: David M Parody
Royal Navy submarines have been fitted with silent ‘sub sniffers’ which can be used to track Russians in the Mediterranean.
HMS Talent, one of the Royal Navy’s Trafalgar-class attack submarines, was seen in Gibraltar on Tuesday sporting new equipment on her hull.
Johnnie Murray Jones
Lieutenant Commander Johnnie Murray Jones, who has died aged 99, was a submariner in the Far East during the Second World War and later founded a global money broking firm and the security company Guardforce.
In June 1944 Murray Jones’s submarine Truculent had attacked a Japanese convoy and landed special forces on Simalur island, west of Sumatra, when she sailed from Trincomalee with orders to “capture some Sumatrans to help with intelligence”.
Murray Jones was on watch on the surface at the southern end of the Malacca Straits, “the night as black as only a moonless tropical night can be”, when he saw through his binoculars an even darker patch of night which was the sail of a junk lying becalmed on the glassy sea.
| UPDATED: 07:29, Thu, Jan 21, 2021
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