Trident: A fork in the road.

I've always been a supporter of the UK having nuclear weapons. The morality of a weapon doesn't depend on upon its size, destroying a city by conventional carpet bombing is just as immoral as using a nuclear weapon.

I'm less keen on Trident for several reasons, one of which is that with the rise of Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) system it will become less effective. The major powers are developing Hypersonic Glide Vehicles to overcome this defence. These vehicles will be launched from ICBMs, but instead of following a ballistic trajectory to their target, they will fly at a speed approaching Mach 10 in the upper atmosphere. So reducing reaction time for any ABM system.

For the UK developing one of these is a possibility, perhaps along with France, the other possibility is a very long range (3000 miles +) cruise missile, which is the option I prefer. This is partly down to utility and partly down to the rise of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Drones to you. What is a cruise missile, but a single use, disposable UAV? The UK is committed to developing UAV, so why not take advantage of this convergence of technology.

I was struck by the following assessment on Wikipedia of the Royal United Services Institute suggestion for a Trident replacement.

A ‘Dual-Capable’ Submarine Force: "This would maintain the plan to build new submarines, but with only four missile tubes (compared with the twelve currently planned) and with an explicit design mandate that asked designers to allow them also to perform conventional roles... It would not be possible, however, for potential adversaries to detect whether or not a particular boat was nuclear-armed when it went on patrol. Such an arrangement could, in time, combine increased survivability for the nuclear force while also holding out the possibility of further reductions in the size and readiness of the nuclear deterrent."

The US is also considering a dual use boat to replace the Ohio class based on the Virginia Class

The US Navy has converted 4 of its Ohio-class Trident submarines to a role which replaces the Trident missiles with 7 Tomahawk cruise missiles as well as many other systems.

The US's current attack submarine is the Virginia Class, which as part if its design contains the Virginia Payload Module a system which is very similar to having Trident Launch tubes, but with the 7 cruise missile armament, though these will not be nuclear capable.

These all point to the end of the dedicated ballistic missile submarine, Tridents replacement should be the dual use boat, when not armed with Trident, the tubes should not be empty but armed for other jobs. These boats should be based on the Astute class, and when the Astute class comes up for replacement, they should be replaced by dual use boats. This could provide a Navy with a Nuclear Submarine fleet of 11+ boats, possibly up to 14, with greater flexibility than the current system.

In the very long term, a cruise missile could replace the Trident missiles themselves, in about 2050, which will be long after I've stopped being.

Jeremy Corbyn, the new Labour leader, is against Trident's replacement, but given the current makeup of parliament, he is unlikely to get his way. That doesn't mean he cannot influence the system, with dual use boats, the boats do not become waste if Nuclear weapons are  abandoned. The dual use plan adapts the system to the threats faced now and at the same time makes Nuclear Disarmament easier.

When it comes to a vote in the Commons on replacement I cannot see JC ever asking his party to vote for a replacement of the Vanguard boats, but it might be easier for the party to abstain on Dual Use boats, if that is a way of stopping a like replacement, with all the costs and limited capability that entails, and as the RUSI report suggests this, "while also holding out the possibility of further reductions in the size and readiness of the nuclear deterrent." which is at least a step in the direction JC wants to go, it is better than no step at all.

Things to Come

This the future for humanity, it is this or nothing.

We need to talk about Warren

Sometime ago the leader of Liverpool City Council was Warren Bradley, a LibDem. He became leader when Mike "Jackanory" Storey had to resign of a breach of the code of conduct. Storey was at best anodyne, a primary school headmaster with all the charisma of a primary school headmaster. When Warren came along, I'd never heard of him, but it was quite clear he was only Storey's proxy.

Both Storey and Bradley achieved very little, the greatest achievement of Storey was securing the Capital of Culture year for Liverpool and that was about it. Very little happened in the city.

After a brief discussion with Bradley, it seems that he thinks of himself as badly done by and regards any mention of his conviction for a rather foolish bit of electoral fraud as abusive. Warren you weren't hard done by, you were just so far out of your league it was painful.

One of his statements that "educated people are seeing through Joe Anderson", would seem to imply, that as he doesn't like the guy, he sees himself as an educated man. Well, while I don't have any facts about his education, if he has one he has always hidden it well. He variously came over as some who hasn't got that much of an idea of what's going on, always slightly bemused or slightly drunk.

Like a lot of LibDems, he suffered from a lack of imagination and drive, whether you agree with Anderson or not, he has got something done, Warren and Co never did, they were obsessed with not annoying anyone, in the end they annoyed a lot of people. People will forgive mistakes, they are less forgiving of inaction. It is equally true that always answering the call "something must be done" with something is just as wrong.

Liverpool Council suffered from a paralysis that it didn't want to be in the same light as Militant, this led it to be non-confrontational and frankly cowardly, Warren is the personification of that. You can see in the local journals the anger that Joe Anderson has raised by simply doing things, some are outraged that he has not doing the things that they want, others are just annoyed that he is doing things at all. All of them are convinced they speak for the people of Liverpool, all of them ignore the fact that in the May election Joe's party increased its seats on the council.

Let get this right Joe is not a smooth political operator he is in fact a bit of a gobshite but so are his most voluble critics. Not least among them Warren. What most of the voices offer is a quick fix, just do what we want, have our  priorities and it will all be ok. What history teaches us is that this is wrong, you cannot have any real, permanent long term effect on society over night, this is a long hard slog where the reasonable ambition is to make things better for your great grandchildren. To believe you can do it quicker is vanity and a dangerous vanity.

Trans North/HS3

The Government released The Northern Powerhouse: One Agenda, One Economy, One North report, which contains some interesting stuff regarding Liverpool and High-Speed rail, most notably

Trans North/HS3

Also covered is HS3 which has similarities to my Pan Northern Railway  through without York, Chester and Holyhead.

  

HS3 using existing lines

The target maximum speed that has been mentioned is 140 mph, this was the same as the target for the West Coast Mainline upgrade in the 90s.

The was for the first generation of Pendolinos, the second generation is capable of 155mph. The reason they don't go over 125 is the lack of in-cab signalling, but under existing plans, the entire system will be set up for in-cab signalling by 2029, according to the International Rail Journal. Electrification from Man to Leeds is already planned as is Leeds to Hull according to the BBC. It is already in place Liverpool to Manchester.

The proposed times for HS3 are

Liv -> Manc in 20 minutes, mean  94.5 mph over 31.5 miles.
Man->Leeds in 30 minutes, mean 85.4 mph over 42.7 miles.
Leeds ->Hull in 45 minutes, mean 68 mph over 51.6 miles. 

So all those are already planned before HS3! what extra is needs to happen for HS3?

The OpenOffice Calc spreadsheet can be found here.

The Liverpool to Manchester section, given a Pendolino, allowed to accelerate straight to 140 and decelerate into Manchester Victoria would take 15:35. With various limitations caused by going through stations and in urban areas 20 minutes is very close to the maximum that could be achieved. To make a 20 minutes service possible some work would need to be done, whether that would be passing loops or quadrupling of long sections I don't know, perhaps some traffic could be offloaded to other routes but providing access for St Helens & Newton le Willows is not optional. Complete requadrupling of the section from Lime Street to Huyton Junction would help, that would require work to widen the track bed at Broad Green where the M62 intrudes.

The Manchester -> Leeds time of 30 minutes knocks about 15 minutes off of the current journey time, and is 9:37 slower than the theoretical maximum, bearing in mind this is the curviest bit of the route this is less demanding than the Liverpool-Manchester time and perhaps reflects greater thought and time applied.  

The Hull time is only 9 minutes faster than the current time which is the smallest improvement and as this is the longest route doesn't make much sense. Most of the route is quite straight except for a large kink around Selby.

Rail lines around Selby

The average speed for Leeds -> Hull is 68.8 compared with 94.53 for Liv->Man and 85.4 for Man->Leeds. This seems a bit slow, given the profile I would expect a mean speed faster than the Man->Leeds speed. At the same average speed as the Liv->Man journey Leeds -> Hull is about 32:45 and at the Man -> Leeds is 36:15. So it should be possible to knock a further 10 minutes off the overall journey getting the overall journey down to 1:25.

A second generation Pendolino is capable of 155mph, similar to the Advanced Passenger Train, in order to operate at the higher speed the APT had enhanced brakes, these are not on the Pendolino. If a system capable of similar braking to the APT's Hydro Kinetic system were fitted then speeds over 140 could be achieved, which might allow some more savings or at least greater safety margin.  One candidate for the breaking system would be Circular or Linear Eddy Current Braking both of which have been used on railways in excess of 155mph.

Beyond England

Welsh extension.

Currently, the time from Hull to Holyhead, 218 miles, would be 4:09 with an average speed of 52.5 mph, if some stops are taken out leaving only the major stops, then the journey can be down to 3:39 with a mean speed of 59 mph. Whilst this probably faster than it can be driven, the current journey would be longer as it would involve waiting for connections at the principal stations.
Using the 140 mph maximum then with the full set of stops the journey could be made in 2:19 with a mean speed of 94 mph. With only the principle stops that drops to 1:42 at a mean of 128.
The theoretical speed would obviously not be possible but a time of between 2:30 and 2:45 should be possible, knocking 1:24 of the current possible time.
A Liverpool Holyhead journey, via the soon to be reinstated Halton curve, would take about 2:00, this time, is even more speculative than the others as it involves the Chester to Runcorn parliamentary train, which only runs early Saturday morning during the summer, and is in no rush. Taking out the stops gets down to 1:52. With the high-speed options, the time drops to 1:00 with stops and 51 without. Giving an estimated real world time as 1:15, a 45-minute saving.
Electrifying and speeding up Chester to Holyhead would improve London-Holyhead times, as well as local trains, as part of HS3, it would provide a very useful link between the Ferry Terminals of Hull and Holyhead.