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Trident (UK Nuclear Programme)
Trident, also known as the Trident nuclear programme or Trident nuclear deterrent, covers the development, procurement and operation of Nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom, nuclear weapons in the United Kingdom and their means of delivery. Its purpose as stated by the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), Ministry of Defence is to "deter the most extreme threats to our national security and way of life, which cannot be done by other means". Trident is an operational system of four s armed with UGM-133 Trident II, Trident II D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missile, ballistic missiles, able to deliver thermonuclear weapon, thermonuclear warheads from multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs). It is operated by the Royal Navy and based at HMNB Clyde, Clyde Naval Base on the west coast of Scotland. At least one submarine is always on patrol to provide a continuous at-sea capability. The missiles are manufactured in the United States, while the warheads are Britis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trident (missile)
The Trident missile is a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) equipped with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV). Originally developed by Lockheed Missiles and Space Corporation, the missile is armed with thermonuclear weapon, thermonuclear warheads and is launched from Nuclear submarine, nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). Trident missiles are carried by twelve United States Navy s, with American warheads, as well as four Royal Navy s, with British warheads. The missile is named after the mythological Trident of Poseidon, trident of Neptune. Development In 1971, the US Navy began studies of an advanced Undersea Long-range Missile System (ULMS). A Decision Coordinating Paper (DCP) for the ULMS was approved on 14 September 1971. ULMS program outlined a long-term modernization plan, which proposed the development of a longer-range missile termed ULMS II, which was to achieve twice the range of the existing Poseidon (ULMS I) missile. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
House Of Commons Of The United Kingdom
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. The House of Commons is an elected body consisting of 650 members known as Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), members of Parliament (MPs), who are elected to represent United Kingdom constituencies, constituencies by the First-past-the-post voting, first-past-the-post system and hold their seats until Dissolution of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, Parliament is dissolved. The House of Commons of England began to evolve in the 13th and 14th centuries. In 1707 it became the House of Commons of Great Britain after the Acts of Union 1707, political union with Scotland, and from 1801 it also became the House of Commons for Ireland after the Acts of Union 1800, political union of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, the body became the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and No ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1958 US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement
Events January * January 1 – The European Economic Community (EEC) comes into being. * January 3 – The West Indies Federation is formed. * January 4 ** Edmund Hillary's Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the third overland journey to the South Pole, the first to use powered vehicles. ** Sputnik 1 (launched on October 4, 1957) falls towards Earth from its orbit and burns up. * January 13 – Battle of Edchera: The Moroccan Army of Liberation ambushes a Spanish patrol. * January 27 – A Soviet-American executive agreement on cultural, educational and scientific exchanges, also known as the "Lacy-Zarubin Agreement, Lacy–Zarubin Agreement", is signed in Washington, D.C. February * February 1 – Egypt and Syria unite to form the United Arab Republic. * February 2 – The ''Falcons'' aerobatic team of the Pakistan Air Force led by Wg Cdr Zafar Masud (air commodore), Mitty Masud set a World record loop, world record performing a 16 aircraft diamon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sputnik Crisis
The Sputnik crisis was a period of public fear and anxiety in Western nations about the perceived technological gap between the United States and Soviet Union caused by the Soviets' launch of '' Sputnik 1'', the world's first artificial satellite. The crisis was a significant event in the Cold War that triggered the creation of NASA and the Space Race between the two superpowers. The satellite was launched on October 4, 1957, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. This created a crisis reaction in national newspapers such as ''The New York Times'', which mentioned the satellite in 279 articles between October 6, 1957, and October 31, 1957 (more than 11 articles per day). Background In the early 1950s, Lockheed U-2 spy plane flights over the Soviet Union provided intelligence that the US held the advantage in nuclear capability. However, an education gap was identified when studies conducted between 1955 and 1961 reported that the Soviet Union was training two to three times as m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Hydrogen Bomb Programme
The British hydrogen bomb programme was the ultimately successful British effort to develop hydrogen bombs between 1952 and 1958. During the early part of the Second World War, Britain had a nuclear weapons project, codenamed Tube Alloys. At the Quebec Conference, 1943, Quebec Conference in August 1943, British prime minister Winston Churchill and United States president Franklin Roosevelt signed the Quebec Agreement, merging Tube Alloys into the American Manhattan Project, in which many of Britain's top scientists British contribution to the Manhattan Project, participated. The British government trusted that America would share nuclear technology, which it considered to be a joint discovery, but the United States Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (also known as the McMahon Act) ended technical cooperation. Fearing a resurgence of American isolationism, and the loss of Britain's great power status, the British government resumed its own development effort, which was codenamed "High Explos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operation Hurricane
Operation Hurricane was the first test of a Nuclear weapons of the United Kingdom, British atomic device. A plutonium Nuclear weapon design#Implosion-type weapon, implosion device was detonated on 3 October 1952 in Main Bay, Trimouille Island, in the Montebello Islands in Western Australia. With the success of Operation Hurricane, the United Kingdom became the third List of states with nuclear weapons, nuclear power, after the United States and the Soviet Union. During the Second World War, Britain commenced a nuclear weapons project, code-named Tube Alloys, but the 1943 Quebec Agreement merged it with the American Manhattan Project. Several key British contribution to the Manhattan Project, British scientists worked on the Manhattan Project, but after the war the American government ended cooperation on nuclear weapons. In January 1947, a United Kingdom cabinet committee, cabinet sub-committee decided to resume British efforts to build nuclear weapons, in response to an appre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
High Explosive Research
High Explosive Research (HER) was the British project to develop atomic bombs independently after the Second World War. This decision was taken by a cabinet sub-committee on 8 January 1947, in response to apprehension of an American return to isolationism, fears that Britain might lose its great power status, and the actions by the United States to withdraw unilaterally from sharing of nuclear technology under the 1943 Quebec Agreement. The decision was publicly announced in the House of Commons on 12 May 1948. HER was a civil project, not a military one. Staff were drawn from and recruited into the Civil Service, and were paid Civil Service salaries. It was headed by Lord Portal, as Controller of Production, Atomic Energy, in the Ministry of Supply. An Atomic Energy Research Establishment was located at a former airfield, Harwell, in Berkshire, under the direction of John Cockcroft. The first nuclear reactor in the UK, a small research reactor known as GLEEP, went ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Power
A great power is a sovereign state that is recognized as having the ability and expertise to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess military and economic strength, as well as diplomatic and soft power influence, which may cause middle or small powers to consider the great powers' opinions before taking actions of their own. International relations theorists have posited that great power status can be characterized into power capabilities, spatial aspects, and status dimensions. While some nations are widely considered to be great powers, there is considerable debate on the exact criteria of great power status. Historically, the status of great powers has been formally recognized in organizations such as the Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815Danilovic, Vesna. "When the Stakes Are High – Deterrence and Conflict among Major Powers", University of Michigan Press (2002), pp 27, 225–22(PDF chapter downloads) [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Isolationism
United States non-interventionism primarily refers to the foreign policy that was eventually applied by the United States between the late 18th century and the first half of the 20th century whereby it sought to avoid alliances with other nations in order to prevent itself from being drawn into wars that were not related to the direct territorial self-defense of the United States. Neutrality and non-interventionism found support among elite and popular opinion in the United States, which varied depending on the international context and the country's interests. At times, the degree and nature of this policy was better known as isolationism, such as the interwar period, while some consider the term ''isolationism'' to be a pejorative used to discredit non-interventionist policy. It is key to decipher between the terms isolationism and non-interventionism as they represent two distinct types of foreign policy. Isolationism is the act of completely disengaging from any global affair ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Atomic Energy Act Of 1946
The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (McMahon Act) determined how the United States would control and manage the nuclear technology it had jointly developed with its World War II allies, the United Kingdom and Canada. Most significantly, the Act ruled that nuclear weapon development and nuclear power management would be under civilian, rather than military control, and established the United States Atomic Energy Commission for this purpose. It was sponsored by Senator Brien McMahon, a Democrat from Connecticut, who chaired the United States Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy, and whose hearings in late 1945 and early 1946 led to the fine tuning and passing of the Act. The Senate passed the Act unanimously through voice vote, and it passed the House of Representatives 265–79. Signed into law by President Harry S. Truman on August 1, 1946, it went into effect on January 1, 1947, and the Atomic Energy Commission assumed responsibility for nuclear energy from the wartime Ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project was directed by Major General Leslie Groves of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the bombs. The Army program was designated the Manhattan District, as its first headquarters were in Manhattan; the name gradually superseded the official codename, Development of Substitute Materials, for the entire project. The project absorbed its earlier British counterpart, Tube Alloys, and subsumed the program from the American civilian Office of Scientific Research and Development. The Manhattan Project employed nearly 130,000 people at its peak and cost nearly US$2 billion (equivalent to about $ b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quebec Agreement
The Quebec Agreement was a secret agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States outlining the terms for the coordinated development of the science and engineering related to nuclear power, nuclear energy and specifically nuclear weapons. It was signed by Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt on 19 August 1943, during World War II, at the First Quebec Conference in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. The Quebec Agreement stipulated that the US and UK would pool their resources to develop nuclear weapons, and that neither country would use them against the other, or against other countries without mutual consent, or pass information about them to other countries. It also gave the United States a veto over post-war British commercial or industrial uses of nuclear energy. The agreement merged the British Tube Alloys project with the American Manhattan Project, and created the Combined Policy Committee to control the joint project. Although Canada was not a signatory ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
