Ian Dunt

It's currently sat there going, you know what, we're going to offer to extend this nuclear deterrent to all of Europe.

Exactly.

Yes, exactly.

And it can be launched from a submarine, it can be dropped from a plane.

Now, Britain's is submarine only, it's the Trident system.

It is operationally independent.

So no one... Yeah, Britain can launch when it wants to launch.

If it wants to launch, it doesn't need to seek anyone's permission to do that.

However...

The maintenance, so each time you have sort of four submarines and one of them goes off, you know, and is maintained at any given moment, the maintenance is in the U.S.

Because not the warhead, but the rockets are U.S., U.S.

made.

So on that basis, it's not really functionally independent.

Now, you can create it to be functionally independent.

But that costs an awful lot of money that we don't have and wouldn't want to spend anyway.

And if you're not prepared to do that, you are simply much more restrained in the manner in which you talk about the U.S.

and the manner in which you treat them.

So, for instance, how is it the beginning of the conflict in Iran?

Kyrsten comes out and goes, well, we're not going to allow them to use our bases.

for any kind of attack on Iran, because he's a lawyer.