Trevor Jones (Letters, 29 September) is wrong in a number of ways. First the Americans do not and have never held the codes for arming the UK’s nuclear warheads. Further to that, I conducted a complete assessment of the Trident system’s susceptibility to US interference for Gordon Brown in 2009 and was able to assure him that once embarked on Royal Navy submarines the system is completely under UK control with no possibility of US interference. As regards opinion polls about Trident, poll after poll has shown the people of our nation oppose unilateralism and there is no doubt that the safest, most cost-effective way of keeping a deterrent is to replace the Vanguard-class submarines and run on with the Trident system. On this issue Jeremy Corbyn is out of step with popular opinion.
Admiral Lord West
House of Lords
• I do not understand why Caroline Lucas (Letters, 28 September) and other anti-nuclear organisations are still using the same old arguments against Trident. Technology will have rendered submarines obsolete by the time Trident could be built. The US and China are already well advanced in developing underwater drones and sensor technology. The whole point of submarines is to remain hidden; technological progress in the development of swarms or networks of underwater drones and similar devices will make this hide-and-seek game extremely unreliable, if not impossible. The government’s response has been feeble and illogical: because there have been predictions in the past and nothing came of them they won’t entertain the idea that this time the predictions are no longer hypothetical. So please, Caroline, keep up! And Jeremy Corbyn and CND likewise.
Maureen Evershed
Dorridge, West Midlands
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