Trident nuclear missile
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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 warhead A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a low ...
s and is launched from
nuclear-powered Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced b ...
ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). Trident missiles are carried by fourteen
United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
s, with American warheads, as well as four
Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...
s, with British warheads. The missile is named after the mythological 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 addition to a longer-range missile, a larger submarine was proposed to replace the , and -class SSBNs in 1978. The ULMS II missile system was designed to be retrofitted to the existing SSBNs, while also being fitted to the proposed . In May 1972, the term ULMS II was replaced with Trident. The Trident was to be a larger, higher-performance missile with a range capacity greater than 6000 mi. Trident I (designated as ''C4'') was deployed in 1979 and retired in 2005. Its objective was to achieve performance similar to Poseidon (C3) but at extended range. Trident II (designated ''D5'') had the objective of improved circular error probable (CEP), or accuracy, and was first deployed in 1990, and was planned to be in service for the thirty-year life of the submarines, until 2027. Trident missiles are provided to the United Kingdom under the terms of the 1963 Polaris Sales Agreement which was modified in 1982 for Trident. British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the first female British prime ...
wrote to President Carter on 10 July 1980, to request that he approve supply of Trident I missiles. However, in 1982 Thatcher wrote to
President Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
to request the United Kingdom be allowed to procure the Trident II system, the procurement of which had been accelerated by the US Navy. This was agreed upon in March 1982. Under the agreement, the United Kingdom paid an additional 5% of their total procurement cost of $2.5 billion to the US government as a research and development contribution. The total cost of the Trident program thus far came to $39.546 billion in 2011, with a cost of $70 million per missile. In 2009, the United States upgraded the D5 missiles with an arming, fuzing and firing (AF&F) system that allows them to target hardened silos and bunkers more accurately.


Description

The launch from the submarine occurs below the sea surface. The missiles are ejected from their tubes by igniting an explosive charge in a separate container. The energy from the blast is directed to a water tank, where the water is flash-vaporized to steam. The subsequent pressure spike is strong enough to eject the missile out of the tube and give it enough momentum to reach and clear the surface of the water. The missile is pressurized with
nitrogen Nitrogen is the chemical element with the symbol N and atomic number 7. Nitrogen is a nonmetal and the lightest member of group 15 of the periodic table, often called the pnictogens. It is a common element in the universe, estimated at se ...
to prevent the intrusion of water into any internal spaces, which could damage the missile or add weight, destabilizing the missile. Should the missile fail to breach the surface of the water, there are several safety mechanisms that can either deactivate the missile before launch or guide the missile through an additional phase of launch. Inertial motion sensors are activated upon launch, and when the sensors detect downward acceleration after being blown out of the water, the first-stage motor ignites. The aerospike, a telescoping outward extension that halves aerodynamic drag, is then deployed, and the boost phase begins. When the third-stage motor fires, within two minutes of launch, the missile is traveling faster than 20,000 ft/s (6,000 m/s), or 13,600 mph (21,600 km/h) Mach 18. Minutes after launch, the missile is outside the atmosphere and on a sub-orbital trajectory. The Guidance System for the missile was developed by the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory and is maintained by a joint Draper/General Dynamics Mission Systems facility. It is an Inertial Guidance System with an additional star-sighting system (this combination is known as
astro-inertial guidance Missile guidance refers to a variety of methods of guiding a missile or a guided bomb to its intended target. The missile's target accuracy is a critical factor for its effectiveness. Guidance systems improve missile accuracy by improving its ...
), which is used to correct small position and velocity errors that result from launch condition uncertainties due to errors in the submarine navigation system and errors that may have accumulated in the guidance system during the flight due to imperfect instrument calibration. GPS has been used on some test flights but is assumed not to be available for a real mission. The fire control system was designed and continues to be maintained by General Dynamics Mission Systems. Once the star-sighting has been completed, the "bus" section of the missile maneuvers to achieve the various velocity vectors that will send the deployed multiple independent reentry vehicles to their individual targets. The downrange and crossrange dispersion of the targets remains classified. The Trident was built in two variants: the I (C4) UGM-96A and II (D5) UGM-133A; however, these two missiles have little in common. While the C4, formerly known as EXPO (Extended Range Poseidon), is just an improved version of the Poseidon C-3 missile, the Trident II D-5 has a completely new design (although with some technologies adopted from the C-4). The C4 and D5 designations put the missiles within the "family" that started in 1960 with Polaris (A1, A2 and A3) and continued with the 1971
Poseidon Poseidon (; grc-gre, Ποσειδῶν) was one of the Twelve Olympians in ancient Greek religion and myth, god of the sea, storms, earthquakes and horses.Burkert 1985pp. 136–139 In pre-Olympian Bronze Age Greece, he was venerated as a ...
(C3). Both Trident versions are three-stage, solid-propellant, inertially guided missiles, and both guidance systems use a star sighting to improve overall weapons system accuracy.


Trident I (C4) UGM-96A

The first eight ''Ohio''-class submarines were built with the Trident I missiles.


Trident II (D5) UGM-133A

The second variant of the Trident is more sophisticated and can carry a heavier payload. It is accurate enough to be a first strike,
counterforce In nuclear strategy, a counterforce target is one that has a military value, such as a launch silo for intercontinental ballistic missiles, an airbase at which nuclear-armed bombers are stationed, a homeport for ballistic missile submarines, or ...
, or second strike weapon. All three stages of the Trident II are made of graphite epoxy, making the missile much lighter. The Trident II was the original missile on the British ''Vanguard''-class and American ''Ohio''-class SSBNs from ''Tennessee'' on. The D5 missile is currently carried by fourteen ''Ohio''-class and four ''Vanguard''-class SSBNs. There have been 172 successful test flights of the D5 missile since design completion in 1989, the most recent being from in May 2019. There have been fewer than 10 test flights that were failures, the most recent being from , one of Britain's four nuclear-armed submarines, off the coast of Florida in June 2016. The
Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...
operates their missiles from a shared pool, together with the Atlantic squadron of the
U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage o ...
''Ohio''-class SSBNs at King's Bay, Georgia. The pool is 'co-mingled' and missiles are selected at random for loading on to either nation's submarines.


D5LE (D5 Life Extension Program)

In 2002, the United States Navy announced plans to extend the life of the submarines and the D5 missiles to the year 2040. This requires a D5 Life Extension Program (D5LEP), which is currently underway. The main aim is to replace obsolete components at minimal cost by using commercial off the shelf (COTS) hardware; all the while maintaining the demonstrated performance of the existing Trident II missiles. In 2007, Lockheed Martin was awarded a total of $848 million in contracts to perform this and related work, which also includes upgrading the missiles' reentry systems. On the same day, Draper Labs was awarded $318 million for upgrade of the guidance system. Then-British Prime Minister
Tony Blair Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He previously served as Leader of th ...
outlined plans in Parliament on 4 December 2006 to build a new generation of submarines ( Dreadnought-class) to carry existing Trident missiles, and join the D5LE project to refurbish them. The first flight test of a D-5 LE subsystem, the MK 6 Mod 1 guidance system, in
Demonstration and Shakedown Operation A Demonstration and Shakedown Operation (DASO) is a series of missile tests conducted by the United States Navy and the Royal Navy. These tests are employed to validate a weapon system (SLBM) and ensure a submarine crew's readiness to use tha ...
(DASO)-23, took place on on 22 February 2012. This was almost exactly 22 years after the first Trident II missile was launched from ''Tennessee'' in February 1990.


D5LE2 (D5 Life Extension Program 2)

US Navy Vice Admiral Johnny Wolfe, in charge of overall submarine weapons systems procurement, indicated in 2020 that he had initiated trade studies to apply lessons from the D5LE program to extend the Trident II's lifespan to 2084. Wolfe said he expected the first D5LE2 missiles to be deployed aboard the ninth ''Columbia''-class submarine by FY 2039.


Conventional Trident

The Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. It was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase ''The Pentagon'' is often used as a meton ...
proposed the Conventional Trident Modification program in 2006 to diversify its strategic options, as part of a broader long-term strategy to develop worldwide rapid strike capabilities, dubbed "
Prompt Global Strike Prompt Global Strike (PGS) is a United States military effort to develop a system that can deliver a precision-guided conventional weapon airstrike anywhere in the world within one hour, in a similar manner to a nuclear ICBM. Such a weapon wou ...
". The US$503 million program would have converted existing Trident II missiles (presumably two missiles per submarine) into conventional weapons, by fitting them with modified Mk4 reentry vehicles equipped with
GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...
for navigation update and a reentry guidance and control (trajectory correction) segment to perform 10 m class impact accuracy. No explosive is said to be used since the reentry vehicle's mass and hypersonic impact velocity provide sufficient mechanical energy and "effect". The second conventional warhead version is a fragmentation version that would disperse thousands of
tungsten Tungsten, or wolfram, is a chemical element with the symbol W and atomic number 74. Tungsten is a rare metal found naturally on Earth almost exclusively as compounds with other elements. It was identified as a new element in 1781 and first isol ...
rods which could obliterate an area of 3000 square feet (approximately 280 square
meter The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pref ...
s). It offered the promise of accurate conventional strikes with little warning and flight time. The primary drawback of using conventionally armed ballistic missiles is being virtually indistinguishable by radar warning systems from nuclear armed missiles. This leaves open the likelihood that other nuclear-armed countries might mistake it for a nuclear launch which could provoke a counterattack. For that reason among others, this project raised a substantial debate before US Congress for the FY07 Defense budget, but also internationally. Russian President
Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...
, among others, warned that the project would increase the danger of accidental nuclear war. "The launch of such a missile could ... provoke a full-scale counterattack using strategic nuclear forces," Putin said in May 2006.


Operators

* *


See also

*
Agni-VI Agni-VI (IAST: Agni ''"Fire"'') is an MIRV-capable intercontinental ballistic missile under development by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) for the Strategic Forces Command (SFC) of the Indian Armed Forces. Descriptio ...
* British Trident system * ICBM * JL-1 * JL-2 * K Missile family * M45 (missile) * M51 (missile) * Nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom *
Nuclear weapons and the United States The United States was the first country to manufacture nuclear weapons and is the only country to have used them in combat, with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. Before and during the Cold War, it conducted 1,054 nucle ...
* R-29RMU2.1 "Layner" * RSM-56 Bulava


References


External links


Basic characteristics of Trident II D-5
at the U.S. Navy

at Lockheed Martin

at Lockheed Martin

at the Federation of American Scientists {{DEFAULTSORT:Trident (Missile) Cold War submarine-launched ballistic missiles of the United States Cold War weapons of the United States MIRV capable missiles Nuclear weapons of the United Kingdom Nuclear weapons of the United States Submarine-launched ballistic missiles of the United States Trident (UK nuclear programme)