There is some very fishy about this report of a Trident missile going off course on test, while at the same time the submarine and crew, recommissioning after a refit, are passed A1. Evidently it was all hushed up and angry Labour is demanding explanations of why this was held back from disclosure during the Trident renewal debate. Either May was not told or she is not telling. Certainly she refused to answer Andrew Marr’s probing, Michael Howard style, on TV yesterday. Various former Naval high rankers have suggested that there is no reason not to accept a misfire and to hush it up is to create greater eventual disclosure than would have been the case with a routine announcement at the time. After all, things do go wrong. Yes, but with Trident?
Trident is a very well established and tested system. It is possible that some malfunction occurred and the government decided to play politics of unusual naivete in thinking that it could hush it up for fear of losing the commons vote. But that was never in doubt as there is a large built in cross party majority for the deterrent renewal. So what else? Suppose it was hacked? Not by an enemy (this is a bit sophisticated for a teenager) but by us. From an Astute class submarine several hundred miles away, testing a new missile defence capability involving the disruption of the guidance system via jamming or hacking. This is right up there with modern defence planning. So maybe the reason we heard nothing was because the test was a success.
Having heard the evasive responses to probing in the House Of Commons today by the Secretary of Defence, few can now believe that this was a misfire. Exactly what it was is not entirely clear, but it is not that unclear either. It was a cyber warfare test.