What the commentators said

The Government has been “stupid,” said Lord West in the Daily Mail. By withholding news of the failed test and then refusing to comment on the inevitable leak, it has merely fed suspicions that the Navy has something to hide: it doesn’t. As a former First Sea Lord, I am “totally confident” Trident is a dependable weapon. Most likely the cause of the latest incident was no more than a “glitch” in the navigational system of a single missile, the equivalent of a blown bulb in a car. It’s also worth noting that it’s impossible for a nuclear warhead to hit the wrong target and cause a nuclear disaster: the details are classified, but there are mechanisms to deal with the possibility of a missile veering off course. As for unarmed test missiles, they have a “self-destruct” facility allowing them to be destroyed in flight in the event of a malfunction, said Vice Admiral Sir Jeremy Blackham in the Daily Express. Around 160 test firings by ourselves or the Americans have passed off successfully. This episode doesn’t call into question the safety of our deterrent. It shows we have a “method of uncovering rare problems safely”.

But given how seldom the Navy gets a chance to test its Tridents – a single test costs £17m, and this was the first since 2012 – the failure must be seen as a blow to the credibility of our nuclear deterrent, said Robert J. Downes on The Conversation. And since America’s Lockheed Martin makes the missiles, it’s not just the reliability of Britain’s deterrent that will be disputed. Let’s hope this is a wake-up call, said Michael Clarke in The Sunday Times. As the operational life of our four nuclear-armed submarines is “constantly extended”, the number of problems reported on-board and at their Faslane base has multiplied. Meanwhile, a whole new class of risks is emerging: cyberattacks, and “submerged robots” able to detect the presence of subs in the deepest waters. On this occasion, our tests picked up a problem that can now be prevented. Without due care and proper investment, the future could be very different.