INDEX	February 13, 2025
Britain's suicide squad
A generation ago when like today Britain had an extreme right wing Labour government, a dodgy dossier was produced to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He did not. A few years later Libya was destroyed because its leader Muammar Gaddafi made the stupid mistake of agreeing to halt development of nuclear weapons, a decision which made the thugs and tyrants who run NATO feel confident enough to depose him. But what seems sensible to the practitioners of realpolitik, has a habit of coming back as a nightmare; and that is what is happening now. Over the last few months there has been an explosion (if that's the right word) in the development of the technology of warfare. There are now said to be hypersonic missiles capable of flying at Mach 9, nine times the speed of sound. To put that into context my cousin Spuds Murphy was a test pilot at the time that there was talk of flying faster than the speed of sound! This technology has been developed in human terms of reference, not much more than a lifespan. Mach 9 missiles are, of course, completely invulnerable to anti-missile systems like Israel's iron dome. But even if there was such a thing as a directed energy weapon, which there may be, there is another technology known as plasma sheathing, which could make the hypersonic missile impossible to detect. China, Russia and America are spending billions developing these technologies but the real threat comes not from the triumvirate but from small less stable players like Yemen (the Houthis have already used hypersonic missiles). All of which makes any rational person wonder why the UK army, navy and air force are called the Defence. In what universe are they defending anything? How could they possibly play any role in saving the UK from an attack by a rogue power with access to high tech weaponry? A better name for them would be the suicide squad and, of course, that's just what they are!
INDEX Jonathan Brind	February 13, 2025