Little Buddy

People finally saying out loud what "everybody" knows but most people don't - the UK doesn't really control its own nukes.

Yet the UK is – unlike France – highly intertwined with the US when it comes to maintaining its nuclear weapons, which are designed, manufactured and maintained in the US under a deal rooted in a 1958 agreement. Britain had 50 missiles left as of 2008 after purchases from a US stockpile, according to research by the University of Bradford.

“Britain likes to call its nuclear posture independent, but it, of course, is absolutely not,” said Hans Kristensen, who monitors the status of nuclear forces for the Federation of American Scientists, a US thinktank.

“It may be that Britain can fire weapons independently of the US, but below that, the entire infrastructure covering missile compartments on submarines, the missiles themselves, all are supplied by the Americans.”

It isn't even entirely clear that they can fire independently of the US.