It’s all been pretty quiet on the Trident front since that February rally, which saw a tie-less Jeremy Corbyn and other opposers take to the streets of London. However, it’s now emerged that the MoD plans to splash the cash to protect its 58 Trident II missiles from pesky hackers.
The 25-year-old submarine-based system requires a rather expensive software update. A whopping £1.9 billion, which will be spent between now and 2021, has been put aside, and BAE Systems will be charged with getting the job done. The US, always eager to get its XXXXL bollocks out when it comes to anything military-related, is reportedly planning to spend £24 billion on its warheads over the same period.
“We take our responsibility to maintain a credible nuclear deterrent extremely seriously and continually assess the security of the whole deterrent programme and its operational effectiveness, including against threats from cyber,” said a spokesman from the MoD.
Read More: What is Trident and Why do we Need it?
Intriguingly, however, Leicester University’s nuclear expert Dr Andrew Futter has come out and claimed that there’s almost no risk of the Trident system falling prey to a hacker, as the missiles aren’t actually connected to the Internet. Still, you wouldn’t want to take risks with a weapon deterrant capable of smashing entire cities to bits, even if it does happen to be named after a type of chewing gum. [Ars Technica, Telegraph]
This post originally appeared on Gizmodo UK, which is gobbling up the news in a different timezone.