Lord Strangeglove I presume?

[zen]

So how about the flipside of UK75's UK nuclear disarmament scenario?

What would things look like if yhe UK went all in on nuclear weapons and expanded production, sustainment and delivery systems for nuclear weapons.
Presumably at the expense of conventional forces.

 

[uk 75]

We will definitely need Alertken to thread our way through this one.
The first question I have is where do we get the extra materials for the weapons?
This factor limited the number of warheads we could produce for Ikara, Martel, Blue Slug, Bloodhound 3 etc.
I assume we would have to make more progress on this than we did in real life.

 

[riggerrob]

Commonwealth countries like Australia and Canada have plenty of uranium mines.
They also have huge regions of (almost) vacant land for testing. Back then, no one cared about the handful of aboriginys living-off-the-land in deserts or the Arctic.
However, Britain was bankrupt in the aftermath of WW2, so you would need some kind of (fictional) Commonwealth Armed Forces to finance more nuclear weapons.
This would also require further down-sizing the British Army to finance more nuclear weapons.

 

[zen]

Certainly, there was scope for a larger effort and one that could include Canada and Australia.

 

[alertken]

We might try a PoD of mid-1950, Korea evolving differently, such that US treated the place with the same disinterest with which it dismissed France's 1954 request for AW intervention at Dien Bien Phu. US watched the colonial oppressor ignominiously ejected.
Say, USSR vetoes any UN police action, 6/50. US stands idly by as the South is pushed into the sea, US over the hills and far away.

Let's have Churchill still winning 10/51 Election, but now convinced Ike was not his friend in any similar need: say, PRC moving on to revive the Emergency in Malaya, so threatening everywhere East of India, South of Japan...so ANZ. (In real world he wasted time hoping he could rent or borrow B-47/Mk.5 "the Article", and not need to divert AEA from power generation). Let us now assume he places more orders sooner for Mk.1 V-Bombers and for Red Beard gravity fission Bomb. Then what?

All British historiography misreads 8/46 McMahon Act, theft of our Bomb. No. Truman/McMahon denied USAAF Gen.Dr.Strangelove any access to AW, which was just as well over Berlin, 6/48, Korea 11/50. MoSupply Sandys spent much time from 1/53 stroking Ike's team to extract GW and AW data. So, next PoD: that all that effort fails: UK (+Canada/Oz/NZ): alone again. Ike's US is not gendarme of the world, UK gets no AW privilege. Ike does however, as in real, transfer the AW inventory from AEC to his Forces progressively through his tenure, but none of the realworld target/data collaboration happens. So USAF asks us nicely if they can hold Bombs near that twee Victorian seaside resort, Margate, and we choose to tell them to get lost...unless we can play too on your Big Bangs.

You see the conundrum: if US/UK are Allies we can, nay we must rely on their AW umbrella. If we are not...then we are fundamentally stuffed, once Uncle Joe builds Klaus Fuchs Bomb. When WSC told Sir Wm.Penney to do an H-Bomb, historian Lorna Arnold has him meeting AWRE's Brains Trust to ask: does anyone know how it's done? No answer was the stern reply. It took them 10 years (5/47-9/57) to equip RAF to deploy 24 copies of Fat Man. Their solo "megaton weapon", Violet Club, was more Threat to Rutland than to Russia.

So I resist OP's premise of a possibility to have done more. I agree #2 - where do we get more fissile material, and add: and the rest.

 

[zen]

No, not 'our' (UK) bomb, 'our' (UK and US) bomb....suddenly not 'our' (UK and US) bomb just 'our' (US) bomb.

Shut out of results of joint effort and after 'sharing' (giving under duress) Everything.
Suggest deliberate misreading to dismiss and disparage.

And ignored again. US penetration by pro-Communist, Soviet friendly. Voices raised "give it all (Europe) to Uncle Joe".....think that didn't include the UK?
Real story of 'reds under the bed'.
Not just in the UK. Eyes on Cambridge Ring, missing the elephant in DC

There's a reason Mccarthy went on the rampage and it wasn't in his head.

Fissile search and yea shall find.
Other parts more interesting and more difficult.

First big one....power, need excess electricity generation..... back to Canada?

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

My Lord Strangelove is Theodore Pike in The Light of a Thousand Suns.

 

[starviking]

Of course, later on we have a lot of Magnox reactors, with their dual-use possibilities.