NationStates Jolt Archive

Press Briefing Room, Government House, Navarre

A chattering block of reporters sat huddled in the small room ofset from the main Houses of Government. Part of the original 18th Century complex, the room was high-ceilinged with poor acoustics and even worse insulation. Nonetheless, it did the job, and by now most of the people there with their microphones and cameras had gotten used to it.

A side door opened, and a small, bespectled man walked up to the wooden podium set up at the front of the room. With the seal of the Freethinker Parliament carved into its front and with the Freethinker flag emblazoned across the wall behind it, the man stood, shuffled his notes, and addressed the gathered press.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Members of the Press, welcome."

"Today, by the order of the right honourable Prime Minister Theodor Barham, with the express approval of both the House of Peers and the House of Representatives, with the consent of His Majesty King George the Eighth, and at the behest of the leaders of our armed forces, we hereby officially declare the end of the policy of nuclear deterence as provided by our domestic armed forces."

"In this world, small stands for right may go unnoticed, but even the smallest moves for a more peaceful, better, safer world still mean something to the billions of people whose lives stand to benefit from this. We believe that our course of action helps to make the world, in a small way perhaps, a better place for all. This move has not been taken lightly, but is the result of months of deliberation and discussion, and this agreement is the result of many hours of fierce debate and arguement. We believe that this is the right path, and we believe that time will be a favourable judge to our actions."

"For those who percieve this as a sign of weakness, let them scoff, for we still retain our powerful, righteous, fundementally proffesional armed forces. Do not think that we are incapable of defending ourselves, for surely you will suffer if you choose to make that mistake. Our defences against nuclear attack will be retained, and we have many allies willing to step in to avenge is us if need be. We will not be seen as weak merely because we choose a saner path than most."

"For our nuclear assets, our twelve nuclear ballistic-missile submarines will be recalled and converted into conventional strike platforms. Our silos will, over the next few years, be dismantled, with the launching units converted for civilian use. Several military facilities for the manufacture and storage of these weapons will be downgraded, though we will still maintain the capability to build these weapons should we choose to tread down that path again."

"We remain ever vigilant. I will now take any questions from the press."

OOC: Feel free to respond how you like :) Press questions and Govt Anouuncements would be most favourable.

A female reporter stood, shaking brown hair out of her face. The man at the podium nodded at her.

"Junko Ayama, Ancient Terran News Network." she identified herself. "Will the missiles be disassembled and destroyed, and if so, where will the nuclear material be stored? And what is to become of the nuclear strike capability maintained by Freethinkers aircraft?"

Her cameraman shifted his view towards the man at the podium.

The reporter raised his camera to face the man on the podium, asking
"Jonathon Rilfers, Hogsweatian National News. How and where are you going to store the waste material? What are the chances of The Freethinkers regaining its nuclear capacity again?"
The reporter eagerly awaited the answer to his questions.

Vassily Amarinski, Chardonayan Royal Announcement Service System. With your nuclear deterent dismantled, how do you expect to compete internationally when more and more conflicts are being brought to the edge and staved off only by MAD? How do you expect to protect Freethinkers from a thermonuclear attack?

A female reporter stood, shaking brown hair out of her face. The man at the podium nodded at her.

"Junko Ayama, Ancient Terran News Network." she identified herself. "Will the missiles be disassembled and destroyed, and if so, where will the nuclear material be stored? And what is to become of the nuclear strike capability maintained by Freethinkers aircraft?"

Her cameraman shifted his view towards the man at the podium.

"Our missile tally concurrently runs at 240 Talisman II SLBMs in our naval fleets and roughly 4,200 Longrifle ICBMs spread liberally through 70 silo complexes around our various territories. Both weapons carried the WBM-133 125 kt warhead, with a maximum of 20 warheads carried by both types of missile. A rough estimate of 23,000 WBM-133 warheads were manufactured in total, with many of our weapons deliberately underarmed to provide a sub-strategic capability."

"All 23,000 warheads will be dismantled over the next three to four years, with the several tons of weapon-grade fuel, plutonium and tritium, being disposed of in sealed sites, released for research purposes in suitable quantities, re-processing into nuclear fuel, or exported to a stable nation if they so wish. We will not retain any nuclear warheads as such, though our facilities for manufacturing them will be maintained in case of a future policy change."

"As for the missiles themselves, all Longrifle ICBMs will be either dismantled or sold off to friendly nations and organisations. For the Talisman weapons, roughly fifty percent of the force, about 120 missiles, will be dismantled completely or sold on to friendly nations, whilst the other missiles in our inventory will be mothballed and placed in storage at the Puerto Hella Nuclear Facility, in case of a future incident where we need to reactivate them. As I mentioned before, however, no warheads will be retained for our weapons."

"As for the question regarding aircraft capability, our air force long ago was disenfranchised from our strategic forces. Whereas we do have a large number of capable aircraft, no air-launched nuclear weapons have been in service for a decade." He nodded to the Terran reporter.

The reporter raised his camera to face the man on the podium, asking
"Jonathon Rilfers, Hogsweatian National News. How and where are you going to store the waste material? What are the chances of The Freethinkers regaining its nuclear capacity again?"
The reporter eagerly awaited the answer to his questions.

"As we mentioned to the Terran reporter, we will dispose of the material and delivery systems in a number of ways including safe disposal within sealed, remote, guarded facilities, devolution of the stockpile to research institutes, and reprocessing where appropriate. Rest assured, we will make sure none of this material will fall into the wrong hands."

"As for the future possibility of a return of our deterent? Well, in the current political and military climate, no, but, we are not stupid enough to believe that, that will never change. We are retaining a small number of submarine based weapons in a deactivated stance, as well as retaining the capacity to produce warheads if need be. If we do reactivate our nuclear forces, it is likely to be on a much smaller scale than the force we are currently disbanding now."

Vassily Amarinski, Chardonayan Royal Announcement Service System. With your nuclear deterent dismantled, how do you expect to compete internationally when more and more conflicts are being brought to the edge and staved off only by MAD? How do you expect to protect Freethinkers from a thermonuclear attack?

"Well, we haven't been in situation where the threat of nuclear war has stayed the threat of a conventional conflict, although we are aware of it happening in some of the less developed places of the world. We believe that lacking a nuclear arsenal will force ourselves to be better diplomats and encourage our enemies to take a similar path, lest they be seen as hasty or unhinged to engage in a nuclear showdown."

"We must also point out we retain an excellent strategic defense system, capable of defending ourselves from most conventional delivery systems, and with the release of funds from the nuclear program we will be able to further improve our defences. We should point out that nuclear arms do not protect you from the effects of a nuclear strike, but merely allow a spiteful revenge."

"We should also point out that as a small nation within some very powerful defensive alliances, it is unlikely that we would be at the forefront of any target list seeing as we are incapable of unilateral offensive operations against most of the nations powerful enough to threaten us with atomic weapons. We have sufficient allies to know that an undeserved strike against ourselves will be responded to with equal gusto."

The young Omzian reporter from the state-owned Tonobran News Channel, who has been battling with both the heat and the other reports for quite some time, finally had his time when he raised his hands high and finally spoke during the rare pause between each question. Not allowing a second to pass away, he spoke loud and clear. "Fanrae Voranos, Omzian Tonobran News. Aside from strategic ballistic missiles, does the Freethinker military possess shorter-range nuclear weapons, such as cruise missiles, short-range ballistic missiles, and artillery shells?"

His cameraman, who had finally realized that his partner is speaking this time, moved the view unprofessionally onto his partner. While at this, and while as he listened, Voranos was suprised that he finally remembered what SRBMs actually stand for.

The young Omzian reporter from the state-owned Tonobran News Channel, who has been battling with both the heat and the other reports for quite some time, finally had his time when he raised his hands high and finally spoke during the rare pause between each question. Not allowing a second to pass away, he spoke loud and clear. "Fanrae Voranos, Omzian Tonobran News. Aside from strategic ballistic missiles, does the Freethinker military possess shorter-range nuclear weapons, such as cruise missiles, short-range ballistic missiles, and artillery shells?"

His cameraman, who had finally realized that his partner is speaking this time, moved the view unprofessionally onto his partner. While at this, and while as he listened, Voranos was suprised that he finally remembered what SRBMs actually stand for.

"A few decades ago, there were twenty-three different types of warhead and delivery system, including free-fall bombs, naval gun shells, cruise missile weapons, along with a host of other weapons and delivery systems. When the WBM-133 replaced the 129 model, it was built with the capcity to adjust the total warhead weight by altering how much of the fission/fusion process it underwent. It could produce sperate yields of just under a kiloton, to ten kilotons, to finally the full yield of force, roughly listed as 120 to 130 kilotons of explosive force."

"With this variable load, and a wish to cut the vastly bloated nuclear force to a more economic level, every other warhead and delivery system was systematically removed from Freethinker service. The WBM-133 warhead and the two respective delivery systems provided the foreseeable need for nuclear force within the Freethinker military."

"On a technical note, it was possible to mate a single WBM-133 warhead with our domestic Scimitar LAM, to provide a fully-capable tactical weapon, although these conversions were not operationally deployed and were all dismantled within the last few years."