The Royal Navy is due to test a nuclear weapon in a few days.
Officials issued a warning to shipping as the nuclear submarine HMS Vanguard sailed into the Atlantic this week.
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Trident II D5 missile taken in 2005. Credit: Crown Copyright
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British Royal Navy submarine HMS Vengeance, the fourth and final Vanguard class submarine Credit: EPA
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This is the first time the UK has test-fired a missile since a failed launch in 2016.
And there follows the warning sound that the world is heading for World War III.
The Sun has learned that the £4billion submarine is due to test an unarmed missile after completing a seven-year refit in Plymouth.
The tests are the final hurdle for HMS Vanguard to re-enter service as part of Britain’s nuclear deterrent fleet.
The 30-year-old submarine was filmed sailing out of Port Canavarel, Florida, on Tuesday morning.
The Navy hailed the doomsday ship as a 491-foot “colossus” that can patrol undetected for months.
It can carry up to 16 Trident 2 D5 missiles, each armed with multiple British-made warheads that are more than 20 times more powerful than the weapons dropped in WWII on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
The submarine is expected to launch one unarmed missile from a distance of 90 km from the east coast of the USA.
The U.S. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency issued a warning to shipping that charted the missile’s expected collision course in the mid-Atlantic.
The missile should travel some 6,000 km before falling into the sea between Brazil and West Africa.
The “dangerous operations” warning also outlines areas much closer to the launch site where debris is expected to fall as parts of the 60-tonne missile are burned and discarded.
The US-made 44-foot Trident missiles are designed to blast to the edge of space and track their position relative to the stars before re-entering the atmosphere and falling to earth.
Their maximum range is about 12,000 km.
A Royal Navy source said each nuclear-armed submarine could carry more explosive power than was dropped in the entire Second World War.
Officials regularly refuse to comment on nuclear and submarine missions.
However, the US warning remains in effect from 9pm on January 30 until 4am on February 4.
HMS Vanguard left Plymouth last year after a £500 million refit that took three years longer than planned.
The Sun revealed that contractors repairing HMS Vanguard secured repairs to the reactor chamber by gluing together broken bolts.
But the errors were discovered in the pre-mission checks.
In 2016, her sister submarine HMS Vengeance suffered a Trident missile failure after a similar refit.
The intercontinental ballistic missile was supposed to fly 9,000 km from near the coast of Florida to its target southeast of Ascension Island. But, of course, he took a dangerous turn and automatically self-destructed.
Former Prime Minister Theresa May has been accused of covering up the failure ahead of a parliamentary vote on renewing the UK’s nuclear deterrent.
It was only the fifth time the Trident 2 missile had been fired this century.
Previous tests — in 2000, 2005, 2009 and 2012 — were widely publicized by the Defense Department and Lockheed Martin, the US arms manufacturer, as proof of the weapon’s reliability.
Defense Secretary Grant Shapps and First Sea Lord Admiral Ben Key visited Washington DC this week for talks with their American counterparts.
Shapps warned last week that we were living in a “pre-war” age.
He said the UK could soon face conflicts with Russia, Iran, North Korea and China within five years.
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Trident II D5 surface penetrating missile fired from HMS Vanguard in 2006 Credit: Crown Copyright
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HMS Vanguard sits in dock at Faslane Submarine Base on the River Clyde on December 4, 2006 Credit: Getty Images – Getty
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