Whose bang is it anyway?

It would be better if there were no nuclear weapons at all, but given that there are, and always will be, do we need our own, i.e. Trident or whatever its successor will be called? I think on balance - but only just - the answer is "yes". I would however feel much more confident about giving my approval if I was satisfied that our weapons were truly ours - in other words that our much-vaunted independent nuclear deterrent was really independent. But is it? It appears that the weapons are American manufactured (albeit in the UK) and the trigger and guidance system together with all the sophisticated software which controls it comes from the US. So although we could theoretically launch our missiles without US approval, in practice they could, if they wished, make it virtually impossible to do so. This makes the case for Son Of Trident significantly weaker, I feel.