Trident missile launched from an American submarine, 2018/Reuters
A British Navy test of a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead has failed for the second time in a row, causing embarrassment to Britain and the United States, which manufactures it.
The Trident missile was launched from a submarine in the presence of Defense Secretary Grant Shapps last month, but its booster rockets failed and it landed in water near the launch site in the ocean.
The launch is particularly rare, partly due to the price of the missiles - 17 million pounds each - which are not armed with nuclear warheads during their tests. In the previous test, in 2016, the missile deviated from its course and
was intercepted. Shapps, who was with the commander of the fleet on board the submarine " Vanguard" - which has just completed seven years of renovations - confirmed in a letter to Parliament the report of the launch failure, which was first reported in "The Sun"
. To parliament, Shapps confirmed that "an anomaly did occur" during the test on January 30 this year, but said that Trident was "the most reliable weapon system in the world."
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