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By and large, I have always been of the view that it makes sense to replace the Trident Missile Submarines when required which is, I understand, in about 20 years time however and such is the gestation period of these things, we must start now. True, given the parlous state of the UK Finances, better not to have to find the estimated £20 billion cost but…

It should be the purpose of any personal blog to explore and consider ‘ideas’ that are outside of the mainstream or at the very least, “question” the current perceived wisdom. Wednesday bought the following: “The government should scale back the UK’s Trident nuclear deterrent to save money, a think tank has said. The Royal United Services Institute urged ministers to consider dropping the requirement of always having a nuclear submarine on patrol at sea.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10784192

This has prompted a number of thoughts…

A Submarine Based Deterrent

Looked at from a Cold War perspective with one main enemy, the Soviet Union, Polaris/Trident missile systems greatly extended the ‘geography’ of these islands by putting our Nuclear Deterrent “out there somewhere” under the sea. As a stealth technology, yes it works very well as the fortunately minor collision between a British and a French missile subs in the Atlantic recently demonstrated, neither knew the other was there !

Given that we are looking 20 years ahead, it is fair to say that we just do not know what situations we will be faced with so, erring on the side of caution, we should accept the continuing need and just get on with the Trident replacement.

The Weapons Themselves

Having been born at the end of 1945, I grew up in the world of the Cold War, looking back and for a very long time, the ‘A’ and ‘H’ Bombs were probably viewed by most people as little more than just “super bombs” and test explosions equating the force and size to “X amount of TNT”, didn’t really help too much either. It only gradually dawned on people that there would be long term environmental problems in areas and regions where these weapons had been used and people would continue to die from contamination long after the initial blast.

However, it seems to have gradually dawned on both the USA and the USSR that these things had a greater potency and/or consequences than just that so that “First and Second Strikes” merged into “First Strike Only” and the philosophy of MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction emerged. Even today and despite considerable disarmament, we still have far too many of these weapons than Nature can tolerate and leave us with a habitable environment/planet after only a few detonations.

Questions

I suppose a question might be: “Under what circumstances would the USA, Russia, China, Britain and France actually use Nuclear Weapons ?”

Perhaps we can refine that further because the vast majority of nuclear warheads and delivery systems are concentrated in the hands of just two Countries, the USA and Russia and therefore the “Mexican Stand Off” that has neutralised both from using their arsenals is likely to continue into the future. So if we consider everyone else “Second Tier”, we can repose that question on a more sensible basis.

Under what circumstances would Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea, use whatever nuclear weapons that they have ?

In the case of the first three, it is hard to imagine, with Israel easier, it would do a pre-emptive strike if it felt that it’s survival was seriously threatened. With Pakistan and India, in reality it is another “Mexican Stand Off” and Pakistan would be mad to get involved in any nuclear exchange with it’s smaller land mass. Rouge States such as North Korea, Iran and so on are the real problem, not because they would use what ‘potential’ they actually have but because they would supply it to “terrorists” because they either saw it in their ‘National Interests’ to do so or, “My enemies enemy, is my friend.”

The potential nett result is a nuclear 9/11” whereby a ‘dirty bomb’ the components of which have been supplied by ignorant and introverted States such as North Korea or even Pakistan, lead to sections and areas of the West and their commercial districts, ‘radiated’ for the next ‘how many years’?

Does one even need a military nuclear programme to represent the threat of supplying the components necessary for a ‘dirty bomb’ ? Right now there are some 60 new nuclear power plants under construction right across the globe with a further 2-300 under consideration over the next 20 years, the ‘material leakage’ potential is quite high.

The Astute Class

The basic question surely lies in whether or not, we in the UK should build new ‘Trident Replacements’ ? As I understand it, there are three parts to these submarines, the vessel itself, the rockets/guidance systems and finally the warheads themselves. One of the most fascinating programmes I have ever seen was on the BBC – “How to Build a Nuclear Submarine”, the publicity blurb was as follows:

“The BBC has been given exclusive behind-the-scenes access as the Royal Navy built its latest nuclear-powered Astute submarines. The submarines, which cost more than £1bn, take years to design and build, with the first of class taking 14 years to complete. More than a year of the top secret process at one of the most secure places in the country – the BAE Systems shipyard in Cumbria – has been captured on camera. Weighing 7,000 tons and measuring 100 metres in length, assembling the different sections is a delicate business.”

The point is that designing and building these things is a complicated process and some of the 14 years of developing and launching the first of the Astute Class subs was down to a series of cock ups. In fact if I remember correctly, the whole program was stopped and construction totally changed at one stage plus, this was the first new submarine out of Barrow in about 10 years.

This class of submarine can carry and fire cruise missiles so one thought put forward is to use them instead but that carries two problems with it: We would have to develop both the missiles and their warheads ourselves which is likely a far higher cost than the Trident system where we get substantial cost sharing advantages with the USA. But the other problem is that sub sonic cruise missiles are too easy to intercept and have a far shorter range and will take longer to reach their target.

It is the reason why air launched nuclear weapons and our “V Bomber Fleet” were abandoned for the submarine launched Polaris system originally. This leaves us with only one other choice, land, UK based ICBMs and I’m not too sure that would be any cheaper either.

Conclusion

Unless the UK wants to pre-announce an intention to unilaterally disarm itself of nuclear weapons at the end of the service life of the Trident Fleet which may be a logical idea in some ways, we need to press ahead with its replacement as the most cost effective way of proceeding.