Those two impostors

When the Sunday Times ran an exclusive on 22 January 2017 about a Trident missile having “experienced an alarming failure after being launched from a British submarine off the coast of Florida in June last year”, they went into the “What did they know, and when did they know it?” mode much-beloved of investigative journalists. Readers of the story, which derived from “a senior naval source”, were told that

The incident happened shortly before Theresa May became prime minister but she omitted any mention of the failed test when she persuaded parliament to spend £40bn on new Trident submarines in her first big Commons speech on July 18. The revelations are likely to cause a political storm. MPs will want to know why such important information … was withheld …

As Cameron remained PM until 13 July, this line was not exactly supported by

The source had told this newspaper that the test took place at the end of June – about the time of the Brexit vote on June 23.

or by a story in The Times the next day, US urged Britain to keep Trident blunder secret:

Officials from the Obama administration asked David Cameron’s government not to comment on the malfunction during a test of the Trident nuclear deterrent in June, it is understood.

The Sunday Times returned to their story on 29 January, sticking with “the serious malfunction [having] been covered up by Downing Street” but shifting the emphasis to “problems with the gyro within Trident’s guidance system” and US documents, backed up by “A source close to the US military”.

Neither of the Sunday Times reports made anything of the closeness of the British Trident test (actually on Monday 20 June – see below) to the date of the EU Referendum. A post here last year looked at the opinion polling in the days leading up to the Referendum and any impact of the death of Jo Cox MP and suspension of the campaign on Thursday 16 June. Parliament was recalled on 20 June and campaigning resumed the following day. At this point Remain seemed to be doing better in the polling than hitherto, or as it turned out, on the day.

The Sunday Times’s political editor, Tim Shipman, has written in depth about the Referendum in a highly-regarded book, All Out War.  At the end of a chapter on the aftermath of Cox’s death, he records:

… Another senior figure in the campaign described Jo Cox’s death as ‘a disaster’ for Stronger In: ‘That weekend , I bet the papers would have splashed on a five-point Leave lead in the polls, and I think on Monday and Tuesday the markets would have crashed. We would have had a cycle which was much closer to Scotland. Actually it took the sting out of the campaign. It meant that the bounce back to the status quo never really happened. That was something we were banking on happening”. 

Cox’s death also meant Mark Carney’s final intervention on the day of her killing received almost no publicity. ‘He was just wiped off the news agenda, and that was devastating from our point of view’, a Tory source said. … (page 388)

The next chapter of Shipman’s book deals with the final ‘Great Debate’ of the campaign held at Wembley on Tuesday 21 June. By then the news of the test failure would have reached Whitehall - which raises an interesting point: what effect, if any, the news might have had on the campaign.  In so far as it could appear to the public as being a loss of face for the government and the prime minister, it might have been considered as unhelpful to the Remain side and even as undermining its authority. 

Two other, albeit less intriguing, points about timing lurk in all this. Firstly, if the story didn’t break surface last summer soon after the event, why should it emerge in January, seven months later? Perhaps it should be noted that President Obama’s period of office ended on Friday 20 January and the new Trump staff in the White House would have had no interest in responding to The Times’s story on Monday 22nd, if they were even aware of it.

Following the Sunday Times story, a Labour MP, Kevan Jones, put down an Urgent Question on 23 January:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the test firing of a Trident nuclear missile in June 2016.

The Defence Secretary, Sir Michael Fallon, responded:

In June last year, the Royal Navy conducted a demonstration and shakedown operation designed to certify HMS Vengeance and her crew prior to their return to operations. It included a routine unarmed Trident missile test launch. Contrary to reports in the weekend press, HMS Vengeance and her crew were successfully tested and certified as ready to rejoin the operational cycle. We do not comment on the detail of submarine operations, …

Lines which he continued to take in response to questions. Another MP, John Spellar (Labour Minister for the Armed Forces, 1999-2001), asked:

Will the Minister confirm that in Lord Hennessy’s book “The Silent Deep” there is a full description of a previous firing?

Spellar could have asked the book’s author who must have been in Westminster, for later the same afternoon in the House of Lords, Earl Howe, Defence Minister, repeated the statement Fallon had made earlier (although the words “In June last year” were replaced by “On 20 June”) and Lord Hennessy would speak:

My Lords, I declare an interest in that I witnessed the launch in question from the survey vessel two and half miles away from where the missile came out of the sea. I put it to the Minister, with great respect, that it would make it much easier for those of us who very powerfully support the independent deterrent, and the building of the four “Dreadnought” submarines in the successor class, to make the case generally in the country when we are interviewed in the media if the Minister could assure us that a full analysis has been successfully made of whatever went wrong—I have no knowledge at all of the nature of what went wrong—and that remedies have been put in place. I understand that every particle of a D5 missile is riddled with the highest security classifications, but in this case, such an assurance could be possible and would be very welcome.

Earl Howe replied:

My Lords, the most important assurance is the one that I have already given: this is a system in which we have absolute confidence. It has never been the practice of government to give Parliament details of submarine operations or of the systems and subsystems that are tested during a demonstration and shakedown operation. But I hope I have said enough to reassure noble Lords about our deterrent and its reliability.

Peter Hennessy, as well as witnessing the June 2016 launch, had been present at launches in May 2009 and October 2012 (The Silent Deep, page 638). By yet another near coincidence of timing, the paperback edition of his book had come out on 2 June 2016. The Submarine Service seems to have embraced Hennessy as warmly as the civil service used to in the days when his books on Whitehall would admiringly recount how “down these mean corridors a man must go”. But perhaps he shouldn’t book his flights to Florida for 2020, say, too soon, in view of Fallon’s response to Spellar’s question above:

… I have already made it clear that, of course, earlier Governments in different circumstances took different decisions not to share details with Parliament, but to release information publicly about the completion of tests. We have to take our decision in the light of the circumstances that prevail at the time and the national security considerations.

And if 2020 turns out to be the next year a British submarine tests a Trident missile, do not expect it to take place before 7 May!

Fallon must have been left wishing that in the past others had adopted the reticence implied in Kipling’s advice:

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster  

And treat those two impostors just the same

The Frankton Memorial, Le Verdon-sur-Mer

There has been a revival of interest in the December 1942 Operation Frankton in the last few years. Better-known in the past as the Cockleshell Heroes operation, it was a clandestine attack on German shipping in Bordeaux harbour mounted by twelve Royal Marines commandos under Major HG "Blondie" Hasler. Infiltrated by submarine to the mouth of the Gironde estuary, the plan was to navigate their way by two-man canoes (“cockleshells”) up the heavily defended estuary for 70 miles to the harbour.

From www.c-royan.com

Five canoes set off with ten men: two died of hypothermia, six were captured and executed by the Germans, two survived including Hasler. Six ships were damaged, one extensively. Far from being futile, Frankton demonstrated the need for inter-agency cooperation while planning for the invasion of France in 1944.

In 2012 Paddy Ashdown’s A Brilliant Little Operation: The Cockleshell Heroes and the Most Courageous Raid of World War 2 was published, a BBC2 Timewatch documentary, The Most Courageous Raid of WWII, narrated by Ashdown, being shown the previous year. Ashdown’s account offers perspectives from someone who is both a senior politician and a former Royal Marines officer who had met Hasler. The documentary and book reveal that unknown to the Combined Operations Command who controlled the Marines, the Special Operations Executive were running similar operations at the same time. Inter-agency issues are explored further in Tom Keene’s Cloak of Enemies: Churchill's SOE, Enemies at Home and the Cockleshell Heroes, also published in 2012. Prior to these two books, the best-known account of the operation had been C. E. Lucas Phillips’ Cockleshell Heroes published in 1956.

In 2011 a memorial commemorating Frankton was installed on the southern edge of the mouth of the estuary at the Pointe de Grave in the commune of Le Verdon-sur-Mer (33). As it is fairly remote, two hours’ drive from Bordeaux, the photographs below may be of interest to anyone unable to visit the site. The memorial was designed by Baca Architects and constructed by Albion Stone Restoration for the Royal Marines Association. Both companies’ websites are worth consulting, Baca explaining that:

The Memorial remembers the 10 courageous Royal Marines, the bravery of the captain and crew of the submarine HMS Tuna and the courageous French citizens who assisted the Royal Marines. The four substantial Portland stone blocks step up towards the front of the memorial, where one may envisage a symbolic representation of the Royal Marines emerging from the sea, standing proud. As one moves around the memorial, different compositions are revealed. The separate stones create individual settings for insignia, as well as stones at the flanks to show the story of mission.

Albion explain that:

The staggered blocks create a dynamic ensemble, growing bolder to the front. The blocks are adorned with polished plaques that commemorative the heroism and retell the story. Symbolically the four stones represent four figures emerging from the sea.

and offer descriptions:

Stone 1: Crests of the participants in Operation Frankton: The Royal Navy, Combined Operations Command, The Royal Marines, The French Resistance

Stone 2: This carries the text tributes in English and French to the gallant 10 Royal Marines, and each named beneath a carved floral motif of the Rose, the Thistle and the Shamrock, representing the birth places of the men England, Scotland and Ireland. There follows tributes to the Capt and crew of HMS Tuna and to the courage of local French people who helped the marines, three, named on this plaque who were deported to concentration camp in Germany, and did not return arrested for being associated with Op Frankton, coincidentally, except for one Lucien Gody who raced late at night to warn Hasler and Sparks to flee their hiding place as Germans were close by. At the base are the words of Lord Mountbatten about the 10 men. 

Stone 3: There is a depiction of the Submarine HMS Tuna, together with the five canoes just after the launch, where they were to be together for the very last time. Two crews were lost in two vicious Tide-races on the first night, two men died of hypothermia and two were captured when they arrived exhausted on the beach and were executed four days later. [The quotation is from the C. E. Lucas Phillips’ book, mentioned above.]

Stone 4: This carries the narrative account of Operation Frankton, again all repeated in French.

The memorial is constructed in Grove Whitbed stone which has a surface markedly different from the limestone widely used for buildings in the Gironde.

The Pointe de Grave is exposed to salt water spray from the Bay of Biscay and the effects of corrosion are already beginning to show on the Frankton memorial. Nearby is another memorial which commemorates the American Expeditionary Forces under General Pershing which arrived in France in 1917. Hopefully it will receive some restoration before the centenary in 2017.

No gain for the needy South West

A post earlier this month about the Scottish independence referendum said that the possible relocation of the Royal Navy’s nuclear submarines to SW England would be revisited. 

Back in 2012 a post appeared here called Would Scotland’s loss be the South West’s gain? At the time there was a prospect of an independent Scotland no longer providing a base for the UK’s nuclear submarines and the Trident nuclear deterrent. The post explored the possibility of relocation of the deterrent and thousands of associated jobs to SW England and concluded:

Recent polling suggests that a majority of voters in Scotland do not want independence and if this continues until the referendum, the possibility of any gain does not arise. Otherwise, if the UK sans Scotland is to continue to be a nuclear weapon state, there doesn’t seem to be an alternative to Trident operating from HMNB* Devonport. A suitable armaments depot would have to be constructed there, or possibly in Cornwall, say by 2025. If this turns out to be not so much ‘implausible’ as impossible, something more radical might adopted, but probably would not be revealed until after the 2015 election. Otherwise Trident’s removal from the Clyde ought to be of considerable long-term net benefit to the economy of SW England in the form of jobs, and expenditure by households and on base support.

A key source for this post was Malcolm Chalmers’ and William Walker’s 2001 book, Uncharted Waters - The UK, Nuclear Weapons and The Scottish Question, although they had come to the conclusion that relocation to Devonport was implausible (page 120). A month later a follow-up post, What would be the cost of the South West’s gain?, appeared here. A cost figure which seemed to have some authority had appeared in The Times:

The cost of moving Britain’s four nuclear submarines from the Faslane base on the Clyde, along with stockpiles of warheads and missiles, could be £2.5 billion, according to former senior military commanders.

This figure’s possible provenance was explored and it was compared with the outturn of a couple of recent major projects audited by the NAO, the post's conclusion being:

Neither of these examples would suggest that £2.5 billion is a wild over- or underestimate.

In August 2014, a month before the referendum, Chalmers, who is now Research Director and Director, UK Defence Policy Studies at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI), published (with Hugh Chalmers) a detailed analysis, Relocation, Relocation, Relocation Could the UK’s Nuclear Force be Moved after Scottish Independence? To which their answer was Yes - to Devonport and Falmouth:

with the conclusion:

A potential alternative to HMNB Clyde would involve relocating the submarine support functions of Faslane to HMNB Devonport and replicating the munitions-support functions of Coulport from scratch on a greenfield site north of Falmouth. Previous work undertaken at HMNB Clyde in preparation for the current Vanguard-class submarine suggests that this relocation plan could cost between £3 billion and £4 billion (gross, at 2012/13 prices), not including any costs associated with land purchase and clearance of existing buildings at the new munitions-support facility. 

Some of these relocation costs could be funded by the cancellation of planned upgrades to HMNB Clyde to prepare it for a successor to Vanguard. The UK currently anticipates investing £2.3–3.4 billion (at 2012/13 prices) in new infrastructure for a successor submarine. Even if only £500 million of this were dedicated to HMNB Clyde, the net costs of relocating HMNB Clyde may therefore amount to between £2.5 billion and £3.5 billion (at 2012/13 prices), together with any costs associated with land purchase and clearance.

Following the referendum result, the problems that might have arisen after independence, of which Trident’s future was just one, have moved off the political agenda. Although the possibility of Scottish independence cannot be ruled out for all time, it seems most unlikely that resourcing submarine relocation would be recommended in the UK’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) due in 2015. That this potential gain is now not forthcoming is regrettable, if only because Devon and Cornwall are in a poor way, as the Western Morning News recently demonstrated drawing on the ManpowerGroup Pay League. Apparently in terms of averages, workers in the Home Counties and London earn up to £17,000 more than in the South West where, at £24,400, annual pay is almost £3,000 lower than in the the UK as a whole at £27,200. A table gave details at local authority level within the SW Region:

The relocation of work from HMNB Clyde would have had greatest impact towards the end of the list (22, 25, 26, 30, 32 and 35).

UK Trident: Summer 2014

Every so often there is a post here about the public debate about the UK’s future nuclear deterrent which, on current plans, will be based on Successor SSBNs carrying Trident missiles. Three recent items seem to me to be worth recording.

Labour’s National Policy Forum

This Labour Party Forum has 198 members who met in private for three days in July. According to the Guardian:

A full report of what was agreed at the NPF will be published at the time of Labour's annual conference in the autumn and it will form the foundation of the party's election manifesto.

The LabourList website's Mark Ferguson liveblogged the NPF and reported “the wording delegates agreed on Trident (as per last night’s late night deal)”:

With other nations possessing nuclear weapons, and nuclear proliferation remaining a deep concern, we can never be absolutely certain as to what the future security landscape will look like. In July 2013, the current government published its Trident Alternatives Review which examined alternative defence systems and postures for the UK’s deterrent. Labour has said that we are committed to a minimum, credible independent nuclear deterrent, delivered through a Continuous At Sea Deterrent. It would require a clear body of evidence for us to change this belief. 

Labour recognises the importance of Britain leading international efforts for multilateral nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. Following the action we took when in government, Labour would actively work to enhance momentum on global multilateral disarmament efforts and negotiations, looking at further reductions in global stockpiles and the number of weapons. This would be done in line with our assessment on the global security landscape. 

Labour would continue to take a leading role internationally to push the agenda of global anti-proliferation with nuclear and non-nuclear states. This is a vision shared by President Barack Obama and Labour would work with the United States and other allies, such as France, to advance ‘Global Zero’, which seeks to advance an action plan for the elimination of all nuclear weapons. Labour recognises that the success of past international bans on weapons of mass destruction such as landmines, cluster munitions, chemical and biological weapons. 

The NPT Conference 2015 will be a key moment for a Labour government to show leadership in achieving progress on global disarmament and anti-proliferation measures. 

Labour has said that the process and debate leading up to the next Strategic Defence and Security Review in 2015 needs to be open, inclusive and transparent, including examining all capabilities, including nuclear. It must also examine the cost implications as well as the strategic necessities, recognising the importance of the defence sector to the UK economy, and the need to protect and develop a highly-skilled workforce. To this end, a Labour government will have a continuing consultation, inviting submissions from all relevant stakeholders, including Labour Party members and affiliates, on the UK’s future defence and national security issues.

RUSI On Warheads

Back in March, I posted about a paper produced under the auspices of the RUSI think tank which aimed to debate Continuous At-Sea Deterrence. Its author, Hugh Chalmers, has since written The Bang Behind the Buck, Replacing the UK’s Nuclear Warheads which centres on the proposition that:

… the next Parliament may have to start considering a replacement [for the UK’s nuclear warheads] towards the end of its term if a replacement were to be needed by the latter half of the 2030s. (page 1)

and is consistent with the 2010 SDSR statement about replacement warheads:

3.12 Since 2006, work has been progressing in order to determine the optimum life of the existing warhead stockpile and the range of replacement options. Under the 1958 UK-US Agreement for Cooperation on the Uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defence Purposes (the ‘Mutual Defence Agreement’) we have agreed on the future of the Trident D5 delivery system and determined that a replacement warhead is not required until at least the late 2030s. Decisions on replacing the warhead will not therefore be required in this Parliament. This will defer £500 million of spending from the next 10 years.

if “by the latter half of the 2030s” and “at least the late 2030s” are taken as meaning the same thing. The RUSI paper thinks the need for replacement may arise because:

… it is unclear whether it [the UK’s current arsenal of nuclear warheads] will continue to age gracefully. The complex array of interconnected components that make up the UK’s warhead deform and decay over time, affecting its behaviour and thus the reliability of the warhead. … Eventually a fault may arise that cannot be easily remedied, and replacing original parts with alternatives gradually alters warheads from their original tested design, introducing uncertainty into their functioning and effectiveness. (page 1)

But unpromisingly for the reader:

Despite being pivotal to the long-term operation of the UK’s nuclear force, very little information has been made available as to what replacing a nuclear arsenal actually involves and how a replacement decision will ultimately be made. This is because most details of the UK’s nuclear arsenal and the methods used to maintain it are understandably classified. This paper draws upon what open sources are available to shine some light onto this issue by outlining the composition and status of the UK’s nuclear arsenal, and describing how it might ultimately be replaced or renewed. (page 2)

And the reality of the UK’s situation is that:

The origin of the current Trident warhead, and indeed most of the UK’s past nuclear warheads, can be traced back to the 1958 MDA with the US. This agreement, forged in the shadow of the Soviet Union’s burgeoning intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capability, ended twelve years of nuclear separation between the former wartime collaborators and gave the UK access to more advanced nuclear expertise and capabilities from across the Atlantic. (page 2)

So it’s not surprising when, nine pages later and towards the end of the paper, we are told:

The future of the UK’s nuclear arsenal is therefore inextricably linked to that of the US. (page 11)

and that in summing up the Future of the UK’s Nuclear Stockpile:

If indications emerge within the next parliament that the UK’s nuclear stockpile may not survive past the late 2030s, the government at the time will be faced with a dilemma. Without a clear steer from the US, the UK may have to choose between developing a replacement warhead with an uncertain supply of components (and over time, missiles), or retaining an arsenal of suspect reliability. In the case of the former, the UK might embark on a pathway that, at best, produces limited results, and, at worst, risks jeopardising the much-valued exchange between the two nuclear partners. Given this tough choice, pressure to replace the UK’s warhead may meet equal and opposite pressure to delay until a clear pathway can be developed in collaboration with the US. (page 12/13)

In this paragraph there are three ‘may’s, one ‘if’ and one ‘might’ and by my reckoning there are 39 ‘mays’, 21 ‘if’s, 16 ‘might’s, 10 ‘could’s and 10 ‘were’s (as a subjunctive) in the whole paper, reflecting its subject’s inherent uncertainties: to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, it has too many known unknowns and unknown unknowns. One of the few official statements on the subject was in the 2013 Trident Alternatives Review (TAR) which is correctly quoted as stating “that replacing the UK’s [Trident] nuclear warheads would take approximately seventeen years for the first unit at an estimated cost of around £4 billion in 2012 prices” (page 1), although the 50% confidence associated with this figure (TAR paragraph 25) was not included, nor was the interesting remark at TAR paragraph 5.12:

Analysis of the timescales likely to be associated with delivering a new warhead was conducted, using as a baseline studies that supported the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review and ongoing studies for a possible new Trident warhead (should one be required).

Most readers will conclude that the author has done as good job as could be expected in the circumstances. This paper is better written than its predecessor; indeed the author thanks six named individuals and “a number of experts”. The conclusions it reaches, given the nature of the Mutual Defence Agreement, are perhaps not that surprising. A cynic might say that it could just as appropriately been called The Buck Behind the Bang.

BASIC's Trident Commission Concluding Report 

Launch of the Concluding report in July 2014

BASIC, the British American Security Information Council, describes itself as “a small but influential think tank with one very large idea: we want a world free from the threat of nuclear weapons”. It set up the Trident Commission in 2011 as an inquiry into Britain’s nuclear weapon policy and the issue of Trident renewal with a membership of eight from appropriate ranks of the great and the good. I won’t list them all here, but will note that they include a former Conservative defence and foreign secretary (Rifkind), a former Labour defence secretary (Browne) and Professor Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield (Peter Hennessy, as he is disrespectfully labelled in posts here).

Anyone who wants to go into the Commission’s activities over the last three years should start with their webpage and read on to locate Evidence Received and Background Briefings. The papers in the latter were by BASIC staff with one, Alternative delivery systems and their platforms, by Matt Cavanagh, a former Labour SPAD who worked on defence issues.  The Commission focused on three questions in particular, namely:

Should the United Kingdom continue to be a nuclear weapons state?

If so, is Trident the only or best option for delivering the deterrent?

What more can and should the United Kingdom do to facilitate faster progress on global nuclear disarmament?

Whatever BASIC may have expected or hoped for, the Commission’s answers to these questions in the Summary Conclusions tend to endorse the status quo. So, on the first:

Based upon the two key specific considerations, namely national security concerns and responsibility towards the Alliance, the Commission has come to the unanimous conclusion that the UK should retain and deploy a nuclear arsenal, with a number of caveats expressed below. Most notably, it remains crucial that the UK show keen regard for its position within the international community and for the shared responsibility to achieve progress in global nuclear disarmament.

and

We are conscious that our conclusion — that the UK should retain and renew its nuclear deterrent — must be weighed against the considerable cost of renewing and operating Trident, a cost that is a rising proportion of the defence budget (as capital spending on the project increases and as spending on other defence capabilities reduces). Over the life of the project, it can be expected that capital, running, and decommissioning costs associated with the nuclear weapons project account for roughly 9-10% of the overall defence budget, though into the 2020s we will experience a higher spend, and after that a smaller amount. However, we believe that cost must be of secondary importance to the judgment over whether forsaking the UK’s nuclear deterrent capability could open the country to future strategic risk. (page 6, L-HC)

On the second question:

The government’s Trident Alternatives Review considered the technical case for alternative platforms and delivery systems, concluding that at present there were no benefits to be had from choosing a different nature of system at this stage. The Trident SSBN (Ballistic Missile Submarines) system meets the criteria of credibility, scale, survivability, reach and readiness. Whilst the Commission is not in a position to interrogate in depth the information and assumptions underpinning the Review, we are opposed to proposals to develop alternative platforms and delivery systems, with new warheads, simply on the basis of possible but speculative cost savings. The choice of system and posture must be credible when considering national security and alliance relationships, and must embrace the UK’s responsibilities to stability and the wider international community. Whilst dual-use systems have the benefit of adaptability to circumstances, we have serious concerns about their capacity to increase strategic ambiguity, which would both complicate arms control and cause confusion in crises. (page 7, R-HC)

The third question is addressed on pages 8 and 9 of the Summary Conclusions and in Chapter 3 and anyone interested in diplomacy, non-proliferation and the “disarmament ladder” should consult those. Suffice it to say that the Commission is in favour of progress on nuclear disarmament and outlines constructive steps which the UK could take.

The Commission gave careful consideration to CASD and list reasons for and against its continuation and possible alternatives in Chapter 2 (pages 30 to 32). The Summary Conclusion was:

Some see a CASD posture as essential to any credible seaborne nuclear deterrent that would meet the UK’s needs into the foreseeable future. As a Commission looking ahead into a rapidly-changing world picture, we believe there are further steps that could be considered between the current posture and full disarmament, when the strategic conditions allow, with relaxed CASD as one of those steps. We are, however, divided over whether the UK could take this step independently, or only multilaterally with other nuclear weapon states. 

Some of us believe that CASD should be maintained for the foreseeable future and that we must wait for improvement in the security environment, specifically a reversal of the current trends in the modernisation of nuclear arsenals elsewhere and stronger indications of a matching intent to disarm. Some of us believe that the strategic environment today, which does not involve a current or near foreseeable strategic military threat to the UK and its vital interests, enables us to drop continuous patrolling and retain instead the capacity to increase patrols should crisis threaten. 

There is in any case an opportunity to initiate a full conversation with the United States and France on the conditions that could allow the allied nuclear weapon states to consider closer coordination of their continuous patrolling posture. (page 8)

The question of the number of Successor SSBNs is addressed in Chapter 2:

The Ministry of Defence assumes that the UK will still require a four submarine fleet to have a high confidence of maintaining an indefinite CASD posture, though decisions on this will be taken later*. This is because, even with the modernized PWR3 reactor that no longer requires mid-life refuelling, the new submarines are still expected to need complex mid-life overhauls for other components that could last several months. We do not have sufficient information to come to a definitive view on whether three submarines would be sufficient for a CASD posture, or whether replacing the four existing Vanguards with four successor submarines represents an increase in patrolling capabilities because of the higher reliability of new technology.

* Refers to the TAR paragraph 3.36, p.29 which reads:

Classified analysis about attempting to maintain continuous at sea deterrence with a 3-boat SSBN option showed that the risk of unplanned breaks relates directly to the number of submarines available for operational deployment, which in turn relates directly to the total number in the fleet. The modelling suggests that, over a 20 year period, a 3-boat fleet would risk multiple unplanned breaks in continuous covert patrolling as well as requiring regular planned breaks for maintenance and/or training. Experience to date with the Resolution-class and Vanguard-class SSBNs is that no such breaks have occurred or been required with a 4-boat fleet.

The TAR mentions PWR3 once (paragraph 5.19) and then only as being the reactor costed for the SSN(Vertical Launch) option. However, the Trident Commission’s Background Briefing Paper 3, Measuring the financial costs, states on page 22 that:

… the Successor submarine will be using PWR3 technology, so that mid-life refuelling will not be necessary …

At this point it is worth noting that the RUSI paper could only have been improved by consideration of and reference to some of the material prepared for the BASIC Trident Commission.

Summing Up

None of the above, Labour’s policy, the RUSI and BASIC reports, is advocating any significant changes to the current plans for replacement of the UK’s Trident SSBNs. The only issue of substance seems to be the number of submarines. In 1908/1909 during the Anglo-German arms race, the slogan popular among enthusiasts for the Royal Navy’s Dreadnought battleships was “We want eight, and we won’t wait”. Over a hundred years later, the number of the Navy's Successor SSBN’s is unlikely to be an issue in the 2015 election, let alone be the cause of a slogan – what would it be - “Three or four, but certainly no more”, perhaps?

As for CASD, it’s probably egotistical even for a blogger to quote himself, but this is what I said last time, and nothing I’ve read since makes me want to revise it yet:

My guess is that at some point in the future a Conservative or Labour National Security Council, or some ministerial subset of it, will meet to decide whether to order the third and fourth Successor submarines. They will know things that we don’t, like the outcome of the Scottish independence referendum and the extent of the recovery of the UK economy, and many things we probably never will, like the maintenance requirements of PWR3. One can imagine that if extensive analysis by the RN and the Ministry of Defence shows that CASD can be maintained for a very high proportion of the Trident Successor in-service life (ie to the fifth or sixth decade of this century) with three submarines, there might be reluctance to order a fourth. However, if the fourth Successor makes the difference between sustainable CASD and any of the alternative postures identified so far, it would have to be a group of politicians with a high degree of confidence in their ability to manage a crisis who would decide to spend the money on something else.

RUSI and CASD

(ie the Royal United Services Institute for Defence & Security Studies and Continuous At-Sea Deterrence) 

There have been about 15 posts here relating in some way to the UK’s Trident nuclear deterrent. This is not least because the submarines might, conceivably, have to be rebased in SW England if Scotland were to become independent, the subject of the last Trident post in December 2013. Since then there didn’t seem to be much of interest on Trident until a letter from two Conservative MPs appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 10 February:

SIR - We do not believe that the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) has, as an organisation, endorsed the idea that continuous at-sea deterrence can safely be abandoned by our Trident nuclear force (report, January 31). The views expressed in the Rusi analyst Hugh Chalmers's convoluted paper are clearly labelled as “entirely the author's own" and should not be ascribed to the institute as a whole. 

His conclusion that “even an inactive fleet of submarines can help to deter actors from seriously threatening the UK” is based on a fallacy. Though admitting that such a fleet “would be vulnerable to a no notice [enemy] strike", Mr Chalmers asserts that “such an attack seems highly unlikely without prior indication or provocation”. 

If we were known to have a part-time deterrent posture, any rational enemy would have maximum incentive to strike without warning, precisely to prevent the reconstitution of our power to retaliate. History abounds with cases of aggression which took the victim wholly by surprise. It also teaches us that some aggressors may take enormous risks if, but only if, they think they may avoid the consequences. 

It is the certainty of retaliation, as much as the magnitude of retaliation, which lies at the heart of deterrence. An uncertain deterrent may ward off some attackers, but it would be an open invitation to others that the risks are now worth taking. 

Julian Lewis MP (Con) 

Bernard Jenkin MP (Con) 

London SW1

Chalmers’ paper can be downloaded from RUSI. The point the MPs were making about responsibility for its contents is perhaps slightly more involved than they suggest. On page ii of the paper it is explained that:

This Occasional Paper is part of a series commissioned by the Nuclear Security Project (NSP) of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), which examines key factors that will shape the UK’s nuclear forces over the course of the next decade.

and

The views expressed in this report are entirely the authors’ [sic] own and not those of the NSP or NTI. For more information, see www.nuclearsecurity.org

whereas on page iv:

The views expressed in this paper are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those of RUSI or any other institutions with which the author is associated.

which leaves out the “entirely” and introduces a “not necessarily”. As for NSP and NTI, the www.nuclearsecurity.org link didn’t work for me, but NTI does have a website:

The Nuclear Threat Initiative works to strengthen global security by reducing global threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons

as does the NSP:

… an effort to galvanize global action to reduce urgent nuclear dangers and build support for reducing reliance on nuclear weapons, ultimately ending them as a threat to the world.

None of which would anyone want to argue against, although, noting the eminence of its four founders, NTI might seem a bit like a CND (“campaigns to scrap nuclear weapons and create genuine security for future generations”) for the Bilderberg/Davos set.

But what of the merits of Chalmers’ paper as disputed in the MPs’ letter? Its main title, A Disturbance in the Force, (as many readers probably know, but I had to turn to Google), is a quotation from the screenplay of Star Wars IV:

Obi-Wan Kenobi: I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

which doesn’t seem particularly apt, given the paper’s subtitle, Debating Continuous At-Sea Deterrence.

The opening sentence is:

The traditional theory of deterrence suggests that the most effective way of dissuading an enemy from hostile action is with the certainty that such action would be promptly followed by devastating retribution.

Surely the word “nuclear” is required before “deterrence” if the appropriate retribution is “devastating”? Then follows:

For the past forty-five years, the UK has provided this certainty by maintaining a nuclear-armed submarine on patrol at all times, ready to fire if required. However, it is also accepted that in practice such certainty is not always achievable.

What is the meaning of “such certainty is not always achievable” in this sentence, given the “has provided this certainty” in the previous one?  Does it mean “has not always been achieved”, or “is not always being achieved”, or “need not be achieved in future”. The sentence is endnoted to page 24 of Michael Quinlan’s Thinking About Nuclear Weapons: Principles, Problems, Prospects, published in 2009. (Quinlan was the top civil servant in the UK Ministry of Defence and is the dedicatee of the second edition of Peter Hennessy’s The Secret State.) This seems to be the passage on page 24/25 which is relevant:

In ideal circumstances deterrence is most securely provided by certainty both that grave misbehaviour will be promptly detected and that condign retribution or rectification will follow. Amid the world's complexities, however, that partnership of assurances is not always achievable. Where that is so there is no option - for all parties - but to deal in probabilities and possibilities. That need not destroy deterrence. During the East/West confrontation leading figures as diverse as President Charles de Gaulle and Dr. Henry Kissinger at one time or another, in their own styles, reminded their hearers that it was at best unprovable that the United States would risk embarking, for European causes, on sequences of action that might imperil its own cities ('sacrificing Chicago for Hamburg'). But the contrary was also unprovable for Soviet leaders. Even a modest chance of a huge penalty can have great deterrent force. In different jargon, the 'expected value, of a disbenefit - the magnitude of the penalty factored with the perceived probability of its being levied - can outweigh even a high valuation of hoped-for benefit.

One is left feeling that Quinlan was dealing with certainty in terms of whether there would be the political will to make use of nuclear weapons, but was not addressing uncertainty in their availability. Nor was he addressing the impact on political will of there being any uncertainty relating to availability. The paper continues:

The fleet of Vanguard-class submarines that currently operates this tag-team patrol, known as continuous at-sea deterrence (CASD), will eventually retire to be replaced by a successor. While current UK policy states that a replacement fleet will take up this baton and maintain CASD for the foreseeable future, this will not be without cost. The UK government has stated that maintaining CASD will require a fleet of at least four submarines, one of which will patrol while the remaining three undertake training, undergo maintenance, or sit in reserve (see Figure 1)

At this point there is a danger of being too picky, for example about the expression “tag-team patrol”.  But if a paper has endnotes at all, wouldn’t it be appropriate to support categorical assertions such as “UK policy states …” and “The UK government has stated …”? The interested reader may wish to know the sources. And Figure 1 has to be remarked on:

“Periods are illustrative only; a period may be longer or shorter than others” - Well, yes. A recent patrol by HMS Vigilant lasted three months, according to the Royal Navy’s website. This was after a five year (60 month) programme of overhaul. Figure 1 is hardly “indicative” or “illustrative” of timescales but could be misleading.

The paper then takes up the 2013 Trident Alternatives Review (TAR) and the subsequent Liberal Democrat policy proposal (covered in a post here, CASD, or not CASD, last October) and explores the relationship between non-continuous patrolling postures and having fewer than four submarines. Some interesting facts are offered. For example on page 4:

The next generation of nuclear submarine will be armed with up to forty warheads on eight missiles. [Endnote 13] On average, therefore, less than half of the missile’s capacity will be used, which increases the range of the missiles up to approximately 11,000 km. This makes far-flung deployments unnecessary by giving the UK’s missiles – in effect – a global range. [Endnote 14]

Endnote 13, (Initial Gate Parliamentary Report, page 4) certainly supports the first sentence. But an 11,000 km range for a partially-loaded Trident D5 missile is not exactly the implication of Endnote 14, the TAR, which, when examining generic delivery vehicles, said:

2.17 Ballistic Missiles (BM): Ballistic missiles perform a guided rocket boost into space before releasing their payload onto a ballistic trajectory early on in flight (i.e. letting the payload “fall‟ through space). This “throwing‟ of the payload onto a high arc gives ballistic missiles long range (circa 10000km). The re-entry vehicles (the payload) then fall through the atmosphere at high speed, requiring advanced defences to neutralise them. Given current UK-US arrangements for the Trident D5 ballistic missile and our knowledge of and experience with this system, it was decided only to model the D5 in this review.

Again, in a paragraph on page 7 of the paper:

Every generation of submarine so far has required a long period of overhaul to conduct repairs and to refuel the nuclear reactors that power them (known as Long Overhaul Period (Refuel), or LOP(R)). During these periods, major refurbishment work is conducted on the propulsion reactors, drive systems, weapons systems and other elements of submarine infrastructure. While the current Vanguard-class submarines require a three-year LOP(R), [Endnote 26] successor submarines will be equipped with a new reactor (the PWR-3) that will fuel each submarine for the entirety of its lifetime, removing the most significant element of current LOP(R) procedures. [Endnote 27]

Endnote 26 is a Babcock International Group PLC media release concerning the current refit of HMS Vengeance in Devonport Royal Dockyard (Plymouth, SW England) which is expected to take three-and-a-half years. Endnote 27 is “Ibid”, but, perhaps not surprisingly, Babcock made no mention of PWR3. However, the Endnote 13 reference (Initial Gate Parliamentary Report) does state on page 5:

PWR3 provides superior performance over PWR2. In availability terms the simplicity of PWR3 and the application of modern design practices and newly matured technology will significantly reduce periods in upkeep and maintenance.

but nothing about “entirety of its lifetime”. On page 13, the reader is told that:

… submarines can be held at varying levels of readiness. As a crisis loomed, submarine reactors could be activated within a day or two, crews could be mustered, and provisions loaded without actually launching the submarine. For instance, even if submarines were not deployed, a ‘sustained’ posture would maintain one submarine ‘on deterrent duty’ and ready to deploy swiftly, perhaps by keeping its reactor online or by a host of other measures.

The practicability of submarine reactors being “activated within a day or two” or kept “online” seems to be key to the feasibility of non-CASD postures. Chalmers, according to his LinkedIn profile, has a degree in astrophysics, so presumably his opinion is informed, but again an endnote source supporting it would be useful. In such non-CASD circumstances (page 14):

Rather than being faced with a single ‘terrible choice’, as a crisis emerged or receded the government would be faced with an array of choices with inactivity at one extreme and the rushed deployment of armed submarines at the other. Choosing which (if any) steps to take may not be easy; calibrating the readiness of nuclear forces in such a way would be entirely unfamiliar to those accustomed to the simplicity of CASD. [Endnote 45] 

(Endnote 45: In contrast, the UK often has to consider the international implications of overt changes in readiness of its conventional forces. “accustomed to simplicity”)

which seems to echo a comment on the first page:

… the civil servants and armed forces that develop and implement the UK’s nuclear-weapons policy have spent their entire careers working within the constructs of CASD. For them, a step away from CASD would be a step (both bureaucratically and philosophically) into the unknown.

Perhaps an explanation for this conservatism can be found later on page 14 when the possibility of A Bolt from the Blue is discussed:

By monitoring the submarines and training activities at the UK’s naval base in Faslane, one can imagine an unknown adversary covertly developing an impression of how quickly the UK could deploy its submarines in the event of an imminent attack. Such an adversary might feel tempted to exploit this window of vulnerability by striking the UK’s forces out of the blue. 

If the UK were unaware of this threat, it would have little chance to prepare a response. Deploying an inactive submarine would not be instantaneous … Without any prior preparation aside from training, current deployment procedures would require a submarine to be activated, loaded with supplies, checked over, carefully armed with up to forty warheads, and then piloted to a safe patrolling zone. In all, these activities take up to two weeks to complete. [Endnote 47]

Endnote 47, unfortunately, is not a source reference for this process but a comment from the author: “To keep health and safety risks as low as reasonably practicable (the ALARP principle) warheads are currently transported and fitted to missiles one at a time.” Even in such extreme circumstances?  But later on page 15 we are told:

… a pre-emptive strike against inactive nuclear forces (through conventional or nuclear means) would be an extremely drastic move. A serious threat to the UK would not come out of the blue in this way.

and

In the unlikely event that this threat emerged without any warning, an aggressor would have to be extremely bold to ignore the probability that such pre-emptive aggression would be met with stern punishment from sources other than the UK, which is likely to remain a member of NATO.

But doesn’t the UK provide part of NATO’s nuclear deterrent, and wasn’t Polaris (and subsequently Trident) made available to the UK under the Nassau agreement of December 1962 on the basis of its being committed to NATO but with independence of operation if supreme national interests were at stake? I suspect that by this time many readers of this post will have lost interest or alternatively will have decided to read Chalmers’ paper for themselves. But in short, the paper goes on to examine the implications of a non-CASD deterrent and how it might be perceived by an adversary. However, on page 18 there is an interesting concession, extracted here but worth reading in full:

… the immutability of CASD disengages nuclear forces from the day-to-day management of international relations. While crises may erupt and recede, the UK’s nuclear forces continue their patrols unchanged and would only play a part in crisis management in the most extreme circumstances. … Adopting a flexible approach to non-continuous postures, in which the UK would calibrate its forces from high to low readiness, would require the UK to consider the status of its nuclear forces on a more frequent basis. In the face of an evolving crisis, the UK would need to take a number of decisions over whether and how to initiate, sustain and ultimately terminate extended periods of patrolling – decisions that are currently unfamiliar. 

… a non-continuous nuclear force would not ‘de-couple nuclear weapons from the day-to-day calculus of national security’; instead, it would pollute areas of decision-making where it was previously of little relevance. 

In this case, a key challenge to abandoning continuous at-sea deterrence may not be the preservation of credible nuclear threats, but the development and implementation of organisational structures that would allow decision-makers the time, freedom and confidence to calibrate nuclear forces in response to emerging threats. At the political level, overt changes to nuclear readiness may have to be explained not just to the public, but also to the UK’s adversaries and allies. …

And on page 19:

A former submarine officer has voiced concerns that if the UK’s nuclear forces are rarely, if ever, called upon to deploy (such as in a ‘preserved’ posture), then a similar rot [to that affecting silo-based USAF ICBM crews] might eventually set in. In this case, rather than reinvigorating morale by moving back to continuous at-sea deterrence, the wholesale abandonment of the UK’s nuclear forces would be a more suitable alternative.

Regrettably there is no endnote as to where these concerns were voiced. Finally, one of the concluding remarks has certainly got it right:

… the desirability of abandoning continuous at-sea deterrence rests upon a rigorous analysis of how non-continuous postures would actually work in practice, with explicit consideration of when the UK might have to call upon its nuclear forces and how exactly it might calibrate them in response to an emerging threat.

Possibly such an analysis wasn’t provided by this paper, but as its author pointed out on page 2, “As always, the devil is in the detail.” My guess is that at some point in the future a Conservative or Labour National Security Council, or some ministerial subset of it, will meet to decide whether to order the third and fourth Successor submarines. They will know things that we don’t, like the outcome of the Scottish independence referendum and the extent of the recovery of the UK economy, and many things we probably never will, like the maintenance requirements of PWR3. One can imagine that if extensive analysis by the RN and the Ministry of Defence shows that CASD can be maintained for a very high proportion of the Trident Successor in-service life (ie to the fifth or sixth decade of this century) with three submarines, there might be reluctance to order a fourth. However, if the fourth Successor makes the difference between sustainable CASD and any of the alternative postures identified so far, it would have to be a group of politicians with a high degree of confidence in their ability to manage a crisis who would decide to spend the money on something else.

The Royal William Yard, Plymouth

Plymouth, in Devon SW England, is an historic coastal city which was badly damaged by bombing in the Second World War. Many of its significant buildings were originally constructed  for the Royal Navy. Plymouth would now like to be seen as an “Ocean City” rather than naval town. 

Last September I posted about the Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich in London. Originally the Royal Hospital for Seamen, the magnificent buildings by Wren and Hawksmoor next to the Thames date back to 1700. The interior of the baroque Painted Hall by Thornhill portrays the supremacy of British seapower, something which would endure for two centuries. King William IV, who reigned from 1830 to 1937, had joined the Royal Navy in 1778 at the age of 13 and was known as the “Sailor King”, so it was fitting that when a new victualling yard was built in Stonehouse (map left) next to Devonport dockyard between 1825 and 1833, it would be named after him.

The Royal William Yard was designed by Sir John Rennie, engineer to the Admiralty, who is probably best known for his version of London Bridge, now in Arizona. Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner’s Buildings of England Devon (2nd edition) describe the Yard as “by far the most impressive single architectural group in Plymouth” and “the most grandiloquent of the monumental compositions created by the Victualling Board of the Navy after the Napoleonic wars [and] among the most remarkable examples of an early C19 planned layout of industrial buildings anywhere in England”.

The Yard closed in 1992 and after restoration, conservation and modernisation was converted by Urban Splash to provide a basin for visiting boats and restaurants, cafés, and shops as well as flats. Visitors enter through an impressive gateway with King William’s statue.

The Gateway and the substantial buildings inside the Yard: Bakery, Slaughterhouse, Cooperage, Brewery etc, are made of local stone in an imposing late Georgian classical style.

All the buildings are Grade 1 listed and, being next to the harbour and Tamar river, provide photogenic subjects.

These plaques reminding visitors of the contributions made to the restoration by the EC and the now defunct local RDA could do with some restoration themselves:

Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich

When I last visited the Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich, it wasn’t “Old” – but it wasn't so long ago that it was the Royal Hospital for Seamen. A family wedding last month in the Chapel of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (left) was good reason to return and provided an opportunity to see both the Chapel and the Painted Hall again. The tiled floor of the Chapel represents ships’ cables (below) and the painting behind the altar is Benjamin West’s Shipwreck of St Paul, c1785 .

The Chapel was rebuilt after a fire in 1779 in an austere neoclassical style whereas the baroque Painted Hall from 80 years earlier remains much as Sir Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor intended. The impressive painted interior (1708-1727) is by Sir James Thornhill and assistants and embodies British maritime supremacy in the form of the Royal Navy ensuring the triumph of peace and liberty over the forces of tyranny (below).

The problem with eating in the Painted Hall is that, however good the catering, it’s impossible for the food to match the splendour of the surroundings. The group of buildings at Greenwich, now being better looked after by the Foundation than for years, is probably, in its setting, the finest in London. Admission to the Chapel and Painted Hall is free and there is much else to see nearby – the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site ought to be a must for visitors to London.

Things Past East of Suez

Ann Widdecombe was born in Bath (SW England) in October 1947, became an MP in 1987 and was John Major’s Minister of State for Prisons from 1995 to 1997. She left Parliament in 2010 and subsequently appeared in BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing and in pantomime. She has recently published Strictly Ann – The Autobigraphy.

Browsing a copy in a local bookshop, I saw that she has included a photograph of her class at the Royal Naval School in Singapore in 1955. Below is a similar, but slightly earlier, photograph showing her (I am reliably informed) in the front and on the far right, appropriately enough. This blogger is one of those children, now in their middle sixties and therefore all members of a demographic cohort  described here before, the UK’s “post-war bulge”.

The photograph comes from a booklet (extracts below) to mark a visit to that school during the then Duchess of Kent’s Tour of Malaya in October 1952. She also visited the Admiralty Asian School. Blissfully unaware at the time, I now feel distinctly uncomfortable when faced with late-era colonialism and racially-segregated education. By then, the perpetuation of British rule had been undermined by the Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945 and Singapore went on to achieve independence from the UK in 1963. The Royal Navy withdrew from its base in Singapore in 1971.

There is an obvious irony in the Singapore educational system’s now being held up as an exemplar by the UK education minister, Michael Gove, or at least that was the case last year when the Financial Times (£) reported that:

Michael Gove has tired of Sweden and New York City. After claiming to be inspired by those places’ school systems, the education secretary has now embraced Singapore as a model. His curriculum reforms seek to mimic elements of the small Asian country’s high-performing education system.

Singapore’s post-colonial economic success is beyond doubt. The ninth edition of Dan Smith’s State of the World Atlas shows: Singapore’s GNI per capita (on a purchasing power parity basis) as being US$ 55380 vs 36590 in the UK; life expectancy in 2009 of its citizens as 82 years vs 80 in the UK; in 2008, 28% of Singapore’s adults were overweight vs 62% in the UK, and so forth. Its problems are probably inherent in a small city state – dependency on its neighbours for water and vulnerability to their pollution.

Denis Healey, when Defence Minister and faced with an urgent need to make savings, took the decision to liquidate “Britain's military role outside Europe, an anachronism which was essentially a legacy from our nineteenth-century empire”. This policy of withdrawal led to the closure of the bases in Singapore and other locations “East of Suez”, a description much used at the time but little heard of from governments since, even in the last 10 years of UK military deployment in Afghanistan. Surprisingly it turned up in a speech by David Cameron on 10 June, Plan for Britain's success, marking the start of the UK’s presidency of G8:

… I have revived our friendships in the Commonwealth and reinvigorated relations with our old partners in the Gulf, where we’re active commercially, diplomatically, and with renewed military co operation to the east of Suez.

No doubt the drafters of this speech and the PM knew the phrase came from Kipling’s poem, Mandalay:

Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst …  

Where the old Flotilla lay,

(at Mandalay not Singapore of course), and they are aware of the last line:

An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

Update on the Royal Navy’s Trident

In 2006 the Labour government announced that the UK would construct new nuclear submarines to carry the Trident missile system. Since then two issues have emerged which have been the subject of posts here: a review of alternatives to Trident, which was a Lib Dem element within the 2010 coalition agreement, and the implications of Scotland becoming independent, the Royal Navy's Trident submarines currently being based there.

Posts here on the first of these appeared in June (concentrating on the ‘Moscow criterion’) and in September just after the cabinet reshuffle. Nick Harvey, who had led the review, ceased to be a minister and his role was transferred to another Lib Dem, Danny Alexander. Harvey later addressed a fringe meeting at the Lib Dem annual conference, his remarks appearing at length in the Guardian on 27 September:

… to convince ourselves that the only point of having any deterrent at all is the capability of flattening Moscow is the wrong and distorting lens through which to view the debate."  

Instead of replacing Trident with a like-for-like 24-hour nuclear armed submarine presence at sea after the current system is due to be taken out of service in 2028, cheaper alternatives are being considered. These range from stepping down the patrols, to designing missiles to be launched from aircraft, surface navy ships or land, to a delayed launch system.  

The delayed-launch model would involve developing a nuclear warhead for a cruise missile that could be launched from existing Astute submarines, Harvey said, "but having perfected that technology simply put it away in a cupboard and keep it as a contingency in case there ever were to be a deterioration in the global security picture that might need the UK government to take it out of the cupboard".  

In this situation, the UK would store the warheads in a secure military location, from where they could be removed, put on the tip of a missile and put to sea within weeks or months.  

… Harvey told a fringe debate at the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton that the idea of moving "down the nuclear ladder" had support across all three armed services: the army, the Royal Navy and the RAF. He said one reason for growing support for the review's alternatives was a "perfect storm" of defence capital costs around 2020, including building the new joint strike fighter aircraft and Type 26 frigates, a new generation of unmanned aircraft, and amphibious craft for the navy.

At the PMQs on 17 October, the first after the party conferences, Harvey was able to return to this theme, but only after an earlier question by a Conservative MP who is well-known as a supporter of the UK nuclear deterrent:

Mr Speaker: Question 4 is a closed question.  

Nuclear Deterrent  

Q4. [122163] Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con): Whether he remains committed to the continuation of the UK’s Trident nuclear deterrent after the Vanguard submarines are withdrawn from service.  

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend will be delighted to know that the answer is yes, we are committed to retaining an independent nuclear deterrent based on the Trident missile system. That is why we have continued with the programme to replace the Vanguard class submarines, including placing initial design contracts with BAE Systems.  

Dr Lewis: That is indeed an excellent answer. Given that a part-time nuclear deterrent would be dangerously destabilising, will the Prime Minister confirm that the British Trident successor submarines must and will operate on the basis of continuous at-sea deterrence [CASD]?  

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this issue. One of the key elements of the credibility of our deterrent has been that it is continuously at sea, and the Royal Navy takes immense pride in having been able to deliver that without a break over so many years. I have met some of the crews and visited some of the submarines. What they do is incredibly impressive and I pay tribute to them for the service that they provide. Yes, being continuously at sea is a key part of our deterrent.

later:

Sir Nick Harvey (North Devon) (LD): Returning to the Trident issue, has the Prime Minister looked at the severe cost pressures facing defence at the very moment the Trident replacement has to be paid for? Joint strike fighter airplanes, Type 26 frigates, unmanned aircraft and Army vehicles all need paying for at much the same time. This has to come out of the defence budget, and austerity will be with us for some time yet, so will he keep an open mind about how exactly to replace our nuclear deterrent?  

The Prime Minister: All the things that my hon. Friend lists are programmes that are fully funded and will be properly invested in, because, as he well knows—because he played a major role in it—the Government have sorted out the defence budget. Having carefully considered the issue of the nuclear deterrent, I do not believe that we would save money by adopting an alternative nuclear deterrent posture. Also, if we are to have a nuclear deterrent, it makes sense to ensure we have something that is credible and believable, otherwise there is no point in having one at all.

A post here in February considered the practicalities of removing Trident from Scotland after independence and another in March attempted to put some bounds on the cost. In June Harvey and another defence minister, Peter Luff, gave oral evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committee on the subject. Currently only an uncorrected transcript is available with the caveat that “Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.” Subject to that, the evidence at Questions 315 to 351 is worth reading in full, but particularly noteworthy are:

Q326 Mr Reid: Have you done any planning as to how long it would take to replicate the facilities at Faslane and Coulport elsewhere in the UK?  

Nick Harvey: While it would be possible to do so, it would be fraught with difficulty. It would be a very challenging project, which would take a very long time to complete and would cost a gargantuan sum of money. When the facilities there were upgraded for Astute and the previous upgrade of the nuclear deterrent, the cost of that upgrade in today’s prices was about £3.5 billion. That was upgrading an extant facility. If we were to replicate it somewhere else, that figure would be dwarfed by whatever that would cost. … The costs would be absolutely immense. I would have thought that relocation would be just about the least favoured option that it would be possible to conjecture.  

Q343 David Mowat: I was just reflecting on this approximately £5 billion figure for moving Trident. Effectively that is one of the costs of separation. …  

Nick Harvey: The only figure that I have used was that a previous upgrade in today’s money cost £3.5 billion and I felt that that would be dwarfed by the cost of re-establishing-  

Q349 Chair: … if the Scottish Government did win, we had separation, they wanted Trident out and they were willing to be reasonable, they would have to be satisfied that you had no alternative but to keep them there for 20 years. It is not an unreasonable point to pursue with you.  

Nick Harvey: I am not saying that anything cannot be done.  

Q350 Chair: Good. That is the first time the MOD has ever said that.  

Nick Harvey: I am saying it would be difficult and not straightforward.  

Q351 Chair: Ah yes-that is the traditional MOD caveat. You forgot to mention expensive.  

Peter Luff: And lengthy.  

Nick Harvey: I took all of that as read.

The SNP at its party conference this month decided that their policy should be that an independent Scotland should become a member of NATO but that the SNP leadership should first seek an agreement that Scotland could be nuclear-weapon free. Their leader, the Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, said in an interview on BBC1's The Andrew Marr show on 21 October:

Nobody seriously believes that Scotland as a country of 5.25 million people would want to be in possession of nuclear weapons. That would be a bad thing for Scotland; I think it would be a bad thing for nuclear proliferation across the world. So our opposition to stationing or hosting nuclear weapons in Scotland is unconditional. What we do say, however, because we have substantial indications that our friends and allies want cooperation, we'd be happy to be a member of NATO on a non-nuclear basis. 

When he was asked by Marr how the UK could deal with this, Salmond said it would be "far better" if it was "curtains for Trident", but that Trident removal would have to be "as soon as can be safely arranged." He ruled out a Cyprus sovereign base arrangement. The RN could "either relocate Trident to another facility in the rest of the UK or alternatively they could use the nuclear facilities in America, or in France for that matter. Trident is effectively an American weapon.” 

The last comment was disingenuous: the Trident missile system is American but the submarines and warheads are made in the UK – or in England as Salmond would see it. The diplomatic and logistical problems of relocating RN Trident to another country are obvious but, of course, would not be Salmond’s problem, nor would establishing another facility in England or Wales. He will have his hands full enough however in attempting to negotiate with NATO on the terms proposed while at the same time many in his party are unhappy with joining the Alliance at all. Two MSPs announced their resignation over the issue on 23 October.

So where does this leave the RN and the UK deterrent? The PM seems to have pre-empted the Lib Dem review of alternatives by endorsing Trident and CASD. But, if in 2014 Scottish independence proceeds on the basis of current SNP policies, would the remaining UK embark on the “difficult and not straightforward, … expensive and lengthy” undertaking of rebasing Trident? Ian Jack in an article in the Guardian in September, The SNP says it would kick Trident out of Scotland. But at what cost?, drew attention to the prosperity of the part of Scotland adjacent to the Trident base – indicated by the presence of one of that nation’s five branches of Waitrose:

So in the process of Scottish independence, as yet hypothetical, my guess is that Trident will become a bargaining chip to be deployed by Edinburgh's negotiating team in exchange for a big London favour. (Bigger oil rights? A smaller share of the national debt?) Its bases will survive where they are on leasehold into the mid-2020s, when the submarines are due to be replaced, at a currently estimated cost of £25bn. But, sadly for the shipworkers of Barrow, there will be no replacements. A truncated UK will then have lost the taste and the budget for "punching above its weight", and Trident submarines will be seen as what they are: a strange consequence of British military ambition in the last century, as beautiful and terrible in their way as the Dreadnought, though unlike the Dreadnought (one hopes) never used. And so they will quietly pass away, leaving Helensburgh's Waitrose among their monuments.

Recent opinion polls indicate 30 to 40% of the Scottish electorate in favour of independence, 50 to 60% against.

Meanwhile the US Navy has problems of its own, made clear at the recent annual conference of the Naval Submarine League. The USN will need new submarines for its ballistic missiles to be in service from about 2030 to 2080. At some point in those years a new missile to replace Trident will be required, and there is scope for cooperation with the US Air Force, but:

The other crucial partner on ballistic missiles is the United Kingdom, whose only remaining nuclear weapons are on its Vanguard submarines. Ironically, the [US] Navy has a better record of collaboration with the Brits than with America's Air Force. The Royal Navy has relied on U.S.-designed missiles since the Polaris Sales Agreement was signed in 1963. Even after the Americans delayed the SSBN(X) program by two years, they stuck to the original schedule to develop the missile compartment so it would be ready in time for the British could use the design in their own new missile submarine, which must enter service two years before the American sub.
 

ADDENDUM 25 OCTOBER

The Scottish Affairs Committee has now published a report, The Referendum on Separation for Scotland: Terminating Trident—Days or Decades?. The Chair of the Committee, Ian Davidson, MP said:

A separate Scotland would be presented with a choice over Trident: it could honour the longstanding commitment of the SNP that there should be no nuclear weapons in Scotland and insist on the ‘speediest safe transition’ of Trident from Scotland. In reality, Trident can be deactivated within a matter of days, and the warheads removed within twenty four months. In the process, the UK would lose the ability to operate its nuclear deterrent and effectively be forced into unilateral disarmament, for an indeterminate period.  

Alternatively, a separate Scotland could allow Trident to remain on the Clyde long enough for the UK to identify and develop a new base elsewhere. This option would mean armed nuclear submarines operating out of Scotland for twenty years or longer. Developing a new base, particularly replicating the facilities at Coulport, could only be done at great expense, and the UK Government has made it clear that any such costs would be included in the Separation negotiations.