Former defence chief General Dannatt, who advises David Cameron and the Conservative front bench, has signalled his opposition to the renewal of Trident.
General Dannatt, the former chief of defence staff who controversially accepted a Cameron invitation to advise the Conservative front bench, has signalled his opposition to the renewal of Trident.
General Dannatt said that the lifetime of the current Trident-bearing Vanguard class submarines should be maintained for a period of a further 15 years but not necessarily beyond that. Dannatt said that the UK should keep Trident:
“At present we should keep it but not forever.”
Conservative Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox responded:
“Our position, as stated by David Cameron, is we intend to maintain a minimum credible submarine based nuclear deterrent for the United Kingdom. Let me reassure the people of Barrow, there is no question of changing this policy.”
The debate among Tory defence advisers on the future of Trident comes in the wake of the influential Chalmers Report on the costs and consequences of Minsitry of Defence budget cuts and a public disagreement between the current Chief of the Defence Staff General Richards and the First Sea Lord Admiral Stanhope on the long term need for Britain to possess full spectrum warfare capabilities as epitomised by massive procurement projects like Trident’s successor, the Joint Strike Fighter and the planned new aircraft carriers.
This blog has previously detailed how scrapping Trident could free up some 45bn GBP in the long term defence budget.
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9 Responses to “Dannatt off message on Tory Trident plans”
Anon E Mouse
Graham – With the interest alone on government borrowing estimated to be up to 60-70 billion next year I wouldn’t worry about the price.
Apart from the jobs created it lasts for 30 odd years and the idea countries such as Iran are looking to obtain nuclear weapons serves only to increase peoples belief it is vital to our security.
Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
Why can’t Greenpeace get out of politics and get back to saving whales? I’ll never give any more money to this organisation and will also encourage others not to. If Greenpeace activists want to get into this tell them to join CND.
Marcus Roberts
Meandering Mammal: Great points – hope I didn’t come across as too ‘brook-no-disagreement’, not my intention at all. Just wanted to clarify though that I am not conflating nuclear powered with nuclear capable. I am however very interested in finding a way to modify the Astute design to serve as a nuclear detterant platform. The TLAM debate (http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2560/why-the-navy-should-retire-tlam-n) means we have to think carefully about what kind of system would be used if a shift occurred from strategic to theatre level deterrence. More likely is using the Astute baseline as an ICBM platform.
I’m actually writing a longer paper about this at the moment and would welcome a more lengthy discussion between us on this. If you’d care to please send me an e-mail – thanks!
Meandering Mammal
Marcus
I dropped an email via the contact page earlier in the week, but have had no response so I’m not clear whether it got to you or not.
Labour and Tories not listening to new thinking on defence | Left Foot Forward
[…] to the pressure on Trident renewal was yesterday’s comments by Conservative party defence adviser Sir Richard Dannatt that: “It [Trident] might not be right in 5 or 10 years […]