No single element of the nuclear deterrent - neither submarine, nor missile, nor warhead - is independent despite politicians saying that is what we must have.
Kate Hudson is the general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)
‘How many missile tubes does it take to arm a submarine?’ sounds a bit like a bad joke on a Christmas cracker. Nevertheless it has become a matter of at least modest interest over the past few days. As government plans for detailed design work on a new generation of nuclear weapons submarines were announced in the Commons last week, such esoteric questions momentarily achieved national exposure.
In fact, we should all be interested in the numbers of missile tubes planned for new nuclear subs. Obviously because of the costs involved, but also because it isn’t just a technical question about military kit – it is a political question which will have a political impact.
When the Strategic Defence and Security Review was launched last October, a number of reductions were announced to Britain’s nuclear weapons system. Most significantly, the stockpile of warheads was to be reduced, but David Cameron also announced that the number of warheads actually on the subs was to be reduced too.
This then means, of course, that you need fewer missiles to launch them with, and fewer tubes to house the missiles. So far so good. But what happens when – supposedly in a bid to save money – you are working on a common missile compartment with another user, in this case the United States, whose requirements turn out to be rather different? This seems to be what has happened with the missile tubes question.
Basically, it seems the Brits want eight and the US prefer 16, so they are compromising on 12. As other commentators have pointed out, presumably that means we are paying more for something that is larger than we need. But it also raises another question about our special nuclear relationship with the US and our so-called ‘independent’ nuclear weapons system.
We already lease the missiles from the US – now the tubes will be a co-production; we use US technology for many aspects of the design, production and targeting of the weapons – including spending money in the US on reactor design (nuclear reactors propel the subs) in recent months. Indeed we are also working with the French now on aspects of warhead production.
So the result of all this is that no single element of the system – neither submarine, nor missile, nor warhead – is independent despite politicians repeated proclaiming the need for an “independent nuclear deterrent”.
24 Responses to “Memo to Westminster: UK “independent nuclear deterrent” not actually independent”
Charles
@Trevor A Smith
The public gets confused over this. We don’t need US authorization to launch them, but they have withheld “launch code”, meaning their targeting software. Sharing it is deemed too high a security risk, since it could be used to make their missiles inoperable, however we write our own.
Dave Citizen
Mr S – I disagree with you on Iran. I can honestly say that I do not fear an Iranian attack unless we or the Americans do something really stupid (possible?). I know they brutalise their own people and of course I’d rather they didn’t get their own weapons, but us getting new ones doesn’t sound like a clever way to get them to drop that plan. I’d say Isreal is more worrying in terms of kicking something stupid off.
Richard
“There is no-one outside the UK chain of command involved in the launch procedure.”
That’s the biggest load of boollox 13eastie has come out with for a long time, and boy does he write some ignorant shit.
Michael Short
I agree with a deterrent because Mutually Assured Destruction works, that’s why the Cold War was stopped from becoming the Third World War, because both sides realised fighting against a nuclear capable opponent is unwinnable. Whenever victory looks assured you have a dangerous enemy in a corner with nothing to lose.
Without any nuclear capabilities, this isn’t a obstacle for war. And it’s very easy to say you can’t see a scenario where someone would want to declare war on us but that’s just silly, it’s only with hindsight we can make judgements what should have been done, right now we have no idea what events could happen in the future.
The intentions to disarm are noble but naive at best and horribly dangerous ignorance at worse, after the First World War we tried to disarm somewhat and all that happened was that we were woefully unprepared to face an urgent threat in Nazi Germany.
Giving us the lesson, that just because we don’t want to fight doesn’t mean no one else does.
And it’s better to have the deterrent than not if any threat comes down to it and hope that deterrent avoids the devastation of war.
13eastie
Richard,
The accusation of ignorance would carry more weight if, rather than littering the page with profanity, you were to venture into the bargain some evidence that you are possessed of greater knowledge than those whom you accuse!