Trident - is it a necessary expense? | Laura Sánchez Pérez

The Trident programme, Britain's submarine-based nuclear deterrent, was introduced in 1994 to replace the predecessor system- Polaris, and is expected to last until the middle of the next decade. This means that the construction of a new system needs to begin soon. Conservatives have consistently pledged a replacement to the Trident, perhaps taking advantage of the W93 sea launched warhead technology that our American allies have promised to share. 

Due to the pandemic, Britain’s £31bn replacement for its ageing Trident nuclear submarines has been delayed by another year, raising fresh questions about whether the United Kingdom can rely on the existing fleet. Official documents released at the end of last year quietly confirmed that the current phase of the Dreadnought programme had been put back to March 2022. Given the immense cost- the nuclear fleet comprises some of  the most expensive items the UK owns- it is important to understand the reasons why we ought and ought not want to maintain the ability to launch nuclear missiles from beneath the sea.

Mutually Assured Destruction and the Cold War

The policy of mutually assured destruction (MAD) was designed to be used in retaliation to a Soviet nuclear first strike with missiles en route to Europe or the United States. Part of the UK nuclear plan was to ensure that under no circumstances we would fire our Polaris missiles first even if tanks were rolling across the German plain, unless the Soviets had already fired nuclear weapons at us.

As Paul Rogers notes, the UK’s tactical nuclear weapons could have been used against such a Soviet offensive. Yet at the time people thought that this would not necessarily start a strategic exchange. Perhaps naively, we tended to consider Polaris in isolation from the tactical battlefield and on a whole different level.

The UK’s second strike only policy let people sleep easily at night during the years that the UK took sixteen Polaris missiles to sea. As Nick Ritchie explains, each of these missiles carried two warheads with an estimated yield of 40kt. Thus, with sixteen missiles per boat, just one patrolling submarine could have fired 32 40kt warheads, which would have given a potential explosive yield of 1.28 megatons. This is why we call what could have happened, if they were used, an Armageddon.

Understanding the power of the bomb

The US had many more submarines, aircraft and land-based missile silos. Our contribution was a gesture of togetherness against a common enemy, whose declared policy was assumed to be ‘world domination by any means’. To measure it aside the Trident, the atomic bomb that physically destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima in WWII and killed 100,000 people in the process had a mere 15 kiloton yield. 

Each Trident warhead has a yield of up to 100 kilotons, which, in terms of destructive power, is equivalent to six or seven Hiroshimas. At present,the UK deploys 40 nuclear warheads and no more than eight missiles on its four submarines. The destructive power  aboard just one of these submarines, if used at the same time against a densely populated country, would kill considerably more than 100,000 people.

Justifying nuclear use

The ownership of this sort of power begs the question: what threat might justify the use of such destructive force? We also need to be clear under what circumstances and at what scale the Prime Minister might authorise a nuclear strike. Two government statements are relevant to this discussion.

Firstly, then Secretary of State for Defence- Geoff Hoon, stated in 2002, prior to the invasion of Iraq, that Saddam Hussein could ‘be absolutely confident that in the right conditions we would be willing to use our nuclear weapons’.

Secondly, thirteen years later, a government policy paper stated that: ‘it will not rule in or out the first use of nuclear weapons’ to ‘deter and prevent nuclear blackmail and acts of aggression against our vital interests that cannot be countered by other means’.

This leaves open the option for the Prime Minister to authorise the Trident’s use to deter an aggressor that  may be threatening to use nuclear weapons or that is using massive conventional forces, which we do not have sufficient conventional force to counter. However , importantly, the government deliberately maintains “some ambiguity precisely when, how, and at what scale we would contemplate use of our nuclear deterrent”.

Keeping the option of using nuclear weapons first against an adversary judged to threaten our ‘vital interests’ with a non-nuclear force open is different from MAD. 

This encourages questions about the whole basis of what we may or may not do with the Trident. Formerly, we would not have fired the Polaris missiles until British cities had been totally destroyed by some megalomaniac Soviet action. It would have been a futile gesture by us, but the threat of doing so was considered an important and logical deterrent. Now it is ultimately a matter of the Prime Minister’s judgement as to whether we embark on a nuclear war. This raises the prospect of deliberately causing Armageddon as opposed to a reaction to one already started.

In which case, we would argue that we have the right (a) to question whether the government should have that power and (b) if so, to constrain the circumstances in which such power can be used. As Nick Ritchie points out, the UK “does not dispute that international humanitarian law applies to the use of nuclear weapons and has incorporated the notion of ‘extreme circumstances of self-defence’ into its declaratory nuclear policy statements”. Yet, will all future Prime Ministers follow these guidelines in practice?

The need to ask these questions, and decide if building a new generation of nuclear weapons is justified at the known significant economic cost and will proportionately enhance our security“” is particularly important given that no military case has been made for the Trident’s use by its supporters, other than the vague statement that we do not know what the future holds for Britain.

Reference to the prospective use of nuclear weapons is nearly always qualified by adding that they are a weapon of “last resort”. As part of the decision making process it needs to be ensured that all other alternative avenues have been exhausted, starting with the political and economic ones, escalating up through the increasing use of conventional military power.

Rethinking what military capabilities the UK needs

In the 1960s and 1970s, the UK invested in both the Polaris force and significant conventional armed military forces across all three services. The country was able to send a Task Force as far afield as the Falklands and, more importantly, our  armed forces were strong and large enough to withstand the attrition— associated with  fighting a full-on war.

These services have gradually been whittled down to a level, where such a Task Force could no longer  be assembled. By its own admission, the Royal Navy does not have enough ships and submarines to meet peacetime commitments—never mind an armed conflict against another state . The six Type-45 destroyers designed to protect the UK’s two new carriers were victims of over-design and under-funding (while still costing more than £1billion each) and are now in harbour with major operational limitations, which will take some years to be rectified.

Meanwhile, the next generation of frigates has been delayed. When they do come, they will have outdated equipment and  fail to provide adequate anti-submarine warfare protection to carriers, unless they forego other roles. The Army and Royal Air Force also have their own tales of woe: soldiers die for lack of body armour and the correct vehicles, because the military budget has to cope with the costs of Trident.

Why is this? To some extent you can blame senior officers for lack of management ability and vision when challenged by the need to meet major commitments with a constantly reducing budget. They should perhaps have been  more realistic and admitted that  we were not well placed to play the role assigned in the Iraq war, be peacekeepers afterwards, and embark on a military intervention in Afghanistan. This  “can do” spirit has evidently proved  counterproductive.

However, the other budgetary factor is that the cost of building four Successor submarines alone is now set to cost at least £31 billion. You can buy quite a lot of aircraft carriers, frigates, and hunter killer submarines for that, while also investing in better training facilities and equipment for our brave servicemen and women and making sure that they can fulfil their noble duty to our nation with fewer impediments, concerns, and risks.

The consequential reality is that the UK has very little conventional capability before the use of Trident becomes our last resort—a very dangerous situation for world peace. So, who are we likely to need to use our last resort against having said that rogue states and dirty bombers are not likely targets? The answer is no one at the moment. We must therefore conclude that the Royal Navy is being exploited to operate a political status symbol with little  military value at a cost to  other important capabilities. Correspondingly, while the Trident might deter potential aggressors, this deterrence exposes the lives of our worse-equipped soldiers, on whose shoulders the burden of initial resistance would fall, to greater risk.

No existing threat justifies our nuclear force

During the Cold War, the UK’s nuclear-armed submarines were at fifteen minutes’ notice to fire. Since 1994, however, following an agreement with Russia, the UK’s nuclear weapons have been de-targeted- although this situation could be quickly reversed. The Trident submarines are lurking on standby ’, whence there is time to target and arm them if the situation escalates. Saying that North Korea is a threat to the UK is not credible. Britain does not pursue the same interventionist foreign policy as the US and is rarely involved in serious quarrels with other nations. 

Some may argue that now is not the time to lay down our nuclear arms, because it might further destabilise our position in Europe and be seen as a further “weakness” post-Brexit. But what does this mean? That Moscow or Beijing will see an opportunity and seize it? 

That is wishful thinking. We Believe that they know, despite the Prime Minister’s words, that we would not fire our nuclear weapons, except in retaliation to a major nuclear first strike by them- which they are unlikely to launch. Even without a nuclear arsenal, the American-coordinated NATO nuclear umbrella should prevent a change in outcome. What is far more likely is that our adversaries take advantage of our regular armed forces’ weaknesses and use proxies to defeat them abroad, such as how Russia has reportedly been supplying the Taliban to undermine US presence in Afghanistan. . Unfortunately, NATO would likely find it difficult to find an effective response to such manoeuvres.

As for a developing intercontinental threat from elsewhere in the future, if it is  not on the drawing board now (and it’s not), then we have time to consider our options. Designing a submarine today to go to sea in seventeen years’ time to counter a future undefined nominal threat is tantamount to fighting tomorrow’s war with yesterday’s technology. By making that decision now it becomes harder to change our posture later, as more and more money is poured into the Successor programme.

Is there an alternative? Yes, there is. If, despite all the above, Britain decides that it needs to have nuclear weapons as insurance against potential external aggression, then a submarine platform is probably the best vehicle to carry it, because it is considerably less vulnerable  to counter-detection than cruise missiles, aircraft, or land based weapon platforms. 

However, the problem with the current and future Trident submarines is that they are a single purpose platform, very big- consequentially comparatively slow- and really only have a self-defence capability. They contribute little  to peacetime surveillance or war-fighting capability in any other area than firing extremely expensive strategic missiles.

The UK has already reduced the number of missiles per boat, so why not make a further reduction to say four per boat and fit a missile section into existing Astute class hunter-killer submarine hulls? This option could save money and make for a more efficient use of the military technology we already have.

Furthermore, to demonstrate our willingness to comply with the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, missiles and warheads should be placed in ready-use stores. This is justifiable on the basis that there is no threat today that requires the cost of having a submarine at sea at all times, employed solely on what is known as Continuous at Sea Deterrence (CASD).. Should it ever begin to become necessary, a CASD posture could, of course, be re-introduced very quickly as a clear signal of the UK’s determination to deter and as a further step up the nuclear ladder.

Conclusion

It is highly unlikely that the UK will ever come under nuclear attack from an enemy remotely susceptible to a threat of nuclear retaliation.. Maintaining an active nuclear arsenal and the Trident delivery system chips at other, much more relevant investments that could protect our servicemen and women not in the future, but in the present. 

Even if there is a remote chance that we might need to retain a nuclear weapons capability, there is an option, which cuts the cost significantly, allows for the restoration of our three military services,  and maintains the nuclear deterrent as a capability to be deployed if events ever require. This is a much more equable solution that reconciles the need to protect the British public at large with a nuclear deterrent with our national obligation to make armed service worthy of the brave people who signed up to join it and are prepared to sacrifice. Their lives should not be risked unnecessarily, and it is the equipment and relative safety for them that should be prioritised over the Trident.

If you liked this article and want to help our organisation expand, please consider donating.