An interesting discussion paper on the subject of the future of the UK’s nuclear deterrent from the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) Trident Commission.
From the foreword
The last Labour Government reaffirmed its commitment to Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent, based on Trident, at the end of 2006. The current coalition government, in its October 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), maintained a commitment to this decision in principle but also announced some changes to UK nuclear doctrine, a reduction in the number of warheads and missiles possessed by the United Kingdom, and a delay to the timetable for the construction of the replacement submarines on which the Trident system depends.
The decision to delay the final judgment on replacing the submarines until after the next election has created a window of opportunity for further deliberation on UK nuclear weapons policy. The starting point for the BASIC Trident Commission is a belief that it is important to make the most of this opportunity.
We are living through a period of enormous change in international affairs with new powers and security threats emerging, increased nuclear proliferation risks, and growing pressure on economies and defence budgets in the West. Since the original 2006-07 decision on Trident renewal modest arms control progress has also been made by the United States and Russia and President Obama has set out a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. The current government, more recently, has also initiated a further review of possible alternatives to Trident.
In our view, there is a strong case in this context for a fundamental, independent, review of UK nuclear weapons policy.
There is also a case, in the national interest, for lifting the issue of the United Kingdom’s possession of nuclear weapons out of the day to day party political context and for thinking about it in a cross party forum. The BASIC Trident Commission is doing this by facilitating, hosting, and delivering a credible crossparty expert Commission to examine the issue in
depth.
The Commission is focusing 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?
Read more below, well worth the time
H/T Jedibeeftrix (who, by the way, we all need to get back to blogging!)
my pleasure admin, and thanks, i have some ideas brewing on slow boil.
i’ll get there.
Interesting read, BASIC is an anti-nuclear think tank so a lot is being made of job losses and loss of industrial skills, as well as beginning with an ulterior motive. I believe they are side stepping the usual nuclear disarmament arguments, and utilising an argument that would be plausible to the Surrey based shareholders of BAE Systems.
Scrapping the deterrent is one thing, leaving the nuclear powered submarine industry is definitely another! Given that oil will shortages will be more apparent in the forthcoming decades, the more nuclear powered vessels we have, the better.
My initial penny’s worth would be to scrap the SSBN’s and increase the number of Astute’s, to give us a greater tactical freedom. Albeit, Astute’s without nuclear weapons.
Had I had it my way, the CVF’s would have been nuclear powered as well, further reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. Maybe sometime in the future our replacement/additional CVF’s will be nuclear powered.
I don’t think we should give it up until every other country does. As the saying goes, ‘don’t bring a knife to a gun fight’ and as long as there are other countries out there with them and others that want them we would basically be throwing our gun in the bin and picking up a knife. That’s fine if everyone else has a knife but it’s not much good when you’re walking in a room with a load of people with guns.
Keep the capability as is, if you have to re-fit the vanguard class to keep them going then so be it.
As WTF said, as long as potential enemies have nukes, we should have some. and I think SLBMs are the way to go, cruise is a bit politically shifty (some countries may shit a brick if they saw a conventional cruise launch and thought it was a nuke)and ICBMs are obviously vulnerable to a sneak attack. Air-launched is probably cheapest, but not so good on the strategic front. In terms of a compromise between stealth, effectiveness and cost, the Trident replacement would have to be roughly like-for-like.
WTF & Harry, I’ve a book on warfare and weapons which has a picture dating from the 17th century, it depicts two groups outside a door ‘disarment’ the picture caption reads ‘After You.
The ‘after you’ argument is as old as warfare itself, given the number of nations that have it, and the number of which are superpowers (soon to be hyper-powers), our chaging won’t make much of a global impact either way and may persuade an number of nuclear wannbe’s to drop their ambitions of joining the club.
@ace Rimmer
I actually believe nukes keep the peace, The US was quick to use them when no one else had any, but they’re not too quick to use them against other countries that have them.
There is zero chance the US would have dropped nukes on Japan if the japs would have had them at the time because the yanks would not have wanted the comeback
US having them and Japan not having them cost Japan the war, it’s that simple.
People are quick to want to get rid of them but I think it would be a huge mistake, one that we may come to regret in the future because you certainly don’t get much respect without them.
Do we need 10,000 like the yanks? No, but we need enough so people can’t just walk over us or blackmail us.
If everyone who has them signed to say they would get rid of them then I would be all for it, but not until such an agreement has been made.
My two pence worth
Japan would have lost the war anyway – they were out of raw materials.
The nukes shortened the war and saved a whole stack of allied lives: British as well as American (14th Army was getting ready to invade Malaya when the surrender came).
“Japan not having them cost Japan the war,”
WTF, terrorists don’t have a state to attack, neither do they have a target that can’t be dispatched by conventional means. If they get their hands on a nuke, our nuclear deterrence is useless.
Raise you a penny
@ Peter
Japan was willing to fight until every man, woman and child was dead, okinawa cost a huge amount of lives for both Japan and the U.S and the U.S knew that trying to invade Japan would be a bloodbath and would probably have cost millions of lives for the Americans, if they even managed to do it.
Having nukes when Japan didn’t bought a nice quick end, but would they have been able to do that if Japan would have had Nukes? In my opinion, no way.
@ace rimmer
I don’t think your comment about terrorists means anything as they will use a nuke if we had them or not, the UK getting rid of them is not going to make our country any safer, but it could make a difference when dealing with another country
“Japan was willing to fight until every man, woman and child was dead, okinawa cost a huge amount of lives for both Japan and the U.S and the U.S knew that trying to invade Japan would be a bloodbath and would probably have cost millions of lives for the Americans, if they even managed to do it.”
japan wa willing to give up according to aberystwyth interpol dept, and they know a thing or two, although it doubtless saved the lives of thousands of pow’s so i have always been sanguine about the decision.
The Japanese are very different to us. We have more in common with the Arab mind set. They had lost but an invasion would have been very costly.
I thought the document was a bit simplistic. I can’t be bothered to moan about Trident. The SSN is the one of the few advantages the UK has over many states. I have been moaning about our diminishing ability to “sink” ships and without SSNs we are sunk. Nothing gives us the range and flexibility. The fact that former defence sectaries can sign a document that says all an SSN does is defend the SSBN is laughable. As I keep saying the next war is going to be a long way away and may even be more maritime than land based. We need more SSNs not fewer.
@ X
“We need more SSNs not fewer.” – The more that me and you agree, the more convinced I am that the world really is destined to end in 2012.
And as for the Japanese mind set. That’s another one of the things to add to the list of my peculiar interests, for those that are keeping score.
@ Chris B
I could say something rude about the RAF if it would make you feel better!
I think we’re already doomed. It’s too late now.
X, “We need more SSNs not fewer.”
I second that.
Here’s a thought….
Can SSN’s become more ‘mission flexible’? Recently I was looking at the wikipedia entry for the Zumwalt class destroyer, to me, uneducated in the way of things that float, it looked like a submarine that can’t submerge. With this in mind, would it be possible to come up with a sub armed with say a 155mm, that could also fulfill the role of a destroyer……or is this straying unwittingly into the realms of Kafkaesque alternate realities?
@Ace
That depends what you want your ‘destroyer’ to do. Our T45s are AAR destroyers which means that their ship killing, anti submarine and land attack capabilities are all rather stunted. Astute is better at all these things than T45 so probably already fills the role of ‘general purpose destroyer’ rather better than T45 does.
What worries me about Asute is that we may never get to use the offensive capabilites. The small number of hulls mean that they will forever be tied to defending our two critical capital assets: CASD and CVF.
If we had more situational awareness of where the enemy subs are and what they are up to we could afford to release the Task Force Astute for devastating offensive action. As it is I can see it sitting under the carrier in a defensive posture for weeks on end because we won’t know where the threat is coming from.
MPA capability please! Cut 10 FJ to pay for it. This will actually enable us to use our best naval weapon in an offensive role.
Interesting stuff about Japan at the end of WW2.
My thoughts are that they were at the end of their tether, the firestorm raids did more damage than the two atomic bombs. The new and devastating nature of the bomb allowed the Japanese to make the final step towards surrender.
As for the real reason for the US dropping a bomb on an enemy on its knees and close to surrender was geo-politics pure and simple – it was done to send out a message to the USSR.
It was done to let them know what progress had been made and to make very public the power of the technology.
Libya sent out a very strong message.
The friendship of the west is transient.
Nukes are yahoo mentalist’s best friend.
Like the rest of you I want 12 Astutes in the fleet.
But I know we can’t have them on the current budget. We could have 10 medium cost medium spec MPA.
That woudl enable us to do much more with the 7 Astutes we do have. Do more with them and we will be much better placed to make the case for more hulls.
Combat enablers. Force multiplication. The way forward.
point of fact gents.
the fire bombing of Dresden and Nagasaki caused many more civilian casualties than the atomic bomb.
as a matter of fact the Japanese thought that they simply suffered another firebombing.
i hate to sound a pacifist note (its really not in my nature) but nuclear weapons are not the shield that everyone thinks…at least in the hands of a nation state. the real problem is loose nukes. in the hands of a terrorist or even criminal gang, thats when nukes become a threat. as it is now, at least against military targets, nuclear weapons are just another means of mass destruction that can be planned for, defeated or worse case scenario…fought in. not for long, but they won’t end combat immediately for your entire force if you’ve properly dispersed them.
oops AAW actually. (Although I expect they could destroy an A330 Voyager quick enough if you really wanted them to
“Our T45s are AAR destroyers”
A nuclear disarmed world would be very dangerous. If nuclear free held, then the danger of a full blown,4 to 6 year, conventional world war like 1914-18 or 1939-45, reappears.
Or the first dictator nutter who builds 50 crude nukes, gets to rule the world.
If Britain unilaterally disarmed, it would be the worst of both worlds. Our 60 year history of nuclear weapons, means we remain a nuclear target , even if we disarm. We could be nuked , while the enemy claims we were rebuilding our bombs, whether we were or not.
1950s austerity Britain thought 200 warheads was the minimum credible deterrent. I think that still stands.
Hi, Ace. A sub with a 155mm gun… HMS M1 built towards the end of the first world war was fitted with a 12inch gun – must have rattled their fillings when that was fired. Never saw action, was hit by a ship and sunk in the ’20s. I think, with the loss of all crew.
It’s missiles today anyway. TLAM on the Astutes; also sub launched anti-ship missiles out there if you want them – like Klub – no need to surface as with a gun.
Japan being nuked has been mentioned. I firmly believe that the United States not used nuclear bombs in that war -while the US was the only nuclear weapon state- there would have been a super-power nuclear war long before now.
There was no real public or political perception back then, about what nuclear weapons actually did, or about the long-term effects of radiation, radiation sickness, and fallout. Without Japan’s misfortune illustrating the effects of nuclear weapons, post-war politicians -red and blue- would have been far keener to reach for the button.
Hey BB.
I’d have thought the gun suggestion was more for support reasons against close in land targets than ship killing?
The question in that case would then would be what is the sub supporting? A beach assault? Which would likely be covered better by cheaper escorts?
Depends I guess. If these fancy electromagnetic guns pan out then there might be legs in the idea. The Astute already has plenty of power available.
Now a question that’s always bugged me; why don’t submarines carry short range AA missiles, for the use of, against Helicopters that are dipping/searching for them.
The obvious answer that comes to mind is the amount of racket plus the visual clue from the smoke that would give them away, but if they (the helicopters) were operating at a distance from the mother ship then it would presumably be less of a problem?
Onto nuclear weapons. Too useful to dispose of. Keep him, in some form or another. Whether it’s CASD, some new air launched job, ICBM’s, whatever. The value to the nations security is too great to dump them.
And regarding Japan surrending (might as well squeeze as much into this post as possible) don’t forget that the Russian decleration of war had a big impact on Japanese thinking as well as the nuclear weapons.
I agree we need more ssn’s. I think we also need to retain an SLBM deterant. The only solution I forsee is an 8 boat fleet of a hybrid ssbgn armed with 4 common missile compartments.
Hi, Chris.B. The Royal Navy tried out Blowpipe on an SSK – back before Blowpipe was found to be next to useless. I guess that idea came about from the Navy’s use of SSKs to offload special forces close into shore – probably an outdated concept now.
If your naval doctrine involves a lot of green water submarine ops, or surfacing to drop off commandos, then AA defence might be worthwhile; but otherwise, breaking the surface in any way, to identify and target an aircraft is probably too risky and would be a self-defeating tactic.
As suggested – a greater number of SSBNs. The new missile compartments will be multi role – able to be configured for TLAM as well as Trident. The compartments will have 12 tubes, the UK requirement is for 8 Trident – potentially 4×6 TLAM tubes. So more SSBNs than the minimum required to cover the deterrent patrols would enable their use as a tactical missile platform too; frees the few Astutes from the burden of being the Navy’s only TLAM platform and allows them to stick to ship hunting if needs be.
solomon, most Japanese survivors report a single explosion, how could anyone possibly think that was firebombing? In case you don’t know, carpet bombing with incendiaries is needed to cause a firestorm. Whoever told you that they thought it was a firebombing is talking out his ass. If you came up with it…
BB,
Seems right to me. Squeeze the (more economically efficient, given staff and supplies costs) eight Astutes out of the planned class build cycle now assigned to seven. Concentrate them forward: one on patrol up near Svalbard, one APT(S), one east of Suez. ABility to surge a fourth to cover the V boats when on the roads to the mid-Atlantic trench or help screen a major operation if absolutely necessary. Hunters, spotters, killers in secret. Best job for ‘em.
After that a class of six as you described. 8×6 (six live MIRV per plus decoys) in the red tubes gives you 48 warheads, then 4×7 (IIRC the US flex-tubes hold seven Tomahawk) plus hopefully another eight through the tubes a la Astutes gives you 36 TLAMs. One of those lurking under the carrier group in a defensive posture, using her silence and torps to defend the group sub-surface, as a TLAM battery, and of course a reserve to the CASD boat out in the abyss, given the range of either Trident or (in some sunshiney world where Anglo-French cooperation eats rainbows and craps butterflies) M51. Could be more than that on the TLAM front but the little I know about the flex-tube system is that it’s not quite as “flex” as, say, the Danish StanFlex designs; that installation or removal is a major-refit deal. Having a mix of capabilities, however, gives you a new class of undisputably “capital” ships. If you’ve stores to fit out up to three of them at a time, then you’ve pushed up the warhead numbers on the deterrent over the planned 120 threshold to 138, but you also get capability to cover major task forces from below and provide added offshore bombardment (the conventional kind.)
But if firebombing-as-WMD is a subject of interest, how about crowdsourcing it? Imagine it (mostly facetious here, but only mostly) with those spooky little Skynet rotary UAVs TD showed off a month or two ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb
for my own personal view on CASD:
we could live without it.
if it were my choice i would reduce britain’s deterrent to a latent ability via sustaining AWE and keeping some warheads in store.
in turn i would create six new SSN class after astute with four common missile compartments configured for multiple tlam spots.
when astute get old i would design a further class of six new SSN’s with the common missile compartment.
the intention being an ‘economic’ twelve boat fleet of two classes to preserve the ability to [both] design [and] manufacture nuclear subs.
No CASD, no Trident 2.0, just lots of SSN’s capable of hosting a nuclear deterrent and AWE controlling our anti-proliferation efforts alongside 64 warheads.
F35 is being configured for the B61 free fall bomb, just another consideration. Reduce the number of missiles on a future SSBN, I like the idea of a mixture of Trident / TLAM and buy a small number of B61. We can even spin it as an arms reduction having several less warheads etc.
Not sure if it’s a good ideat to mix trident and TLAM on the same boat at the same time. It presents some unique risks and would you want our only armed nuke platform I’n close to the coast firing TLAMs. All for a common fleet but I think boats should only be on one mission type at a time. Interesting point made I’n the article about needing a new design every 8 years to sustain design capability. This would suggest we need 2 ssn and 1 ssbn design every 24 years. I wonder how the USA copes. As there boats have a 40 year design life they will not turn out this level of design tasks I’n the coming decades.
I think you’re right about the flexibility of the tubes Jackstaff. A semi-permanent instalation, not something you’d swap out on a routine turn-around. The UK might also opt for three TLAM tubes and a dock in the fourth of the ‘spare’ tubes, but still a significant extra capability.
I wonder if there would be enough stretch with just four new boats to provide an occasional tactical missile launch – like popping down to the Med, bombing North Africa in a first day strike, then back home to reload with nukes and rejoin the Trident pattern.
I am sure Vanguard weighs in at 16,000 tons for a reason, if you compare the size difference between an Astute and Vanguard you can see it is massive. Kinds of hints to me that sticking a Trident into Astute is not going to be practical even with a common missile compartement (if it can fit)…
Which means you need a new, bigger sub to do the joint role. Does that rule out green water ops? Doesn’t it also change the unwritten rules of the game of “Don’t touch our deterrent and we wont touch yours” that was commonly played during the cold war? During a hot war, sinking an Astute is a completely different story from sinking a Vanguard, a distinction many navies (including enemies) might like to preserve…
I don’t think either the US or UK are planning to mix the tactical cruise and nuclear ballistic missile roles, Martin. But both countries’ next boats will be able to be fitted as a dual-role platform, and our lot have already said that the requirement is for eight (out of twelve) tubes on Royal Navy boats to be fitted for Trident.
Hi, Desk Jockey. The US Navy already has the Ohio subs that were converted to TLAM only. Not sure it makes a real difference in a war – we’d keep our SSBNs well away from Argentina (regardless of what they claim) or Iran when we next go to war. Got the rest of the oceans to hide in.
^edit “…we’d keep our [nuclear armed] SSBNs well away from Argentina…”
@ dj – you are correct that a d5 would not fit I’n an astute however the difference I’n beam between the two is only 1.2m astute is pretty large at 7400 t disc. It’s not inconceivable for a common platform with four or even 6 tubes to have a similar capability to astute. As for Any one crazy enough to take a 7000 t billion pound boat into green water please send them my way for swift clip around the ear.
Sorry I take that back I was thinking brow water not green.
BB – That may be, but the Iranians/Argentinians etc would scream like crazy if we parked a nuclear capable sub off their coast. Yes I know a Trident carrier would never go anywhere near their coast, but they would still percieve it as a ‘hostile’ act.
At least with a single role sub, it is easier to deny that it is anywhere near their country. Everyone knows the Argentinian claims are bollocks, how much harder would that be if everyone knew Astute could carry Trident or if we used Vanguard as a TLAM platform?
Not all American ideas are a good one. Remember their idea to deliver conventional payloads using BMs? Quietly dropped when it was pointed out that it could spook the big players (Russia and China) into thinking a nuke was inbound. (ok pointless and costly were the other grounds too). Using Ohios for TLAMs is not so overt (arguably contributes to nuke disarmament) and it uses up spare capacity, the UK doesn’t have the spare capacity to start with as we only have 4 subs. Hence a large order of new subs, for dual role, but this raises the questions I posed above.
actually, if DK Brown is to be believed and four is the optimal run for a high-tech/high-cost item like an SSN then the statistically most efficient way to keep a viable sub industry is as follows:
a twelve boat fleet, produced on a two year drum beat, with a twenty-four year service life, based on classes of four boats.
this meets the DIS requirment of a new design every eight years, the navy’s need for useful numbers, the treasury’s desire to sweat the assets its invested in rather than retire early to justify new-builds, and DK Browns rule of optimal advancement.
please, twelve SSN’s sporting a 4 pod common missile compartment with the possibility of conventional TLAM.
keeps us in with the yanks, and in the submarine game.
Martin – Speak to the submariners in the Vanguards, 1.2m beam may not sound like much, but they claim there still is not a lot of room to play with. If we were to play that game, we should have make Astute bigger from the beginning.
As for green/brown water ops – what was Astute doing when they ‘parked’ her on a sandbank in Scotland…?! The Board of Enquiry didn’t beat up the captain for going near the coast, just for not using the systems and processes to do it properly. Sounds like the RN want to take that billion quid boat up nice a close to me, otherwise why else install the systems for doing so?
@ Martin
That 1.2m makes a lot of difference. Despite what Mrs Martin might have told you size does matter. It is all about volume not overall dimensions. Without saying too much nobody seems to be giving the command and control of the deterrent much thought. Um there are “reasons” why patrols are conducted roughly where we suspected them to be conducted.
@ Desk Jockey
Roughly speaking the space available within the pressure hull is two thirds of that available in a surface ship of the same size. As I understand it.
There is also the old brought up point that nuclear armed TLAM-As are much easier to shoot down than BMs, so using TLAMs as a nuclear delivery system as some have suggested, might not work, especially against decent air-defence grids. And the worst thing about it is every nuclear armed Tomahawk downed is another possible salvaged nuclear warhead for your enemy. Bad enough that your shot can’t get through, it’s worse if you end up bankrolling his arsenal.
@ Jedi re 4
Yes I have read that too. And in other literature about submarine construction and procurement. Brown also point out that 90% of the cost of a submarine is its hull and only 10% weapons and systems.
As I have said before we choose not to have 12 SSN it isn’t about not being able to afford them. £1billion out of the overseas aid budget spent on SSNS would do more for our security and world standing in years to come than trying to compete with China’s influence buying in the Third World.
Hi, Desk Jockey. If we wanted a continuous tactical missile patrol as well as a nuke patrol, we would need several more subs. But for occasional TLAM missions just one additional boat might provide enough slack in the fleet – or maybe even with just four dual role boats.
And the Argies already complain about nukes off their coast anyway; and the Iranians likely have nuke armed Israeli boats off theirs already too.
Not so sure about Israel, they don’t seem to have a very big sub plan.
And it is a big difference between people complaining about nukes off their coast when others know it is nonsense, and them complaining because there really is one off their coast.
Despite their name, Vanguards are really best used as rear guards, and not in the tactical sense either. SSBNs are threats, you threaten to use them. They are not the first thing you use. Unless you’re really pissed off at the world, that is.
Nukes are a complex issue because their success is judged on them never being used. It has to be said that ‘breaking the spell’ and using one would make the world a much more dangerous place. Does this translate to using a delivery vehicle like Vanguard for conventional missions as changing the game? It is all psychological and so hard to prove or qualify either way.
I think the true fact is that if you want a deterrent, you have to do it properly and suffer the financial cost as a result. There is no halfway house that can be proven to work or to be seen as being so effective. Dual-use subs sound appealing from a cost and practical point of view, but if you never want to actually fire a nuke (accidently or in anger) then maintaining the deterrent as an exclusive thing is probably a good thing to do. Do we really want to open the door to the Iranians/Chinese/N Koreans putting nukes on conventional subs because the US/UK have proven it can be done? Maybe a genie to leave in the bottle..?