Replacing Trident with Trident- really the best option?
26th March 2007
In the relatively brief period between the publication of the Defence White Paper and the Parliamentary vote on the future of Trident the debate has been curiously lop-sided: the options presented were either to sign up for a further twenty odd -years worth of Trident missiles and a new generation of submarine delivery vehicles, or be a unilateralist. It is true that some opponents of Trident are unilateralists: they want to see either the abandonment or the mothballing of our nuclear missile system as a grand gesture to persuade other nuclear states to do likewise, and in doing so present a strong case against proliferation. They certainly do not want to see a replacement for Trident commissioned. In this sense, there is some traction to the argument that a position of ‘don’t take a decision now’ leads down the unilateralist path. When would the right time be? And if this were indeterminate, how would it be possible to plan the long lead in time for a replacement of Trident?
What has been missing from the debate has been the answer to the question: assuming that one believes that the UK should retain nuclear weapons, and that we should, therefore, be thinking about replacing Trident when the present delivery system reaches the end of its life, what system best suits the needs of the UK and the requirements of deterrence in the 21st century?
If this question is asked, Trident certainly seems one of the least likely answers. It was conceived as a system able to participate in MAD (mutually assured destruction) when two superpowers pointed huge arsenals of nuclear weapons at each other, each capable of obliterating the world many times over. Britain’s contribution - an undetectable long-range delivery system, able to launch up to twelve long-range missiles each with eight independently target able warheads could have destroyed a large part of Russia as an element of that assured destructive retaliation against a first strike.
But now the world is very different. As the Strategic Defence Review stated: ’the collapse of communism and the emergence of democratic states in Eastern Europe means that there is no direct threat to the UK or Western Europe. Nor do we see the emergence of such a threat’. The threat now is different and diffuse: states seeking to obtain one or two locally deliverable weapons: countries, possibly in an unstable condition, using the threat of small arsenals of nuclear weapons to buttress their regional position: and of course the threat of international terrorism, against which Trident or similar systems are quite redundant.
In this world, the credibility of deterrence assumes a different dimension. Instead of a threat to blow the world up or use maximum force which is a quite incredible response to 21st century challenges, the purpose of a deterrent is surely a threat to use minimum force to deter the scale of the aggressive intent. A dinosaur system such as Trident simply lacks this ability.
It has been argued that because the UK withdrew all its other delivery platforms and placed its faith in submarines, the only thing we could independently reproduce as the replacement for Trident is Trident, assuming that the purchase of updated Trident Missiles from the US counts as ‘independent’. Even if we work from the starting point that Britain’s future deterrent needs to be submarine based, there are alternatives. The Astute class hunter-killer submarines, currently being built, are powered by the same nuclear plant as Vanguard, the Trident delivery vessel. They can launch tomahawk cruise missiles through their torpedo tubes - not Intercontinental Ballistic missiles, granted, but still a system able to deliver a warhead from almost anywhere in the world if that is what is required. Such a system looks far more like an appropriate nuclear deterrent for the 21st century, and at a fraction of the cost of a new generation of delivery submarines and an extensively up-rated missile system.
The amendment to the motion on the replacement of Trident that I put down supported by a number of colleagues was aimed at least to provide room for consideration of such options. It accepted that conceptual and design work on a new system needs to proceed, and would need to take place whatever replacement system was devised for Trident. But it asks that, during this process, the options are considered, and that before any system is ready for the placing of firm contracts, Parliament is able to decide conclusively that this is what we need, and what we will commission. We should also during the period of concept and design, work hard to advance the process of mutual force reduction and multilateral disarmament.
The reality is that someone will work out a way to engineer such a vote once commissioning ‘at the gate’ is about to commence: and it may be that by that point, Government will want to revisit the decision anyway. In an era of uncertainty we need a process that allows the United Kingdom to develop the best systems to respond to the changed and changing world. Better this way surely, than arguing an unconsidered change a few years down the line, or worse, being saddled with an expensive irrelevance at the heart of our defence system for decades to come.