"Jimlad, I have no idea, I haven't done a full appraisal or a costing exercise. Nor could I. I was neither supporting nor dismissing the idea, simply remarking that the savings could be redistributed and I happen to THINK that there would still be a lot of change left over. As an afterthought, it might also solve the problem of where to put the bombs after the UK is kicked out of Scotla"
Courtney - if you dig around a little you'll find the HMG paper on this and nuclearising TLAM from a few years ago. The basic research done showed very quickly that going down either the RAF airborne deterrent, or the TLAM on an SSN route was vastly more expensive and wouldnt have the same guarantee of success as the SSBN/ICBM combination. Believe me when I say its been looked at, the sums have been done, and each time Trident emerges as the value for money option no matter how you look at it.
As for TLAM - again, not a runner because there is no nuclear TLAM in service, we'd have to pay full development and manufacture costs as the USN doesnt want it anymore, and that gets horribly expensive. Thats before you get into the issue of deterrence policy and how you'd cope in a crisis with lots of SSN going to sea and how this may actually escalate matters. Again looked at regularly and regularly proven to be a non runner in terms of costs.