Trident to carry on
 

bbc.co.uk

Brown signals support for Trident

Trident will be decommissioned by about 2024
Gordon Brown is expected to signal that he wants to keep and renew Britain's independent nuclear deterrent.
The Trident missile system and the Vanguard submarines that carry them need replacing by 2024 and a decision is set to be taken in the next year.

Mr Brown is expected to use his Mansion House speech to indicate his personal commitment to renewing Trident.

Estimates of the cost vary from £10bn to £25bn, depending on what form the new missiles or submarines take.

As well as voicing fears over the cost, critics say Trident is outdated, designed to deal with the threat posed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and should now be stood down.


Labour had a manifesto commitment to retain an independent nuclear deterrent but it only applies until the next general election.

Mr Brown, seen as the most likely next prime minister, will speak of retaining the deterrent in the long term.

It is thought he wants anti-nuclear campaigners to know that he is just as committed to replacing Trident as Tony Blair.

'No moral reason'

BBC political editor Nick Robinson said Mr Brown's words would take the heat off the prime minister, who could have produced "uproar" if he had made the same announcement.

The government's position is that decisions on updating or replacing Trident are likely to be needed during the current Parliament.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "No decisions have been taken on the replacement of Trident, either in principle or detail."

When we face nuclear threat, to decide on a new Trident replacement is beginning a new nuclear arms race

Kate Hudson
Chairwoman, CND

But the decision is expected to be taken in months rather than years.

Kate Hudson, chairwoman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said she feared Mr Brown's words would close down the debate on Trident promised by the government.

"We were hoping that any potential future prime minister would stick by the commitments made last year by then Defence Secretary John Reid for a full public and parliamentary debate," she told BBC News.

"Our feeling is statements like this from someone as significant as Gordon Brown pre-empts that debate."

Statesman's spin?

Ms Hudson said this was the moment to start multi-lateral disarmament talks.

"At this point, when we face no nuclear threat, to decide on a new Trident replacement is beginning a new nuclear arms race," she said.

Labour MP Ian Gibson, an opponent of Trident, said many young Labour backbenchers had been weaned on CND and had not lost those early political views.

"So it may not be as easy [to agree to replace Trident] as people might think because the chancellor says so," he told BBC News 24.



The Conservatives accused Mr Brown of "spin" designed to make him look statesmanlike.


Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox said: "His words are exactly the same as those in the 2005 manifesto and are not new.

"The chancellor is reheating an old pledge to retain the current nuclear deterrent but he is not committing to replacing the independent nuclear deterrent when it reaches the end of its current life."

'Squandered'

The Tories highlighted that in 1984 Mr Brown had called Trident "unacceptably expensive, economically wasteful, and militarily unsound".

Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Nick Harvey said the British people deserved plans for a scheme that could cost £25bn to undergo full scrutiny.

"Gordon Brown's posturing on Trident is smothering the national debate that this government promised to the British people," he said.

Former Labour Cabinet minister Peter Mandelson said he had not read the speech but added: "I'm sure the speech will spark a very interesting national debate on the subject."

At prime minister's questions on Wednesday, Labour's Gordon Prentice, (Pendle), told MPs it would be an "absolute outrage" if billions were "squandered" on a new generation of nuclear weapons without a vote by MPs.

Mr Blair replied: "There should be the fullest possible debate on this issue. I am sure there will be."


He might well retain Trident but i bet he will cut the number of subs and missiles per sub to an absolute minimum.....

Oh, that's been done with pretty much all of the Navy already :(

It would be nice if the mistake last time round (all the procurement off the dark blue budget for a truly national asset) was avoided.

Pigs pre-flighted, holding at runway.....

Yeah, scrap it. There'll be plenty of time to debate whether or not Britain should have a deterrent when the PLA Navy is sailing up the Thames, won't there?

And BTW Trident isn't independent, is it? :confused:

Scrap Trident, cancel the new carriers and that's pretty much the end of the RN. What's left can be subsumed by the RAF as the Marine Branch. Ah, but haven't we been here quite recently?

Stick to what your good at crabs, drinking tea and bothering welsh farmers. The Royal Marines will stick with the Andrew thanks, would look a tad naff doing beach landings in one of your air sea rescue boats.

As the US have proved, carrier battle groups are the way ahead, what with Ocean, Bulwark and a couple of carriers I think the UK will be a bit better off than we are now, as long as the RAF uses it's FJ's to fly off the carriers of course.

I seem to remember that the first Trident came into service in 1994, so what's the expected service life these subs ? I take it that the other two subs were operational later than that, (95 or 96 ?).

Given that the Vulcan was flying for 40 odd years, we don't get too much for our cash do we ?

Just a thought.

Cheers,

MoT

As long as you have sufficient land-based assets (AAR, AEW, ECM/ECCM etc, heavy bombers - ie not JSF, etc etc), oh and the war can wait a few months whilst we get one of the carriers back from the yard and sail it at top speed (:\) to the war zone, and as long as the targets aren't too far away cos we may not get AAR and...and...........:rolleyes: :ok:

I would have thought that they would be around till atleast 2015. It will take us at least 10-15 years to come up with a new system, scrap it after a lot of money is wasted and then buy the US version for twice the amount it would have cost us with the original.

Does that mean that since the vast majority of the work of the MRA4 will be for the dark blue and green services, rather than light blue, that you'd be happy for the MRA4 procurement budget to be shared out also :confused:

I thought ALL military assets were a TRULY NATIONAL ASSET !!!

MadMark!!! :mad:

Sadly true old boy, who remembers AEW Nimrod fiasco ?

IIRC when going through 6FTS at Finingley in 1989, we were told that the final cost of the airframe mod was £1bn each. Not a bad return on investment for a ground trainer that the ab-initio Air Engineers used to start up and shut down.

...and of course we eventually bought the E3 that had been offered to us ten years earlier.

Back to my original point, does anyone know if still have to have the authority of the US President (and considering the mental stability of the baboon who currently holds that office, is this a wise thing), before we can light the blue touch paper on Trident ?

The British, American made Trident is fitted with British designed MIRV's with British designated targets so surely, although the missiles are manufactured in the USA, should come under the full control of the British? :confused:

or is that why Brown wants an 'independent' deterrent? Because we don't have full control.....

Anyone who knows for real isn't likely to tell us here!:hmm: But it is noticable that politicians asked this in the past have usually dissembled along the lines of "I cannot envisage any circumstance where we'd want to launch and the US wouldn't". Doesn't take a genius to work out that one:rolleyes:

But the real issue isn't whether we can fire them ourselves - if we ever find out, Trident will have failed in its primary purpose, deterrance. The issue is that the USA could, if it so wished, stop supporting the UK deterrent, in which case it would be rendered inoperable in months if not weeks. That's how 'independent' it is.

Thye UK Tridents are essentially copies of the US W76 design and utilise a number of US made components.

..at least one would expect the Marine Branch to know the difference between Spain and Gibraltar!!

Load up the ASMP-UKs
 

Is it too late to point out that Gordon said precisely nothing about Trident?

He said 'independent national deterrent' or words to that effect - but he didn't identify any system or solution.

I know it's only words, but words matter - and his struck me as particularly well chosen. The speech was telegraphed as a big vote for Trident...but it wasn't really, was it?

I can't imagine a situation where UK would *have* to fire Trident where waiting to ask the US would be an option...

I'm undecided as to the merits of spending £25bn on a sub launched system, when the likely (?) recipients of a British nuke do not have a credible AD capability.

I doubt whether the Iraninan AD organisation (to pick one example at random) could defend against a decent stand off weapon such as ALCM.

Therefore, as we're not considering anyone with a decent AD infrastructure (such as the Russians, Chinese or possibly the Indians) a threat, wouldn't an ALCM system or the like be equally as effective. Given of course, that the US would sell us some Tomahawks in the first place.

An interesting article in Prospect magazine ran the hypothesis that an unidentified Islamic state targeted the UK with it's first ICBMs in a soviet style 'standing start' attack because a. we are seen very much as an extension of the US's foreign policy, and therefore exert some leverage in Washington due to the special relationship(whatever that is?); and b. if we were to give up our weapons then the US, when it really came down to it, wouldn't sacrifice Birmigham Alabama for Birmingham West Midlands, and the Islamacists would have won a first strike.

Surely, if we don't have absolute control of our sub launched system, it fails to be a deterrent at all. Absolute control over the lesser ALCM option would seem cheaper and preferable ?

Well, it does to me after three glasses of wine, but then again I'm not that bright even when sober.

Your thoughts ?

Cheers,

MoT

My reading of it its another Jam tomorrow to extract more cuts today look at the promised programmes for the armed forces how many are likely to come to fruition in the form originally promised or will be subtley down graded in view of cost or changing military circumstances (IE the forces shrinking)

Matter of public record that services chiefs stated categorically to Parliament defense committee that UK has complete independence in targeting & firing Trident. In response to how long could that last without US cooperation, the answer was as long as the UK could maintain the missiles in working order (currently done stateside). IIRC best guess was at least a year.

A WHOLE YEAR! So, ample time to design, build, test, produce and bring into service our own SLBM's and warheads. Not forgetting to built the testing ranges, degaussing facilities, maintenance facilities, etc.

Pathetic.