Technology | 2009.10.01
This is not disarmament | Richard Norton-Taylor
Brown wants to be seen to be taking action on nuclear weapons, but he should cut warheads, not a submarine that carries them
Gordon Brown is presenting the government\'s intention to cut the number of new Trident nuclear missile submarines from four to three as disarmament. It is nothing of the kind.
It may be a move in the right direction, though not without risks – what happens if one crashes again into a French nuclear sub? And it will save money, though a fraction, probably less than £2bn, of the £90bn estimated cost of the new system over its 30-year lifespan.
The prime minister\'s move was an easy way to grab the headlines as he joins world leaders at the UN in New York for talks in which the US president, Barack Obama, has placed disarmament firmly on the agenda. It was foreshadowed in the government\'s 2006 white paper on a successor to the existing Trident system. The paper said technological advances – albeit mainly to do with its nuclear reactor propulsion – might make it possible for Britain to have one less submarine while keeping to its policy of having one of them always on patrol, or " continuous at-sea deterrence ", CASD, as it is called.
Maintaining that posture is not disarming and it is dishonest to suggest that one less submarine carrying out the same task is. Only cuts in the number of missiles or warheads, the number of warheads per missile and the yield of those warheads could be counted as steps towards disarmament.
This government has taken such steps in the past, though curiously has not trumpeted them. Its 2006 white paper said the number of "operationally available warheads" have been reduced to fewer than 160 (from a total of 200). In March this year it said Trident submarines would in future have 12 rather than 16 missile launch tubes. Meanwhile, each submarine has "up to" 48 warheads while on patrol.
What do these numbers, couched in deliberately vague language, mean? Every time the government reduces the number of nuclear warheads it insists that it is still maintaining a "minimum deterrent". The issue of the number of warheads is complicated by a lack of information on the nature of those weapons. The government is spending billions of pounds on new equipment at the atomic weapons research establishment at Aldermaston. It denies, but many suspect, that the nuclear lobby in the Ministry of Defence has already decided to build a "smart" new generation of nuclear missiles. They could be smaller and have variable yields and therefore, their proponents might say, could be "more useful" and "more credible".
Yet there are serious questions, never properly answered by ministers, about what practical, or moral, value nuclear weapons have, what deterrent value, in an age and a forseeable future when they themselves say Britain\'s main enemy will be assorted insurgents and terrorists against whom a Trident intercontinental ballistic missile would hardly be a credible weapon.
In the event of large states such as China or Russia deciding to attack the UK they would more likely, as the new head of the army General Sir David Richards , has said, use proxy guerrilla groups, or cyberwarfare, their economic power, including – in Russia\'s case – their energy resources.
If Britain is worried about Iran or another rogue nuclear state emerging on the horizon, or being turfed off the top table of world leaders, then it could keep nuclear weapons, but far fewer, at far less expense, and not based on submarines on long patrols. Lord Guthrie, former head of the army and chief of defence staff, speaks for many of his serving successors when he says the government must look at ways of delivering a nuclear weapon much more cheaply. Brown is worried about the increasing strength of that argument and thus makes a move that carries risks while not amounting to disarmament at all.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]lear-weapons-trident-submarine
