by James Jinks
It was a marvellous experience – made wonderful by the superlative and yet modest qualities of the commander and crew. The feeling of comradeship and yet discipline and respect were marvellous to see. We are fortunate indeed in the high personal qualities of our ordinary folk – if ordinary is the word to use: they all seem so able to demonstrate extraordinary qualities when called upon to do so.6
The Falklands conflict was a distraction from the Submarine Service’s primary mission, that of fighting the Cold War and the challenges of keeping pace with an evolving Soviet threat. The 1980s represented the most intense period of activity in the deep Cold War. As we shall see in the next chapter, throughout the 1980s the Royal Navy’s submarines were increasingly involved in sensitive and highly dangerous operations against more modern, advanced Soviet submarines. But they were also responsible for maintaining the United Kingdom’s strategic nuclear deterrent, deployed on continuous Polaris patrols, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year.
Deciding to become or remain a nuclear-weapons power has always been a very prime ministerial business, and the detailed casework underpinning such policy-making is very much like the submariners’ craft – something to be kept concealed and deep below the surface of events until it’s judged to be the moment to come up into the light of public attention. The deterrent-carrying submarines have always been intensely political boats. We have already seen how much this was so when the UK deterrent first went underwater (see Chapter 4). It was so, too, albeit to a lesser degree, when the Chevaline Improvement to the Polaris front end became known, as we shall see. It was palpably true of the leap from Polaris to Trident, as it is today, more than fifty years after the Polaris Sales Agreement was signed.
When the Prime Minister visited HMS Resolution in August 1982, the Polaris missile system on board the Royal Navy’s four ‘Resolution’ class submarines was about to be overhauled by an extensive and highly secret modernization programme that had its origins in the late 1960s. When Polaris first became operational in the late 1960s, one submarine was capable of destroying 7–10 Russian cities, including Moscow and Leningrad.7 When two submarines were at sea there was a 96 per cent per cent chance of destroying twenty cities, assuming a 70 per cent reliability of the Polaris missiles (see here).8 Before the ‘Resolution’ class went to sea in 1968, the United States and the Soviet Union had started to conceive of ways to destroy offensive warheads either in space or after they had re-entered the atmosphere. In the late 1960s, the possibility of the Soviet Union deploying a defensive shield, known as an anti-ballistic-missile system, around its major cities became a very real possibility. If the Russians deployed an ABM system to defend Moscow, British Polaris warheads would be unable to penetrate it if they were not hardened and redesigned. This left the British with a difficult decision. Unless it modernized Polaris, modified the warheads, or altered and reduced its deterrence criteria, the British independent nuclear deterrent would, it was argued, lose its credibility.
In September 1967 the United States responded to the perceived threat by announcing that it also intended to deploy its own ABM system. It also developed two means of countering the new Soviet ABM system. The first was codenamed ‘Antelope’. This upgrade to the front end of the Polaris missile system involved sacrificing one of the three warheads in favour of penetration aids designed to get through the Soviet shield. The second was an entirely new missile system known as Poseidon, a missile with far greater range and a Multiple Independently Targeted Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) system, capable of delivering up to ten warheads, smaller than those in Polaris in terms of yield, with an aerodynamic design such that they re-entered the atmosphere at great speed. Technically, Poseidon was available under the terms of the Polaris Sales Agreement but the British Government decided against asking the Americans for it.9 According to Denis Healey, this was ‘partly because of its immense cost, and partly because we would be responsible, as with Polaris, for producing the nuclear warheads, and we could not expect to master the MIRV technology except at a disproportionate cost in our scarce scientific manpower’.10 Wilson’s Labour Government was unable and unwilling to move forward with anything other than studies and a very limited amount of improvement work such as the purchase of hardened missiles that protected the missile electronics from electromagnetic pulse effects.11
Studies into possible Polaris replacement and improvement programmes continued following the election of Edward Heath’s Conservative Government in June 1970. In May 1972, the Anti-Ballistic-Missile Treaty restricted the United States and the Soviet Union to two ABM sites: one around their capital and another to defend a single ICBM site, with a total of 200 ABM missiles spread between the two sites. The Treaty had important implications for the British as it stopped the Soviet Union from deploying vast ABM systems around the Soviet Union and possibly negating the ability of the Royal Navy’s Polaris force to meet the Government’s deterrent criteria. The treaty threshold of 100 ABM missiles around Moscow was crucial as British intelligence estimates indicated that if the Soviets deployed 128 ABM interceptors around Moscow, Polaris would be incapable of penetrating and upholding the Moscow Criterion.12 Despite the ABM treaty, and a later 1974 protocol that further restricted Soviet ABMs to one site around Moscow, the need to improve or replace Polaris to ensure that it could penetrate Moscow remained.
In the preceding years a number of options had materialized. The first involved adapting elements of the American Antelope programme into a UK project known as ‘Super Antelope’. The second involved purchasing a fully MIRVed Poseidon system from the United States. The third, essentially a hybrid system, envisaged incorporating elements of Super Antelope on top of de-MIRVed Poseidon missiles which later evolved into Option M, a de-MIRVed Poseidon front end which was still at the design stage in the United States.13 A UK MIRVed Poseidon purchase again was ruled out in September 1973 for a variety of political, economic and strategic factors. This left two practicable alternatives, Option M or the Super Antelope programme. Option M was eventually dismissed due to its expense compared to Super Antelope and the likely Congressional difficulties expected to arise should the Nixon administration attempt to request a sale. US attitudes and behaviour towards the United Kingdom deteriorated throughout 1973, including the termination of some elements of US intelligence cooperation as a result of the Yom Kippur War. It also led many British officials to conclude that it was imperative to ensure that the nuclear deterrent retained a greater measure of independence.14 The Heath Government was also anxious to avoid taking any action that could be interpreted as reaffirming the UK special relationship with the United States so soon after joining the EEC.
CHEVALINE
The decision to proceed with Super Antelope was taken in October 1973. The programme, which was later renamed Chevaline, involved a complete redesign of the payload of the Polaris missile to enable it to penetrate Russian anti-ballistic-missile defences. It contained a number of significant improvements over the original Polaris system. It carried re-entry vehicles which were hardened to resist the effects of ABM warheads and two warheads, one mounted on the second stage of the missile and the other mounted on a Penetration Aid Carrier (PAC) which contained a large number of penetration aids designed to confuse the ABM radars stationed around Moscow. Chevaline did not provide an MIRV capability. The PAC was a highly sophisticated spacecraft which, after separation from the second stage of the Polaris missile, manoeuvred itself in space so that its payload, with a second warhead, could be correctly deployed.
The Chevaline project covered a vast range of technical, scientific and engineering disciplines and demanded an in depth understanding of almost every major field of defence technology – scientific intelligence, radar and electronic systems, nuclear technology and effects, battle modelling, system modelling, defence philosophy, materials science, explosive, propellant and pyrotechnical technology, aerodynamics, aero-ballistics, space ballistics, control systems, mathematics, computers, underwater technology, analyti
cal chemistry and so on. The integration of such diverse technologies and the engineering design of a total system to provide both the performance required to meet the threat and the levels of reliability deemed necessary to achieve a credible deterrent system posed major problems and required dedicated teams of very high calibre as well as large supporting groups of technologists, trials engineers and production engineers.15
The early years of Chevaline were troubled. The politics surrounding the programme meant that crucial decisions were postponed while alternatives were explored. The technological challenges involved, combined with questions about the way in which the programme was managed resulted in delays and increased costs. This had consequences. By November 1975, the Chiefs of Staff had considerable doubts about the ability of Polaris to penetrate Soviet ABM defences.16 By the mid-1970s, intelligence assessments indicated that the Soviet Union had deployed sixty-four ABMs around Moscow.17 By the end of 1975, the original Polaris system, which had only been at sea for around six and a half years, was judged no longer capable of satisfying the criterion of inflicting unacceptable damage to the Russians through the destruction of Moscow.18 The Chiefs of Staff were forced to alter their criteria for deterrence, and in March 1976 the Chief of Defence Staff, Field Marshal Sir Michael Carver, recommended to the Defence Secretary, Roy Mason, that the UK alter its National Retaliatory War Plan and target either ten Russian cities, excluding Moscow, or operate the ‘Resolution’ class submarines in the Mediterranean to launch at Moscow in an attempt to outflank the Soviet ABM radars.19
Against the prospect of management deficiencies, technical risks, significant delays, and spiraling costs, a major independent review of the programme reported in 1976. While it concluded that Chevaline should continue, it recommended that overall control should be placed in the Navy’s hands. The Deputy Controller (Polaris), Rear Admiral David Scott, a widely respected Submariner in the Royal Navy, Submarine Service and the United States, was nominated to head a recreated Polaris Executive, by the Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Sir Edward Ashmore. Scott, who had been Deputy Controller (Polaris) since 1973, had doubts about Chevaline. According to his unpublished memoir:
As I carefully read through the details of the extremely complicated design of the new re-entry system, then known as Super Antelope, I began to have doubts as to the rationale of proceeding down the course on which we had embarked. My worries initially stemmed from the following considerations:
1. The introduction of highly toxic, highly reactive, liquid fuels into a system which had been primarily designed to use only solid fuel as a submarine safety measure.
2. With its new front end, the missile system would become a hybrid one, being a mixture of U.S. and U.K. technology.
3. The system relied on the use of decoys to achieve penetration of the defences. These decoys would burn up at about 250,000 feet. Furthermore, their radar signatures could be compromised during test firings. Besides having specially equipped ships to observe firings in the vicinity of the trials area, there were Russian radar stations on Cuba.
4. The shape of the warheads, which had appeared in publications in the U.S., was such that during descent they became sub-sonic in speed at a height of about 90,000 feet, so becoming an easy prey to the Russian terminal defence missiles and even to the Russian SAM 10, a surface-to-air missile.
5. The reduction in warheads from three to two per missile.
6. The reduction in range, which resulted in a massive reduction in the size of the patrol area available to the submarines. I am not, even at this time, at liberty to give figures for this, but I can say that the size of these areas was much less than that available for the unmodified system, and minute compared to the size of the areas available for the Poseidon and Trident missile systems.
7. The accelerating cost escalation of the project. First estimated in November 1970 at £85 Million, it had risen by November 1973 to £235 Million, by March 1976 to £594 Million and by completion in 1980 to over £1 Billion.
8. The inexperience and lack of knowledge of our scientists in the field of Gas Dynamics. This became apparent in 1974 and 1975 when RAE Farnborough, who were responsible for the design of the penetration aids and the penetration aid carrier, had, on a number of occasions, to seek the advice of the Lockheed Missiles and Space Corporation on both designs and calculations.
9. The large number of pyrotechnic devices incorporated in the new front end, amounting to well over a hundred per missile.20
Many of the problems with Chevaline concerned the highly sophisticated Penetration Aid Carrier (PAC) at the very heart of the system. This complex piece of engineering equipment posed mechanical, electrical, chemical, explosive, propellant and pyrotechnic problems alongside major problems in ballistics and dynamics.21
Scott’s misgivings were also a reflection of wider concerns about Chevaline that existed within the Royal Navy, which had always favoured Poseidon to maintain commonality with the US Navy. The introduction of a liquid-propellant system for the main motor which enabled the PAC to meet its various velocity increments before deployment of its payload caused many worries among submariners, particularly from a safety point of view. The probability of a missile accident leading to the loss of a submarine was judged to be no greater than that which applied to the original Polaris system, but submariners, who recalled the fate of HMS Sidon, remained distinctly uneasy about the prospect of working with liquid propellants, despite the introduction of numerous safety systems.22
Submariners were also concerned about the size of the Chevaline operating areas. These depended on a variety of factors such as Russian activity, the seasonal variation depending on ice limits, the disposition of friendly forces at the time, and communications and navigational support requirements. Chevaline missiles had a reduced range of 1960 miles compared with Polaris maximum range of 2460 miles. This entailed an almost 60 per cent reduction in sea room/operating areas compared with un-Chevalined Polaris, as Scott had warned.23 A new lightweight warhead which promised to extend the range of the missiles, and provide more sea room and thus greater insurance against improvements in Soviet anti-submarine warfare capability, was tested in 1978.24 However, according to one estimate these lightweight warheads only led to a modest improvement in range, from 1960 miles to 2030 miles, still a 50 per cent reduction in sea room compared with that afforded by Polaris.25
In April 1976, Scott assumed control as Chief Polaris Executive. Accepting that the Royal Navy was stuck with Chevaline, he led a new management team which undertook a complete review of the project, established tighter controls, significantly increased its cost estimates to £495m (at autumn 1972 prices) and extended the programme to allow additional flight trials. Participation from industry was also strengthened and British Aerospace was appointed to coordinate the various main contractors. When the Public Accounts Committee reviewed the Chevaline programme towards the end of 1981 it confirmed that significant management and control weaknesses had existed for some time before the autumn of 1976 – before Scott assumed control and the Royal Navy took over – during the period when heavy costs were incurred, and that the changes in management could and should have been made earlier.26
Work continued throughout the late 1970s and into the early 1980s. By the time the existence of the programme was disclosed to Parliament by the Defence Secretary, Francis Pym, on 24 January 1980, its cost had risen to £1000m (£530m in 1972 prices).27 Did the Callaghan Government ever consider cancelling Chevaline? In his retirement, Lord Callaghan said:
When I came to office as Prime Minister I could then have said, ‘Well, all right, we’d better cancel it.’ But it’s awfully difficult, unless you have the virtue of hindsight, when something is going on, has been going on for three or four years, and you’re told, ‘Oh, it’s going to be pretty soon now, can we have another hundred million or fifty million?’ to say ‘No, put it all on one side,’ to be so certain you’re right that it’s not going to succeed. In fact, it did succeed; but
it did cost a lot more than everybody expected. And every time they called for a new tranche, I used to write ‘agree’ on the minute … because one always thought it was just around the corner.28
In spite of technical problems with the first submarine firings in November 1980 and delays to the trials programme in 1981 because of a Civil Service dispute, the Chevaline Approval Firings from HMS Renown in early 1982 were an outstanding success. HMS Renown, equipped with a full outfit of Chevaline missiles, became operational in late 1982, followed by HMS Revenge. HMS Resolution and HMS Repulse came next, in 1985 and 1987, after refits.
The Royal Navy’s inventory of Polaris A3 missiles also required upgrading. No quantity of US missiles, however cheaply acquired, could carry the Royal Navy into the 1990s – almost all US Polaris missiles were appreciably older than the Royal Navy’s and by the late 1970s many had started to show a disconcerting failure rate in tests.29 The central factor was motor life. In the early 1980s a major problem was discovered in the first stage rocket motors that had the potential to jeopardize ‘the continuing serviceability of the UK Polaris First Stage Rocket Motor inventory’. As Rear Admiral John Grove, CSSE, explained to the House of Commons Defence Committee in February 1985:
Over the years we have had three types of fault come up on these. You get detectable and repairable faults which, of course, you can repair, and maintain your stockpile. We have had detectable faults that are not repairable so that diminishes the stockpile. The really worrying one, of course, that caused us to go into this programme were faults that were not detectable by non-destructive testing means. They were due to flight failures – the Americans had some failures and we had some failures – and, of course, it is a difficult situation. That was the circumstance that drove us to a remotoring programme.30