The Silent Deep
Page 68
But the cost of the Trident programme continued to overshadow any discussions. By 1981 Thatcher had concluded that the Defence Secretary, Francis Pym, had failed to grip defence expenditure and seemed unable to take the difficult decisions that were required. In January 1981 Pym was removed as Secretary of State for Defence and replaced by the former Trade Secretary, John Nott. Nott inherited a defence overspend from the previous financial year of £200m and a projected overspend for 1980/81 of £400m out of a total defence budget of £11.2bn. The question of cost was captured particularly well during the 1972–82 decision-taking cycle by Nott’s memorandum prepared for MISC 7 in late 1981 ahead of the D5 decision, a document that supplements the Armstrong memorandum of two years earlier:
In the midst of a recession with no economic growth, low confidence and an understandable preoccupation with our short term economic difficulties it would be all too easy to wash our hands of this commitment. Our predecessors in both major parties also had economic problems which seemed equally pressing to them but they have kept this country with an independent deterrent ever since the 1950s. So far the present Government has a good story to tell in relation to our election commitments on defence. On an objective analysis of the threat it would be a startling moment to change this policy as the ‘window of vulnerability’ [in terms of Soviet forces] opens wider in the mid-1980s; as Mitterrand modernizes his independent deterrent; and in the light of all our statements over the past 2½ years to the effect that our independent strategic deterrent is essential for the protection of this country and the maintenance of peace.109
This appeal to the doctrine of unripe time, always a powerful factor, was followed by Nott’s version of what Michael Quinlan (at that time his chief adviser on nuclear matters inside the Ministry of Defence) later called ‘the gut instinct’. Nott asked his MISC 7 colleagues:
Would the Conservative Party forgive us – and more important would the nation do so – if the dangers of the world increase? By foregoing Trident we would be abandoning our stake in the only available technology likely to meet both the requirement of invulnerability and penetration up to 2020 … to decide not to proceed with Trident would be in effect to opt out of the nuclear business. It is also probably inevitable that within our lifetime other small countries will acquire a nuclear capability. In the eyes of our allies, and of our enemies, we would seem quite a different nation (and the Conservative Party quite a different party).110
The overall cost of the Trident programme beyond 1983/84 (the planning horizon) remained a significant issue, not only for the Royal Navy, but the country in general (see here). On 10 February 1981, Nott informed Thatcher that ‘two-thirds of the Party and two-thirds of the Cabinet were opposed to the procurement of Trident. Even the Chiefs of Staff were not unanimous.’111 The Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, who was also present in the meeting, supported the purchase but thought ‘that the Ministry of Defence is guilty of gold-plating’ and hoped ‘that a cheaper way might be found’.112
The Royal Navy argued that the overall cost of the Trident programme should be spread equally over the three Services. The Army and the Royal Air Force were unwilling to give up any of their planned and costed programmes to finance the project. The Navy argued that because Trident had not, for political reasons, been included in the Long-Term Costings, and because it was a national politico-military requirement outside the normal business of defence provision, it should be paid for by a special subvention separate from the general defence budget.113 Nott refused and in the spring of 1981 ruled that the Navy would have to bear the cost of Trident alone. He explained the reasons for doing so in his memoirs:
First, the Royal Navy was responsible for the operations and running cost of Polaris, the existing deterrent. Secondly, as a pure question of financial control and responsibility, it had to be part of a single budget. We could not have the Royal Navy running Trident – and then the Army and the Air Force carping about the management and the cost. Thirdly, the nuclear deterrent had always been a single-service responsibility – the Air Force being in control of the early air-launched deterrent. And finally, as Trident was the United Kingdom’s most valuable defence resource, I wanted the high quality and management dedication of the Royal Navy to continue; I would not have had the same confidence in the Army or the Air Force.114
After two further meetings, MISC 7 agreed in January 1982 to go for Trident D5 and three submarines, with the question of a fourth to be considered later.115 The superior accuracy and destructive power of the Trident D5 missile compared to the Trident C4 had weakened the arguments put forward for a force of five submarines. Unlike the Trident C4, which required two submarines carrying a combined thirty-two missiles to meet the damage criterion identified in Option 1 of the Duff–Mason Report, the more advanced Trident D5 was capable of penetrating hardened targets such as command bunkers and destroying them with a single detonation which was the equivalent of four Trident C4 detonations.116 The fifth boat was now seen as ‘extravagant’, to use Howe’s words, and it was ‘knocked out’.117
Once MISC 7 had reached its conclusions, the full Cabinet was briefed on the D5 decision on 21 January 1982. Nott, who was responsible for organizing the brief, noted in his autobiography that:
We explained to the full Cabinet how much we knew about Soviet nuclear, biological and chemical capabilities, where their command and control bunkers were situated, and how the development of anti-ballistic missile defences bore down on the requirements for a credible deterrent. This was an era when the extent of satellite photography and electronic and signals intelligence was not much known to those outside a small circle … My colleagues were fascinated; but the Chancellor had come from a good lunch and slept during the briefing.118
Negotiations of the terms on which the D5 could be made available took place in Washington on 8, 9, 24 and 25 February 1982 with an American team drawn from the White House (the Deputy to the National Security Advisor), the Pentagon and the State Department, the British side from the Cabinet Office, Ministry of Defence, and Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In a meeting of MISC 7 to review the negotiations on 4 March 1982, Nott argued that ‘the terms negotiated by officials represent an extremely favourable deal which we should have no hesitation in accepting’.119
During that MISC 7 meeting, discussion turned to the size of the Trident fleet. The question now remained, should the fleet consist of four or three submarines? As was pointed out in MISC 7 discussion:
On the question of the size of the Trident force, the point was made that a force of three D5 boats had equivalent hitting power to a force of four C4 boats. The fourth boat was required solely as an insurance against failure of one of the other three. No such failure had occurred with the Polaris force. A fourth Trident boat, at a cost of £1 billion, would be an expensive form of insurance against a contingency which experience showed was unlikely to arise in practice. To keep open the option of three or four boats would also provide a margin against cost increase and help to counter criticism of the increased cost of the programme since 1980. The American Trident programme would not increase. Against this, the point was made that the greater effectiveness of the D5 missile system was not the main factor bearing on the choice between three and four boats; the issue was determined by the need to be sure of maintaining at least one boat on continuous patrol. This could not be achieved with a force of only three boats unless accidents to the boats themselves could be totally avoided. Many of the Government’s supporters would argue cogently for a five boat force and would certainly not be content with less than four. Above all, a force of three boats would not be a credible deterrent so far as the perception of the Soviet Union was concerned. If the Government were seen to be contemplating the possibility of having only three boats, and therefore of giving up the ability to be sure of a continuous deterrent patrol, the case for the maintenance of an independent deterrent would be questioned.120
In summing up the discussion, the Prime Minister said
that ‘four submarines should be built, each with 16 missile tubes, improved tactical weapons and propulsion system, with a view to the first boat entering service in 1994’.121
On 4 March 1982, the full Cabinet also agreed the D5 for up to a four-boat force – the system in operation today. Nott opened with a distillation of MISC 7’s accumulated deliberations. He said in a ‘most confidential record’, kept separate from the normal Cabinet minutes, of which only three copies were made:
that the strategic nuclear deterrent was central to the defence of the United Kingdom. No one could foresee what might over the next 30–40 years happen to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation or to the United States attitude to the defence of Europe. A strategic deterrent under British national control was therefore essential.122
In retrospect, we can see that Nott’s opening remarks about the unpredictability of the world were prescient. Within a month the Falklands had been invaded by Argentina and the UK found itself in a war that none round the Cabinet table in March 1982 were expecting. Nott fleshed out his argument for Britain purchasing the most sophisticated missile in the world. Though he did not mention the Chevaline experience, the perils of not operating the same system as the US were almost certainly in his mind:
The Polaris force would be 30 years old by the 1990s and its credibility would be declining. Only a four-boat Trident force could provide a Successor which would be credible in Soviet eyes and remain operational well into the 21st Century. The D5 Trident 2 missile would be more cost-effective than the C4 Trident 1 version, because it would preserve commonality between Britain and America.123
At this point Nott presented the cost and the French factors together:
It would also be cheaper during the years immediately ahead. Its total cost over fifteen years would average £500 million a year or just over three per cent of an annual Defence Budget of over £14,000 million. By contrast France’s nuclear deterrent was costing twenty per cent of her defence expenditure.124
Concern about overall costs of the programme also led the Government to search for other savings. One of the most significant concerned the initial assembly and periodic refurbishment of the Trident missiles. The Royal Navy’s Polaris missiles had been serviced and maintained at the Armaments Depot at Coulport on Loch Long. Now, the United States Navy offered to support and maintain the Royal Navy’s Trident D5 missiles at the US Navy Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic (SWFLANT) at Kings Bay, Georgia. Due to the greatly increased reliability, safety and lifespan of components used in the Trident system it was no longer necessary to build specialist missile-processing facilities in the United Kingdom. Whereas the Polaris A3 missiles had to be regularly removed from SSBNs between patrols for routine maintenance, Trident D5 missiles could be retained on board an SSBN for up to ten years. All the vital control, guidance and electronic packages placed in the missiles could be readily exchanged, at sea or in harbour, without offloading them. Use of Kings Bay also reduced the task at Loch Long to that of storing and processing warheads, and mating them with the missiles aboard the submarine. Under United States law British warheads could not be stored or processed in the United States, but had to be removed from the missiles before the submarines crossed the Atlantic to offload their missiles for processing. Servicing at Kings Bay would have the added advantages of reducing the opportunities for anti-nuclear campaigners to seek to disrupt the operation of the deterrent through demonstrations or industrial action. (The local planning authority had also refused to cooperate with the Ministry of Defence over the possible expansion of the Coulport base.)125
This considerable reduction in capital works meant that once Polaris was phased out, only a few hundred civilian staff would need to be employed at Coulport, compared to the approximately 2000 working there in the 1980s. The Government estimated that the arrangement would lead to savings in capital expenditure worth some £500m over eight years with significant savings in running costs throughout the lifetime of the system. The most serious problem concerned the impact on the independence – real or perceived – of the UK deterrent by any decision to rely on the US for missile processing. The MOD argued that the UK would still be independent. As Nott explained in a paper to MISC 7 in July 1982:
In reality, given the advance in technology which Trident represents, we would be more independent with US processing than we are now with Polaris with British processing should US assistance be cut off. We shall still depend on US to supply and repair individual components of the Trident strategic weapons system and missile as we do now with Polaris. But the reliability of Trident will be greater and we shall be able to replace components in the submarine from our own stocks of spares in UK so maintaining our capability for an extended period. And, most crucially, our independence will be assured since, at all times, a high proportion of our missiles will be held in our submarines: two boatloads of Trident missiles will always be available and under HMG’s absolute control; and there will be three boatloads for much of the time.126
The summary concluded:
Given that a high proportion of our missiles will be held in our submarines, operationally available, and under HMG’s sole control at all times, the UK ability to use its deterrent if necessary is maintained. It is, of course, true that with Trident, as with Polaris now, the UK will be dependent on the US to undertake the refurbishment, repair and logistic support of individual components of the strategic weapon system and missiles. But this is unaffected by whether we use US processing and facilities or set up our own in Scotland. Moreover, in the inconceivable case of a future US Government deciding to cut off supplies of components and no longer to repair them, there would be no sudden effect on the effectiveness of our deterrent. We hold considerable stocks of spares, and given the greater reliability of Trident, and that components in the missile can be exchanged without removing it from the submarine, we would be better able to continue to maintain the deterrent than would be the case now with Polaris, although over a period of two or three years its effectiveness would inevitably begin to fall off. In reality, therefore, our independence is not reduced if we use US processing facilities for our Trident missiles, and indeed is enhanced by comparison with Polaris in view of Trident’s improved technology.127
Mrs Thatcher, in summing up the discussion on missile processing, concluded that:
the political and financial advantages of carrying out missile processing in the United States outweighed the marginal reduction in the independence of the Trident system and the eventual loss of job opportunities in Scotland. The initial decision to adopt Polaris, and now Trident, as the United Kingdom’s strategic nuclear deterrent already involved a considerable degree of dependence on the United States. The use of American processing facilities was merely an extension of the arrangements for the supply of the missiles.128
The Cabinet was also told on 4 March 1982 that in the event that ‘such support were ever cut off, the success of the Chevaline programme suggested that Britain would not be technologically unable to replace it on a national basis’.129 The Polaris Sales Agreement was later extended to allow a ‘mingled asset’ ownership and management system for the D5 missiles. Missiles embarked on UK submarines are randomly selected from the inventory of missiles at SWFLANT at Kings Bay, Georgia. The submarines then go to the Royal Naval Armaments Depot at Coulport, where the missiles are fitted with UK-designed and UK-manufactured warheads. Initial plans expected the UK to be at all times in possession of two boatloads of Trident missiles, under British control, and three boatloads for around 80 per cent of the time.130
As well as the practicalities, the Thatcher Government was clearly concerned about the ethics underpinning the Trident decision. Open Government Document 80/23, ‘The Future United Kingdom Strategic Nuclear Deterrent Force’, published in May 1980, represented a break in traditional UK policy of not discussing targeting policy and plans. Nott believed that it was no longer ‘feasible to stand publicly on so bland a refusal of discussion, and that something
a little less unforthcoming, particularly on the potentially contentious issue of “city bashing” will be required’.131 This was due to ‘the public concern which the difficult ethical issue of nuclear deterrence naturally attracts’.132 The final document hinted at the targeting options identified in the Duff–Mason Report.
Successive United Kingdom Governments have always declined to make public their nuclear targeting policy and plans, or to define precisely what minimum level of destructive capability they judged necessary for deterrence. The Government however thinks it right now to make clear that their concept of deterrence is concerned essentially with posing a potential threat to key aspects of Soviet state power. There might with changing conditions be more than one way of doing this, and some flexibility in contingency planning is appropriate. It would not be helpful to deterrence to define particular options further.133
According to Quinlan, ‘The phrase was intended to imply targeting concepts which, while still countervalue [targeting of cities and civilian populations] and not promising to exempt cities or in particular Moscow, would not be exclusively or primarily directed at the destruction of cities. The impulse behind this was ethical, and reflected in some degree vigorous public debate in Britain on the moral tolerability of striking at populations.’134