by James Jinks
At sea now atop the D5 missiles in the ‘Vanguard’ class are Holbrooke Mark 4 warheads derived from a late 1970s design. Under way already at Aldermaston and the nearby Burghfield factory in Berkshire is a Holbrooke ‘refreshment’ programme whose purpose is to sustain the warheads into the 2040s, well into the patrolling life of the ‘Successor’ submarines. A new facility is under construction at Burghfield under the project name ‘Mensa’ for the purpose of disassembling and reassembling the Holbrookes after new fuses have been fitted and ‘a few tweaks are made to the physics package’.
How long will it take to design and manufacture the new warheads to replace the Holbrooke Mark 4s? Seventeen years is the current estimate. Those seventeen years fall into three phases. First, seven years to conduct experiments on the new ingredients on the ‘physics package’. These involve the ORION laser facility at Aldermaston and a shared facility in France, TEUTATES, which handles the hydrodynamic testing.109 Second, another seven years to test the resultant design. The new ORCHARD computer system at Aldermaston enables the weapons to simulate the effects they would expect from a real explosion and relate them to the data accumulated from years of underground tests in the Nevada desert up to the last BRISTOL shot in 1991. This historical material remains vital. Third, a final 2–3 years for commissioning and approval.
On these timings, Cabinet and Parliament will have to approve the programme in or around 2016–17, not long after the ‘Main Gate’ decision on the ‘Successor’ submarines, if the 2040s into service timetable is to be met. If the world turned menacing and a Prime Minister and Cabinet instructed Aldermaston and Burghfield to produce a new warhead more swiftly, they could do so in 7–10 years provided they settled for an improved version of the Holbrooke or the BRISTOL (described by an insider as a ‘Ford to Holbrooke’s highly tuned Ferrari’) and five flight trials instead of ten. As with the Submarine Service as a whole, Aldermaston and Burghfield must be sustained by well-motivated people and the highest level of equipment if the UK is to remain a nuclear-weapons state into the 2060s.
At the same time as it reported to Parliament on the ‘Initial Gate’, the Coalition announced yet another ‘Trident Alternatives Review’ to be overseen by Nick Harvey, Liberal Democrat Minister for the Armed Forces (on leaving the Government in the September 2012 reshuffle, he was replaced in this role by Danny Alexander in the Treasury as the Liberal Democrats now were without a Minister in the MOD). The review was led by Ian Forbes, an MOD official on secondment to the National Security Secretariat in the Cabinet Office, and was tasked to examine credible alternatives to a submarine-based system and credible postures other than CASD. On 16 July 2013, the Cabinet Office published an unclassified version of the Trident Alternatives Review. It concluded that:
There are alternatives to Trident that would enable the UK to be capable of inflicting significant damage such that most potential adversaries around the world would be deterred. It also shows that there are alternative non-continuous postures (akin to how we operate conventional military assets) that could be adopted, including by SSBNs, which would aim to be at reduced readiness only when the UK assesses the threat of a no-notice pre-emptive attack to be low. None of these alternative systems and postures offers the same degree of resilience as the current posture of Continuous at Sea Deterrence, nor could they guarantee a prompt response in all circumstances. Whether the cruise missile-based systems amount to a credible alternative to Trident would depend on a political judgment on whether the UK was prepared to accept:
• a reduction in whom it could deter unilaterally in all circumstances (major nuclear powers might only be deterred if UK acted with its nuclear allies);
• a significant increase in the vulnerability of any alternative system compared with an SSBN (as a result of not being able to deploy covertly and/or not being able to sustain an assured second strike capability through-life);
• and significantly increased operational complexity, especially if Forward Operating Bases were required.
Choosing to operate the SSBNs in a non-continuous posture depends upon the level of political confidence that:
• a potential aggressor would not launch a no-notice pre-emptive attack when the UK was at a lower posture with no boat deployed;
• that, with sufficient warning, the UK could re-constitute back-to-back patrolling before a potential period of heightened tension arises (covering the availability of equipment and suitably trained and motivated civilian, military and industrial personnel); and
• that such back-to-back patrols could then be sustained long enough to cover any emergent crisis.
The costs of delivering an alternative system could theoretically have been cheaper than procuring a like-for-like renewal of Trident were it not for timing and the fact that the UK deterrent infrastructure is finely tuned to support a submarine-based Trident system. In particular, the time it would take to develop a new warhead (itself a costly and high-risk exercise) is judged to be longer than the current Vanguard-class submarines can safely be operated. Bridging the resulting gap in deterrence capability would involve procuring two Successor SSBNs so that a Trident-based deterrent remains available until at least 2040. Doing that at the same time as investing in the development of a new warhead, new missile, new platform and new infrastructure means that transitioning to any of the realistic alternative systems is now more expensive than a 3 or 4-boat Successor SSBN fleet.
Meanwhile the ‘Successor’ team at Barrow was gradually cranking up its strength of engineers and designers for what was going to be, by its completion, a 5½-year sequence of work led by Tony Johns, a former submariner who served on HMS Splendid with Mark Stanhope and describes himself as ‘the conductor of a thousand-strong orchestra’.110 On our first visit to Barrow for this book in June 2011 he was still building his numbers; at that point he had 600 people in place, 270 of them professional engineers (recruiting the engineers needed was one of his greatest worries; they are working hard on getting retirees to come back as ‘associates’). At that stage the United States ‘Ohio’ replacement programme was still just ahead of ‘Successor’ by six months to the relief of all those in Barrow. The US is to build twelve Ohio replacement boats at a cost of $5bn each. Each ‘Successor’ will come in at £2.2bn per boat.
By the time of our second visit to Barrow in June 2012, the timing had changed. In January 2012, the US Department of Defense, as part of a substantial cuts programme, announced ‘… we will delay the new Ohio Submarine replacement by two years without undermining our partnership with the UK’.111 Though Washington made it plain that this would not involve any delay to the Common Missile Compartment design schedule and that the US would build the first one, this development did add to the anxiety levels in the UK as never before had Britain been procuring ahead of America in this way.
There is another first involved in the design of ‘Successor’. This is the first time an SSBN has not come off the drawing boards of the old MOD Ships Department in Bath.112 The facilities at Barrow are stunningly better. They are housed in a vast area, filled with computers, known informally as ‘The Blue Lagoon’ and formally as ‘Sovereign’ (Barrow likes to name its rooms after warships). What do we know about the ‘Successor’ design?
It is slightly bigger than the ‘Vanguard’ class, at 17,500 tons, which is surprising given it will be carrying fewer missiles in a twelve-tube, as opposed to a sixteen-tube missile compartment. The increase in size is due to the need to smooth out the design by avoiding the drop on the ‘Vanguard’ class between the missile compartment and the engine room. There will also be more distance between the missile tubes. The size of the PWR3 reactor, which is bigger than the PWR2, also dictates aspects of the design. The PWR3 will not, unlike the reactors on the ‘Vanguard’ class, need replacing in the mid-life refit. It is much safer too, being a passive reactor, which is ‘pretty benign if it goes wrong’.
The ‘Successor’ class will also feature a number of stealth and signature im
provements over the ‘Vanguard’ class. In 2006 the Joint Intelligence Committee’s fifty-year-out assessment prepared for Tony Blair’s ministerial group on Trident replacement stressed the need to increase the chance of undetectability by anti-submarine techniques likely to be available decades ahead. Achieving minimal ‘signature’ is, with sonar, one of the ‘crown jewels’ of the submariner’s trade. A Barrow insider describes it as ‘the last redoubt of national sovereignty’ (signatures are something neither the UK nor the US share). Most of these elements are highly classified but a smooth external design and a carefully sculpted fin and the immensely secret details of the propulsion system, which will run to a reduced shaft speed, are all key elements. Taken together, this ‘slipperiest of shapes’ plus the ‘propulsor standards’ will be one of the ‘big differences with Vanguard’. The ‘Successor’ class will also have X-planes at the back rather than the standard flat ones, altering the appearance noticeably, which will detune what are called ‘wake harmonics’, thereby reducing ‘signature’ still further.
The indispensability of US know-how is everywhere apparent. There are thirty Brits working at Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut, and thirty Americans working at Barrow. The memory is still fresh of how indispensable Electric Boat people sent from Groton to Barrow were in providing what a senior BAE figure called ‘a flying buttress’ for the yard when it was struggling to fill the knowledge and skills gap which grew between HMS Vengeance putting to sea and work starting on HMS Astute.
Tony Johns reckons the task needs, in addition to US expertise and collaboration, ‘Germanic adherence to process, Gallic flair and English bloody-mindedness’. And Tony, understandably like most involved with UK nuclear-weapons programmes, has faith in what he’s doing: ‘I fundamentally believe that we need a national deterrent. That’s what gets me up in the morning and you only get one crack at this in a generation.’113
Barrow, Britain’s premier submarine town, is a remarkable repository of craftsmanship. The boats they build are among the most technically demanding and advanced artefacts in the world and each time one enters the great Devonshire Dock Hall you can feel and hear it. The skilled workforce is, however, hugely understated about the specialness of what they do. A senior figure tells us that this understatement drives one of the top admirals, who visits regularly, ‘nuts – “sell yourselves,” he says’!114
The overlapping anxieties, though constant and admitted to in conversations, never somehow dampen the ardour for the task or the absorption and pleasure that comes from being part of a manufacturing enterprise of the most stretching kind.
What, in addition to the political uncertainty, are the risks to getting the first ‘Successor’ out on patrol in July 2028? The main companies involved, BAE Systems, Babcock, etc. must perform and enough ‘suitably qualified and experienced personnel’ must be available to work on the programme. The UK supply chain also requires careful attention. Deindustrialization of the British economy has made this a growing problem ever since the submarines became the carrier of the British Bomb. For example, with the decline in steelmaking at Motherwell Bridge only Barrow itself has the capability to build inner hulls after buying Motherwell Bridge’s machines. And the highest-grade steel for the Successors will be imported from France. The ‘Astute’ experience too is no end of a lesson for the designers and builders of ‘Successor’. As a senior Barrow figure put it: ‘I’m fabulously proud of Astute. A fabulous piece of engineering but a bugger to build.’115 Only about 20 per cent of the ‘Astute’ design was completed when the yard began to cut steel for it. The comparable figure for the first ‘Successor’ will be 70 per cent, when, if ‘Main Gate’ is passed, it starts cutting steel in 2016. There have been considerable advances in ‘modularization’ since Astute was begun.
‘The shadow of Astute is everywhere,’ admits a senior Barrow figure. If anything, it has made them pessimistic in their calculations. It has inoculated them against the so-called ‘conspiracy of optimism’ between the MOD purchaser and the industrial supplier which has been the curse of so many weapons procurements. Another of Astute’s problems was that its highly secret Special Forces capability was added relatively late as part of the renegotiation of the contract in 2003. ‘Rule one of procurement,’ says a BAE insider. ‘Once you’ve decided what you want, don’t fiddle around with it.’116 Rear Admiral Lister and his successor Rear Admiral Mike Wareham have also ensured that both BAE and the Navy feed the lessons of ‘Astute’ into ‘Successor’. As Simon Lister explained it, ‘My policy is to take every lesson I can from every quarter I can find and feed it into the design of Successor and its manufacturing plan. I am not saying “Astute has been a failure we are not doing that again”. I am saying that we must learn from our experience on a daily basis in how we put Successor together.’117
Listening to the ‘Successor’ conversations makes it clear that the top figures on all sides seem genuinely to like and admire each other. But they all share the scars of the ‘Astute’ procurement and are extremely sensitive about the possibility of time and cost overruns for ‘Successor’. They are, however, bound together by hoops of the highest grade steel, because Submarine Britain is dominated by a monopoly customer – the MOD, and a sheaf of monopoly suppliers. This adds an extra dimension to the notions of ‘intelligent customer’ and ‘smart supplier’. And they both know that any flaws are going to be exposed either by the National Audit Office and the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee or by the unforgiving deep ocean. Yet John Hudson, the Managing Director at Barrow, who has twenty-eight years’ experience working in the shadow of the hulls, is unflustered. So, it seems are all those involved in the pinnacle of all this activity, Operation ‘Relentless’.
OPERATION ‘RELENTLESS’
Operation ‘Relentless’ is the oldest standing order across the UK’s Armed Forces. It began with the first Polaris patrol in 1968 – to be precise, when the Royal Navy took over the deterrent role from the Royal Air Force in June 1969 – and has carried a variety of codewords of which Relentless is the latest. It embraces the UK’s nuclear-weapons firing chain from the Prime Minister and his special authentication codes to the ‘Vanguard’ class submarine on patrol in the silent deeps of the North Atlantic. Operation ‘Relentless’ is signed off by the Chief of the Defence Staff, who lays upon the Tridentine parts of the Royal Navy, its boats, berths, support staff and suppliers, the duty of round-the-clock Continuous at-Sea Deterrence. It is also the most frequently exercised of the standby requirements laid upon the UK’s Armed Forces.
New Prime Ministers are swiftly indoctrinated into its instruments and procedures – nuclear release being, with the secret agency briefings, the most sensitive part of the induction of every new Head of Government. This is not a world of collective Cabinet government or House of Commons votes on the use of force, but is as exclusively prime ministerial as it gets (though each Prime Minister chooses two or three Nuclear Deputies, appointed personally rather than according to the Cabinet hierarchy, lest he or she is wiped out by a bolt from the blue). It is an operation that if, heaven forbid, the UK came to launching a Trident missile, would take just under an hour to propel 60 tons of D5, as we witnessed at the DASO, out of the Atlantic.
The Prime Minister does not have to be in a bunker to do this. He can set the nuclear release procedures in train from anywhere provided he has the right people with him for briefing purposes, together with two nuclear-authenticated officers and the right cryptography in which to encode the message to the Nuclear Operations Targeting Centre (NOTC) beneath the Ministry of Defence’s Main Building in Whitehall.
To reach NOTC you descend several floors beneath the MOD to well below the water level of the nearby Thames. First you pass through the heavily guarded entrance to the Defence Crisis Management Centre (codenamed PINDAR after the ancient Greek poet, for reasons nobody seems to know) and then through two huge bulkheads designed to protect PINDAR’s equipment and people from the electromagnetic pulse created by any
nuclear assault on the heart of government in Whitehall above. PINDAR’s corridors glow with artificial light; the air conditioning hisses; the atmosphere has some similarities to that of a submarine. Then, through a navy blue door, you enter the extended domain of the Submarine Service. Once inside NOTC’s three-room suite you meet the head of this extraordinary branch of the wider tribe, Lieutenant Commander Barry Wells. His chief, Rear Admiral John Gower, is present to divulge what can be shared from this world of multiple codenames, straplines and secret drills. ‘We are rather evangelic about need-to-know,’ he says with Delphic charm.
Gower chairs the Operation ‘Relentless’ Assurance Committee (ORAC) on which sit (in the spring of 2014) his co-Rear Admirals, Rear Admiral Matt Parr, COMOPS, and Rear Admiral Mark Beverstock, CSSE. They meet several times a year and produce an annual report for the Prime Minister on the maintenance of Continuous at-Sea Deterrence (though if it were ruptured, the PM would be told straightaway). ‘It’s all about the management of risk. Nothing in government is funded to the level of desire. It’s funded to the level of necessity.’ On the morning we visit, NOTC possesses an air of calm, as one would hope. The Prime Minister sets its level of readiness and it is currently the lowest. The Crimean crisis is raging away on the rim of the Black Sea but its international ripples are not affecting the pitch of ‘Relentless’.