The government has rejected calls to explore a second sovereign method of delivering UK nuclear weapons, arguing that the existing submarine-based system remains the most credible and proportionate option as nuclear risks increase.
In its report, the Defence Committee said it was “clear that the nuclear threat has increased in the recent past” and noted that while the UK already assigns its nuclear deterrent to NATO, it had not received sufficient evidence to justify investment in an alternative delivery method.
The committee said it wished to understand why the option had been dismissed, recommending that the government “set out its reasoning in detail” in response.
In its reply, the government said the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) made clear that the UK is operating in “a more uncertain, contested, and deteriorating international security environment”, with rising nuclear risks shaping defence planning.
Ministers reaffirmed that the UK would continue to rely on a “minimum, credible, independent UK nuclear deterrent”, assigned to the defence of NATO and delivered through submarine-launched systems. The response stated that “a submarine-based system remains the most effective and proportionate means of delivering the UK’s deterrent objectives”, citing its survivability, assurance and operational independence as decisive factors.
While rejecting the need for a second sovereign delivery method, the government said it is expanding its contribution to NATO’s nuclear posture through other means. It pointed to the decision to procure F-35A aircraft, describing the move as a way of “deepening the UK’s contribution to NATO’s nuclear burden-sharing arrangements.” The response said the F-35A purchase would “complement, rather than replace, the UK’s operationally independent submarine-based nuclear deterrent.”
Ministers also confirmed continued investment in the UKs sovereign warhead programme during this Parliament. This includes sustaining the existing stockpile, developing the Astraea replacement warhead, and modernising supporting infrastructure, while maintaining commitments as a recognised nuclear weapons state.
The government added that it had accepted all 62 recommendations of the Strategic Defence Review, including the recommendation to begin defining requirements for the UK’s post-Dreadnought nuclear deterrent within the current Parliament.
The issue is not spending a penny on defense; this is the worst government in 45 years on military matters, and there have been some bad ones. They are traitors and self-haters.
there are other delivery means, the cost of the Dreadnaught class is crippling for the defence budget
I agree but I feel it is necessary to keep it but perhaps alongside another delivery system ! Perhaps the budget for it should be outside of the defence budget as it really is strictly strategic.
I’m heartily sick of selling out starmer and the labour circus of a government he leads,, inept, weak, inconsistent, a poodle to the Americans and now the Chinese everyone in it is out of their depth and if it sinks any further we won’t need warships, we’ll need lifeboats
Found the bloviating gammon 🐷🤣
I’m afraid Micki is taking just that. This government may have plenty of faults, but not spending enough on defence isn’t one of them.
Their contributions in the field of defence is more than enough, in fact too much in certain areas, that of buying US aircraft and other items off the shelf when UK and UK/EU equipment is superior, such as the Typhoon instead of the F35 with all its problems.
But if we look at Micki’s statement we can see his spelling of defence is the US version defense.
Notice Micki, the population of the UK is fed up with being expected to contribute more and more to US military profits.
So we are going to have aircraft ourselves and all through NATO relying on US bombs that we will NEVER get clearance to use against Russia! Talk about head in the sand!
UK F35A delivered usa free fall bombs is bonkers.
Exactly this.
The ballistic range of those bombs is probably no more than 20-30 miles.
The planes will get shot down long before they reach their target.
stuff clearance we are not a tail for the Americans to wag. we are our own nation and not the 51st state even though government since Aww2 have failed to get that message across to them
Unlike our trident we can’t drop US nukes without the codes! Now are the cousins going to release them?inthe present circumstances not a chance,so why even bother with F35A?
Have any of you people actually read UKDJ before?
Can’t speak for the others obviously but there isn’t many pictures so I do get a bit lost🙄👍
get clearance? the systems are ours and OUR NUCLEAR DETERRENT, this we need permission from the Americans is really pissing me off.
Calm your skin mate,yes trident can be launched by us with no input from the US,but the bombs to be dropped from F35s are American👍
get clearance? the systems are ours and OUR NUCLEAR DETERRENT, this we need permission from the Americans is really pissing me off.
This is a mistake, The most clear and present danger is now the USA. The UK desperately needs to develop its own ballistic missile program similar to the Chinese DF26 with a nuclear capable ballistic missile that can also carry out long range conventionally armed anti ship and precision strike missions with a hyper sonic glide vehicle. If we had such a system with a 4000km range then we would have a secondary deterrent which would detter any future US administration from trying to remove UK access to Trident D5 missiles. We could also pie such a system with an Over the Horizon radar allowing the UK to dominate the North Atlantic in the same way China can now dominate the western pacific.
We need to wake up and realise that Trump is not the end of a process, he is the beginning. The Republican Party that was no longer exists and MAGA has it in for the UK and our nuclear deterrent.
**pair not pie 😀
Right. The only country in Europe to get favorable trade terms with the US. Definitely has it ‘out for’ the UK.
Meanwhile the US’s closest neighbor, Canada. Is getting hammered.
I’m offcourse referring to the comments of JD Vance who is on record recently as stating the UK’s nuclear weapons pose a danger to the USA and should be removed.
The UK recently sent troops to another NATO nation to detter US aggression. The president responded by revoking the “favourable” trade terms.
Wait, he said the UK’s nukes were a threat to the USA? What planet is he from, and more worryingly, what does this mean the Americans are talking about behind closed doors? Why would they need to fear British nukes?
I agree with you that this is only the start of a longer term shift. I think it will speed up in the next administration… Republicans like Vance are isolationist and could withdraw the US from global US military bases to focus on the US. The Democrats might do the same, but to pay more into US scoial security and to fight poverty. One scenario might be that the US withdraws from Europe but retains its bases in the UK. I think the US might price us out of Trident rather than directly cut us off (although the result is the same). The problem with hypersonic weapons as that we are basically bankrupt and we are going to economically fall off a cliff in about five to ten years. Also, we are changing as a nation and could have a left wing governement that (like that of a future more left wing Democrats) that focuses on welfare. We might even choose to give up ICBMs to pay for the NHS and benefits. One option could be to retain nuclear weapons through a cheaper cruse missile based delivery system.
Na…. in the absence of any significant cash im happy to keep the status quo. Dreadnought and Astraea are happening and i’d rather have a bird in the hand than 2 in the bush. Conventional long ranged precision strike is the way to go for the tactical option.
The thing is it’s about deterrence and let’s be honest Putin would not see a conventional strike as a deterrence to using tactical nuclear weapons or a sub strategic strike as an escalation to de escalation approach..
Because we would already be at war and bombing the crap out of each other with every conventional system..
Because of Russian nuclear doctrine conventional will not work ( we will already be at war and so there is no conventional deterrent) and strategic weapons are a MAD response essential to deter a massive nuclear attack..
We can’t compete with the Russian nuclear triad (if much of it actually works) without a significant uplift in the defence budget (not happening). What we can do though is put our limited resources into producing a top class submarine based nuclear deterrent. I see the world as it is and not how i’d like it to be. Get dreadnought done.
We don’t need to compete.. we need to deter.. the great thing about nuclear weapons is you don’t have to have the same number as your enemy you just have to have enough.. Russia has about 16ish cities with a million or more people and 60 with 100,000 or more.. that is it essentially 70 airburst strategic warheads destroys Russian civilisation… yes Moscow has an ABM defence so you need 4 tridents with a mix of 48 penetration aids and warheads for Moscow but all in all you destroy Russia completely as a nation with 100 warheads… bizarrely the UK has more major urban targets with 93 towns and cities of over 100,000.. but it has no ABM defence so it’s probably about the same warhead wise.
What we need to ensure we have is adequate deterrent for all possible Russian nuclear attacks..
1) Strategic attack ( counter value) or first strike counter force..
Now a fully loaded and secure ballistic missile submarine with 100 warheads will provide this. Which means the UK needs to up is SLBM based warheads to 100 warheads per ballistic missile submarine.. that means it needs 3 opperational loads for 300 warheads.
2) deterrence against the Russian doctrine to escalate to deescalate.. essentially this is the Russia plan to use a tactical or sub strategic strike to de-escalate by kinetic nuclear bullying… they will pick a target that hurts but will not immediately trigger a full strategic MAD response.. say a secondary UK city ( Cardiff, Bristol, Sheffield etc) or a none critical military base… there is no conventional response that could deter this as we will already be at war.. so we must have a sub strategic response..we cannot fire one trident from our strategic deterrent boat as it will compromise the boat and strategic deterrent… there for we need a limited second part of the triad for a sub strategic response..
We have to remember Russia hates the Uk with a passion.. it’s not even linked to what we do.. they consider everything that goes wrong linked to the Uk.. its essentially a tin hat hatred, every day the Russian media is telling the population they should nuc the Uk.. the security forces blame everything on the UK.. they even try and blame Islamic terror attacks on the UK..
Because of this hatred it’s very likely any escalate to de-escalate attack would happen to the UK first..unless we have a very specific deterrent that would allow the UK a sub strategic response.
Almost every single nuclear power has more than 1 part of the triad.. even the new nuclear powers of Israel and India have submarine launched nuclear weapons and air launched nuclear weapons. Even Pakistani has 2 parts of the triad…I’m pretty sure we should be able to do it as well.
I totally agree with your arguments with regards to what we should have and i’d love to be proved wrong. I just know that we don’t have the will or resources to do it. Apart from that anything Nuclear is so wrapped up in red-tape in this country that places like India, Pakistan and Israel just won’t have. So i say this is the right decision to concentrate on a proven system that is good enough. Being selfish i do actually want to be able to still claim a state pension and benefit from free healthcare when i retire.
To be fair when it comes to a nuclear power that hates our guts.. wants us gone from the world and makes no bones about it, I’m not sure good enough cuts it.. our commitment to NATO good enough is fine.. the final defence of our islands should be.. test us and you die.. an eye for an eye a tooth of for a tooth..
I agree, it’s also worth the Uk investing heavily in ballistic missile defence to detter Russia. Systems like Arrow 3 can fairly cheaply defend the UK against IRBM missiles.
That would force Russia to use strategic weapons and suffer a strategic response for the UK. If the UK also operated a sub strategic response that may see Russia launch an ineffective attack against the UK yet receive a similar blow back in return.
This is not the way any of us like to think but it’s necessary now especially without the added layers the US brings in nuclear escalation and counter force capabilities.
there are other delivery means, the cost of the Dreadnaught class is crippling for the defence budget
give the strategic ability to other NATIONS. the nuclear capability in the Baltic states and Scandinavia will give Russia a really big worry.
Indeed we just need a second tier.. be that an air launched cruise missile, a 2500km range ground launched cruise missile, Medium range ballistic missile, or sub launched cruise missile from an SSN.. as long as we can have a nuclear answer that does not expose our strategic deterrent anything is fine…
To be honest even a 5th ballistic missile submarine so we can have 2 out at high stakes moments ( if we were at conventional war) as that would allow one to be exposed while leaving the second as the strategic deterrent… even a dockside launch option could work ( they did consider that in the Cold War)
I remember having a conversation about possible Russian targeting of UK 20/30 odd years ago. It was one of those POETS day after work chats in a pub, back then it was about 30 targets. But now it’s probably down to just 4 City’s and 10 military Targets (6 of which pretty well take out City’s due to blast and fallout).
London / Manchester / Birmingham (3 large Airbursts) and Cardiff / Swansea (1 large Airburst)
Lossiemouth (Kinloss)
Faslane (Glasgow & Western Central belt).
Rosyth (Edinburgh & Eastern Central belt).
Barrow (Liverpool).
Derby (Groundburst) Most of the East Mids due to fallout and other Nuclear Materials.
Waddington (Airburst) most of Lincolnshire.
Marham (Airburst).
Aldermaston (Groundburst) Brize Norton, Fairford & Most of the Home Counties due to fallout and other Nuclear Materials.
Portsmouth (Airburst)
Plymouth (Airburst).
I have deliberately missed out 4 other Targets (Fylingdales, Menwith Hill, Mildenhall and Lakenheath) as they may not be involved. Also left out Aldershot and Catterick as the British Army is no threat at present and they will be busy euthenasing civilians.
Or if Russia wants to just do it on the cheap they just use one large Groundburst targeted at the Moon-pools at Sellafield and let the winds do the rest.
Yes many times people have said to me well we need the US deterrent because Russia has 2000 warheads.. I always give the gun pointed at someone’s forehead example.. if you both have a gun with a deadman’s trigger one with 1 bullet and the second with 16 bullets the second guy does not have a greater deterrent because they are both dead on bullet 1.. bullets 2-16 are just spraying blood around the room..
first sign of an impending nuclear attack on the UK, id hope we’d have a real leader in number 10 imagine it if wet lettuce kier starmer was still Which he won’t be, was the only thing between oblivion and the real ability to influence the situation. getting permission from the Americans? rubbish we should have the balls to tell the world that our deterrent is just that OUR DETERRENT.how, when, if, is our decision end of
This is where I think there needs to be a very clear.. dead man’s handle on our nuclear deterrent.. not a prime ministers letter that may say fire or don’t Fire…it should be by a supper majority act of parliament that our ballistic missile submarines have a fire on evidence of the complete destruction of the UK… NO MATTER WHAT… Israeli has a Sampson opinion( some even think the Israeli Sampson opinion is fire at everything if Israel is destroyed)..
Can you imagine if Corbin had become PM it would have essentially been obvious he would have written a don’t fire letter..
I think it’s correct the PM has control of the escalation.. but if the UK. Has been destroyed.. it should be an automatic response ( not on attack, but on firm evidence of distraction).
I have always been worried by the the rationale of any Government, who have said that if a nuclear weapon is detonated on UK or Sovereign territory. They will respond with a single Trident that carries one warhead. Russia and China both have satellites that look specifically for the Trident’s exhaust signature. They will see this “one” missile being launched, but how can they tell that it only has one warhead? Would the incumbent Prime Minister contact Russia/China to inform them that it only has one warhead and it is a singular reprisal for their attack! Would either of these two Countries take the word of the PM, would they take that risk, or more likely send a single missile in response? How would our PM respond to being informed that missile is on its way against us? There is too much risk that would quickly escalate. Which is why we need a escalate to de-escalate Plan B option, as per France with its air launched ASMP-A/ASN4G nuclear armed cruise missile.
Also the very first thing they will do is to use everything in their power to destroy the sub and our entire deterrent.. if you only have one SSBNs it’s is a essentially a second strike use every missile one time only option.
stuff clearance we are not a tail for the Americans to wag. we are our own nation and not the 51st state even though government since Aww2 have failed to get that message across to them
Deterrence at sea is what we UK needs to maintain. Tactical nuke bombing in Europe is up to the Europeans. Sure they can park their bombers here if needed in dispersal.
It’s not about tactical nuclear weapons it’s about the fact we don’t want the UK or UK forces being the target of escalation to de-escalate.. because Russia hates the UK beyond anything rational and if it decides it needs an escalation to de escalate target ( the Russian doctrine of a limited strike to prevent a strategic engagement) you can guarantee it will be the UK.. because Russian state sponsored media tells their population every day there is one nation on earth that needs a nuclear weapon dropped on it and that is the UK.
Russia may have gamed just picking off a nato country and see if collectively there would be a full Monty response
I’m a bit selfish in that if Russia does try an escalation to de escalate strike..I want it to be deterred from doing it to the UK… and I think knowing the UK can graduate a response from sub strategic one city to a full 76 towns cities destruction of Russian culture is the only way to fully deter Russia..
For me the UK needs to have the following defence prioritisation
1) survival of the UK.. that mean a full nuclear deterrent of 1 to 100 warheads
2) conventional deterrent against conventional strikes or attack on the UK.. that means the ability to..
A but a carrier battle group in someone’s nether regions ( for both sea control and strike )
B put SSNs in someone’s nether regions ( both anti shipping and land strike )
C be able to defence UK airspace ( that’s a very effective airforce and lane based air defences )
D have an airforce with strategic strike capability ( that’s air launched cruise missiles and the ability to fire lots of them 2000km from home)
E) defence against the Uk shipping lanes and under seas infrastructure cut ( that’s patrol and ASW capability
3) Support NATO in protection of Europe
A) at least a deployable heavy division backed up by a couple of lighter brigades
B) deployable tactical figher squadrons
C) defending NATO sea lanes
D) forming part of the NATO air defence structure
E) forming part of the NATO nuclear deterrent
F) forming part of NATO expeditionary capabilities
4) Defending UK sovereign territories and wider interests.. for this you would use the resources dedicated to 1 and 2.
Surely the new 2000km range system under development with Germany would be a great candidate? Adding another leg to our deterrent would probably do more to deter hostile states than most conventional assets.
My major concern with a 2000km nuclear capable cruise missile is that they are inherently destabilising. They are potentially seen as a first strike sneek attack weapon with limited second strike potential.
It also removes our ability for massive conventional strike as a nuclear escalation response.
An IRBM can be seen but it’s hard to intercept. That’s much more useful as a sub strategic nuclear weapon.
Russia is developing these systems now, china has them. We should counter.
I suppose I’m thinking what would be the lowest cost option. An IRBM would be nice but I imagine a lot more costly to develop, jointly developing one with the French could help but I can’t see them being interested.
Also is it confirmed what type of weapon the one under development with Germany is? If it’s truck launched then I could see it being quite survivable versus air-launched.
The weapon we are developing with Germany will be truck launched. It’s certainly cheap to do a long range cruise missile but IRBM’s are not that expensive either these days look at Nightfall SRBM being developed for £10m.
An IRBM like the DF21 or DF26 has many auxiliary uses as well. Not only long range strike and anti ship but it can also do anti satellite missions.
All very useful capability if we find ourselves without US support and forced to become NATO’s strategic enabler.
To be honest there are now a lot of nuclear tipped cruise missile out there.. so it’s really only us that does not have them.. even Pakistan has nuclear tipped cruise missiles.
We don’t really need a huge secondary deterrent as it’s mainly needed as a sub strategic deterrent.. very much like the 50 french airlaunched missiles.. it’s just to deter a sub strategic WMD attack or give final warning that the next move is strategic and no one is walking away.
Yes but I would rather keep the long range cruise missiles for conventional strike. It makes the UK more credible in escalation as the Russians would doubt our willingness to use a tactical nuclear weapon. If we have two options, tactical nuclear response via IRBM and massive conventional precision strike then the Russias are less likely to escalate.
I think we should have a nuclear cruise missile, especially one we can share with NATO but I think a shorter range weapon based on STRATUS RS is the way to go.
Easy to see but hard to hit and little risk of a sneak attack taking Russia out. Also having it easily integrated with Gripen and Typhoon opens up lots of potential users.
the Americans have a big bunch of b1b lancers in mothballs if we bought a bomber commans worth of them wed have them available before one submarine could be built.
The Nightfall ballistic missile is being developed so is it unreasonable to suggest a potential Nuclear tipped version to expand our capabilities.
Yes because if you develop that you then risk all out nuclear war when using that weapon conventionally.
One way we could do it that I’ve suggested before is to use the same booster stack but different glide vehicles and terminal trajectories based on whether it’s conventional or nuclear.
To a certain extent that would happen anyway with an anti-ship or nuclear strike and as a lot of BMD radars focus on target discrimination even the Russians ought to be able to tell the difference. For cruise missiles it is much harder, which is why I am opposed to e.g. Nuclear FC/ASW.
A pretty subtle difference though, and any slip up or mis identification could spell the end of the world, id say thats why nations are hesitant to do such.
That’s a very good point Hugo. Could then be the same with a nuclear TLAM which I think they’re reconsidering introducing. Last thing we want right now is nuclear over-posturing right now especially over Ukraine. There’s lots of talk about firing big things over the fence, just wish they’d be a bit more talk about increasing GBAD to protect the UK from such threats and more for Ukraine.
All valid points but we don’t live in ideal times anymore, questions over the integrity of certain allies, emboldened rivals and the great peace dividend hollowing out has left us in a bit of a state unfortunately.
As to your previous comment if we are firing ballistic missiles near or at Russia then the world has already gone to pot so in effect keeping them guessing as to what me might have hopefully keeps them under control and at the end of the day it’s just maintaining the status quo.
In reality it will always be about target and numbers.. if we fired 100 IRBMs at 100 different targets or say 40 at Moscow ( the number that would easily overkill their ABM defence) then they would take that as a clear first strike and trigger MAD.. if you fired a couple at a single target base or city.. they would not. It’s the same with cruise missiles you could fire 50 of them at some specific targets and even if Russia new you had nuclear tipped options they would not trigger MAD.. if you fired 50 IRBMs and 50 cruise missiles at 100 targets then it would….nobody will trigger mad over a potential 1 target…
With modern tech there’s not much need to panic for a couple minutes as to whether to fire your nukes. The subs will be safe and can always fire a day later
Russia is lobbing duel use weapons all over the place.. Israel, US Pakistan, France, Russia etc all have cruise missiles tipped with nuclear weapons.. so that no longer stands up.
It is dangerous having a system armed with conventional and nuclear warheads. There is the risk of any use of it being misidentified as a nuclear strike resulting in a nuclear response.
Everyone apart from us have nuclear tipped cruise missiles.. Russia has a whole host of duel use ballistic missiles it’s been throwing at Ukraine with no regard.. essentially any Ballistic or cruise missile attack could now be nuclear or conventional..
I trust the stability of our commanders rather more than I do the Russians though. Anything we can do to avoid skipping steps up the escalation ladder is useful so I’d still like to retain air gaps between nuclear and conventional weapons. But as I’ve said before I’d be fine if that took the form of a single IRBM booster with HGV anti-ship or an MRV nuclear options.
Someone commented recently (can’t remember which article) that Britain should do to our bits of the Atlantic what China has done to the SCS, in terms of making it uninhabitable for opposing warships due to the sheer weight of firepower in terms of AShMs and targeting capacity on our side. Combined with Atlantic Bastion I think that that would be a sound doctrine and if extended to the overseas territories would give us hard influence over what goes on in quite a lot of the world.
Anything nuclear is riduculously expensive. Money going into nuclear is already coming out of conventional, which is part of the cause of the hollowing out of our military. Right now we need to increase our conventional deterrence to stop us getting into a war, not nuclear to deter escalation after we are already in it.
If we need to increase the sovereignty of our nukes, the target should be onshoring Trident and making sure that we know how to second source components for the Dreadnoughts. Even those limited goals would almost certainly be prohibitive.
It is the way we do it now but not the way we use to or Russia and china do today. They have nuclear warheads as an option on conventional missiles.
DF21 and DF26 for china, Iskander M and K for Russia.
Maybe, one day, when we have an intermediate range missile, we could think about that too. To me it’s a low priority and very dangerous. Wasn’t a lesson from the Cold War, if you can’t tell whether it’s a nuke or conventional coming your way, you are far more likely to cause Armaggedon?
But we cannot use trident in a sub strategic response and therefore we have no deterrent against Russias nuclear doctrine of escalation to deescalate.. once everyone knew don’t use nuclear weapons or you get a strategic response..it’s now Russian doctrine to use a nuclear weapon on the assumption it would prevent escalation to a strategic response… we need a deterrent for that madness.
It’s possible that Russia will not use any nuclear weapons if it’s expecting a strategic response from the UK, or perhaps a single Trident missile from Faslane could be seen as tactical (the yield can be nerfed) if signalled. Why should we read their doctrine and they not read ours? I know it’s not what Russia’s doctrine says, but since when do we believe Putin or let him dictate the process? Escalate to deescalate is likely the same old redline guff we’ve heard time and again. If we don’t buy in, whereas France does, Putin has to try and cope with two completely different possible nuclear responses, and I believe that makes tactical escalation by Russia less likely not more.
Without a higher defence budget, we’d end up losing half of our limited conventional forces just to develop a sovereign tactical capability and that isn’t worth it for us. Both France and the US have it sufficiently covered. Any use of nukes is Russian roulette and if having more conventional forces makes war less likely in the first place, we are better off pushing forward with that.
At present trident does not have an against the wall fire option.. but the UK did look at the possibility during the Polaris years as the potential deterrent of Polaris declined.. the government did studies on what it would do at very high risk moments. As each Resolution class carried 16 missiles with 2 warheads per missile each boat could only fire 32 warheads.. that was considered borderline for penetration of the Moscow ABM defences.. so one Resolution class as considered inadequate…and as they cancelled 1 ( the had planned for 5) one was all they had on patrol.. so they studied how they could surge an extra for 2 at sea and fire the 3rd armed Resolution from against the wall.. for 96 warheads as a credible deterrent.
Personally I think maybe we should just go for 5 boats.. if we had two deterrent boats we could use one as a potential sub strategic platform.. without risking the main deterrent.
The US is unreliable. I expect major internal problems for the US after the November 2026 elections
The only sensible thing is to explore ways with the French. If sadly we had to use these things Europe would be involved anyway in the aftershock anyway.
Politically this is difficult, but the only solution considering the costs
If the f35a is still going to compliment trident, what was the suggested second sovereign delivery system? Ballistic?
Nevermind. I thought we already fully committed to the f35a, rather than being wishy washy about it.
Agree with Jon.
We spend enough on nukes as it is without giving HMG ideas on spending more at further cost to what conventional forces remain.
Trident is only credible for as long as the US provides support. The US are not a credible ally so I would not class trident as being credible.
What is the main reason the UK and Europe ‘need’ the Americans for defence? Nuclear weapons. We (Europe) needs to have enough to deter by ourselves…
The issue is the enemy and will what we have deter.. because the single purpose of our nuclear weapons is deterrent.. we are not going to use them tactically or strategically.
STRATEGIC
So what is our strategic deterrent.. well in reality it’s a if you destroy us we can destroy you.. anything less is not a strategic deterrent
There are three levels of strategic deterrent with Russia, if we ignore counter force because that is an offensive doctrine and go with counter value as the ultimate deterrent.
1) the destruction of Moscow.. now Moscow does have a ABM system that may or may not be any good but it was designed to manage 2 ICBMs of the trident range or 30 odd short to IRBM range single warhead missiles.. so you would probably want 3-4 tridents with 48 penetration aids and warheads to do the job ( the present UK stance is essentially a bit more than this..this is probably not now a viable deterrent level against Russia
2) the destruction of every major city of 1 million or more.. apart form Moscow that is 15 cities.. they have no ABM defence and 1 airburst strategic weapon would essentially destroy each.. this with the destruction of Moscow is a realistic minimum deterrent.
3) 60 cities with 100,000 or more people.. that’s another 60 warheads.. this is the ultimate deterrent and is essentially MAD in regards to Russian civilisation..
So we can have MAD with one ballistic missile submarine and 100 warheads..we can have a realistic deterrent with probably 50-60 warheads.. but we need as a minimum the ability to destroy all 16 cities with a population of 1 million or more.. but I think Putin is a nutter and would need to be convinced of total MAD.
SUB-STRATEGIC
We then get to the second issue, I don’t really think people in the UK realises just how much Russia hates the UK.. they blame the UK for everything.. from the Crimea onwards it’s all our fault.. they even blame the UK for Islamic terror attacks. They see us as the antithesis of Russia.. they hate our culture our politics.. they see the UK as the single most significant threat to Russia.. and every day they are bombarded with state media telling the population that the UK needs to be destroyed and they should nuc the UK. Now if you link this utter and complete tin hat hatred with the Russia escalation to deescalate policy you realise that if they are every really threaten in a war with NATO they are going to undertake a sub strategic strike if they think they can get away with it and it causes NATO to back away.. and there is one nation they really would want to drop it on…
So we must have a deterrent to the UK being used as the escalate to De-escalate target.. we cannot undertake a sub strategic strike with our strategic force because it would be compromised.. and Putin would not Believe or may gamble that we would not press the everyone dies button in response to a single substrastategic strike.. we therefore need a deterrent to this happening because it’s going to be us he’s going to hit.
That is why we need a second limited sub strategic option.. we need the ability to level st Petersburg if Putin decided Bristol of Sheffield are the means to de escalate ( 20 cruise missile, air launched or IRBM warheads would do the job) We also need to make sure our ballistic missile boats take as close to 100 warheads as we can.. only then does the UK have an effective national deterrent.
Once again you really need to do a guest series. Your words are wasted down here!
If we are to have bombs on planed we should have UK ones. If subs are all we need why are we buying F35A to drop US nukes! If we need a tactical nuke deterrent it should be entirely sovereign.
Honest question to you all.
Given that the U.K has the latent ability to fairly rapidly re purpose existing warheads into basic Tactical Nuclear Weapons, that’s just a simple fact. If you have the technology to build a Scalable Fusion device that is small enough & resilient and then put into a MIRV on a Bomb bus complete with decoys and stick it onto an SLBM then just sticking said device in a Steel Bomb case is child’s play.
It’s like asking Ferrari can they build a Bike !
Now for the question, given the above and with Mr Putin on one side, Tango man on the other and a bunch of frightened Europeans would you actually announce we were developing a Sovereign Nuclear capability or just deny it ?
Personally I’d deny it but very quietly make damn sure it can be done PDQ !
I would deny it until it was ready. The Holbrook nuclear warhead could very easily be placed into a storm shadow, the warhead is approximately 200kg while stomshadow can take 450kg. It would need a new electronics package, fusing and ballast to even out the weight but it’s very doable.
You easily squeeze it into a conventional bomb case like Paveway III. At 200kG and rated to with stand the G loading from an SLBM it would also be fairly easy to get it into a SRBM like Nightfall with no need for an aero shield.
The US has repurposed warheads and especially physic packages like this in the past. the W80 cruise missile warhead is a repackaged B61. The RN wanted to reuse the WE 177 for certain naval depth charge weapons in the 80’s following the deep dive Soviet submarine threat.
We have outsourced thinking like this to the US. Time to start standing up again.
ABCR,
Concur w/ your assessment. Both a theoretical, and lower practicable, limit on number of warheads deployed per SSBN. HMG/MoD/RAF have already signalled future intent w/ planned acquisition of F-35A. Dual-capable GCAP/Tempest is the logical successor a/c for airborne capability. Relatively straightforward proposition to equip w/ standoff range weaps, either through acquisition (i.e., LRSO) or sovereign and/or allied development programme(s). Current design experience w/ a mobile, land-based BM will provide an inherent capability to develop third leg of strategic triad if deemed necessary.
Typically, any pronouncement by a government is valid until circumstances materially change. Confidently predict a changed global geopolitical environment post 5 Feb 26, when New START Treaty terminates. All current nuclear powers (and probably others) will be reassessing the level of participation in the virtually inevitable nuclear rearmament marathon. Absolutely convinced Oxbridge educated lads/lasses are pondering the course of HMG’s future nuclear deterrent policy.
Trident is great as an end of the world weapon, but it is all or nothing. Also the UK should own not rent the missiles & have the ability to do basic servicing of them, as we had with Polaris.
With hindsight, we should have kept the lowest yield WE177A in service as a tactical weapon. Now I would go for W76-2 warhead 7kt, in a Paveway IV body with the JDAM-ER wingkit.
We do not rent the missiles.
We lease them from a common pool.
High ranking military personnel have openly admitted that it has no credible systems to defend this Country and in particular its people in in event of an all out war. With no capable defensive land based missile systems and fewer defensive aircraft than in living memory, our Politiciand have decided that defending the citizens of this country is not a priority.
Why are we even still bothering with this F-35A nonsense. We aren’t providing any more bombs to NATO, the shared tactical nuke scheme already has enough carrying aircraft that an additional 12 more not make any difference.
But what it does do is limit the number of jets we can stick on a carrier, which have never even reached half full yet.
It is true that the F-35B is cheaper and does have a longer range, but the B variant is already longer range than most fighters, and the price difference between the two is not enough to offset the fact that the carriers lose a whole squadron available to them.
The RAF already has F-35 as they are shared and Tempest should arrive soon enough at which point there is not much need for the RAF to even have the F-35, and they should instead be moved to RN possession otherwise they will never be enough fighters on the carriers, something we learned in World War 2 where the fleet air arm was initially RAF controlled and it led to all sorts of problems. The RN should be allowed to own its own aircraft and shouldn’t have to share with the RAF unless absolutely required such as now where we do not have enough stealth fighters for each service. That will not however be a problem by the time the Tempest which currently is only going to be a couple years after the F-35A is delivered.
So the government is still stupidly trusting the yanks? The f35 wont work without their approval as anything but a damned over priced under performing, unreliable big mouthed heap of crap…. It wont perform a quarter as well as the old harrier which could at least fly in rain.
The nuclear weapons are the same, independent as long as we have the yanks permission and look, Russia is offering to help the USA invade Greenland. FFKS how much more of a hint does even the most stupid Brit politician need?
We could simply make some nuclear warheads for cruise missiles for escorts with the T41 VLS or for our aircraft. But the best deterent is a powerful conventional force. Once nukes are used everybody loses(MAD). The ability of conventionally target enemes vital assets, command & control etc to effectively cripple them is what we need. Nukes are there only to deter nuke attack/use. So the “doctrine” post cold war of running down forces to criminally megre levels has been trecherously short sighted. Even post 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, which should’ve been the very latest wake up call, we’re still ticking over at barest sub-miminal levels, hoping actual numbers begin to climb again in c10 years time!!!