Examination of witnesses (Questions 1-19)
MR MICHAEL
CODNER, DR
KATE HUDSON,
DR REBECCA
JOHNSON, MR
DAN PLESCH,
SIR MICHAEL
QUINLAN AND
DR LEE
WILLETT
14 MARCH 2006
Q1 Chairman: I would like to begin by
welcoming everyone to this first evidence-taking session on the
Strategic Nuclear Deterrent. I would like to set the context in
which we are doing this. There will be a series of inquiries that
this Committee will be doing over the lifetime of this Parliament
into the Strategic Nuclear Deterrent. This is not intended to
be an exhaustive coverage of everything. There will be further
inquiries in due course. The first one is intended to cover the
strategic context within which decisions on the future of the
nuclear deterrent will be made. It is not going to be easy this
morning. We have an unusually large panel, amongst which, as amongst
the Committee, there will be disagreement, so I will need the
assistance of both the Committee and of the panel to keep moving
things on, please. We have two hours to get through a lot of very
difficult and very deep questions. I am grateful to many of the
witnesses and those outside the Committee for providing most helpful
memoranda in advance, but I should be particularly grateful if
members of the Committee and members of the panel could be as
short as possible. Please do not feel that it is necessary to
answer each question. Certainly do not feel it is necessary to
answer simply in order to agree with something that has been said
before. If you feel a gloss needs to be added, I will try to get
you in but we need to move on very rapidly through a lot of difficult
questions. I would like to begin, if I may, by welcoming the witnesses
very much to the evidence session. I am most grateful to you for
coming. I wonder whether I could begin by going into the factual
background in relation to the purpose of the deterrent, how the
Ministry of Defence might explain it, and some of the technical
details of it. I would like, Sir Michael, to begin with you. Could
you possibly explain to us what the purpose of the UK's existing
nuclear strategic deterrent is, what is the rationale behind it
and how would the Ministry of Defence explain its purpose?
Sir Michael Quinlan: I should
stress, of course, that I retired from the Ministry of Defence
14 years ago. I do not now speak for them in any way. The broad
rationale was that the strategic nuclear capability was part of
the total capability which we possessed primarily for the prevention
of war, and it was designed to convey to any potential adversary
that attack on us, especially if it were persisted in beyond the
levels with which our conventional forces could cope, might in
the extreme bring down upon them nuclear action. That is the essence
of what we were trying to convey by the possession of these things.
The context originally, at the time when the present force was
ordered, was that of the Cold War. It has now of course changed.
The essential concept is as I describe, I believe, still.
Q2 Chairman: Was it aimed at particular
players or was it a general deterrent?
Sir Michael Quinlan: At that time,
it was clearly directed to a Soviet Union whose power was very
large, which was forward-deployed in Europe, and whose ideology
and attitudes were such that we thought we could not entirely
trust them not to have disagreeable designs to our detriment.
That is no longer the case. It seems to me that, to the extent
that there is a case now, it is a case, like that for most of
our armed forces, simply addressed "to whom it may concern".
Chairman: I will move on to the status
of the Trident programme.
Q3 Mr Crausby: Could I begin by asking
you to summarise the technical capabilities of Trident and set
out for us, and indeed for the record, how the system operates.
Dr Willett: As is stated in the
public record, we have four Vanguard-class Trident submarines.
They have the potential to carry 16 Trident D5 ballistic missiles
per boat, although, as the MoD have stated in the Defence Review
papers, it is not necessarily the case that all boats go to sea
with their maximum outload of missiles all the time, and each
missile has a set number of warheads, UK-designed and built warheads.
The point about the warheads, of course, is that the numbers are
classified, both in terms of the numbers in the inventory and
the numbers that are allocated per missile, but the UK MoD has
stated on some occasions in the past that some boats go to sea
with some missiles that have single warheads, others that have
more, but no precise details of the numbers. Of course, there
is some public debate about what the yield of the warheads is
as well, and the warheads are regarded as having a variable yield,
but the precise nature, once again, according to my records, is
classified.
Q4 Mr Crausby: The 1998 Strategic
Defence Review described Trident as a "credible minimum deterrent."
Is that accurate? Is it a credible minimum deterrent?
Dr Willett: The key point about
this debate we are having today, and I think you have started
it in the right way, is to start by asking the question why we
need it. That is the point: is it credible? Why do we need it?
What are the threats? Is it credible in deterring those threats?
The issue about deterrence is that, obviously, you need to understand
who your adversaries are and what you need to hold at risk with
those potential adversaries to deter them. There are those who
argue that, in the current climate, there are no obvious threats,
but the point is, we have to look at what the next 50 years will
hold, and in terms of credibility, it is more an issue really
of we just do not know what the future will hold. This system
is there as a deterrent to high-end threats to the survivability
of the nation. You make the point about the force levels and the
minimum deterrent. One might argue that, with the world changing
as it is, perhaps in the debate about replacing Trident, we could
at least consider the possibility that the UK might wish to reduce
what it has deployed in its inventory, whether that be numbers
of warheads or numbers of missiles, while still retaining what
is a credible and flexible capability.
Chairman: Dr Willett, you have said that
this is the right way to begin the debate, and I want to pick
up that point. This Committee will not, of course, be making any
decisions about the strategic nuclear deterrent. What we will
be doing is informing the debate. We will not be coming to any
conclusions as to whether we should or should not replace the
strategic nuclear deterrent. We consider that we are the right
people to inform and begin and help with that debate, so I am
most grateful to you for bringing that point out.
Q5 John Smith: I have a supplementary
on the technical status of Trident. Are we right to believe that,
in the absence of an obvious threat, the Trident system is currently
one, de-targeted, and two, its standard of readiness has been
greatly reduced?
Dr Willett: That is correct. That
is stated in the Strategic Defence Review and subsequent government
documentation, that the missiles are de-targeted and that the
readiness of the boats has been reduced to a matter of days rather
than the hours that it was previously.
Q6 John Smith: What are the implications
of that, if any?
Dr Willett: The point, I think,
is that we stepped away from the targeting of what was then the
obvious threat, the Soviet Union, and what we have now is the
boats at sea, in the continuous-at-sea deterrent cycle, still
ready to be able to do what they have to do if needed, but we
still have boats at a certain notice to fire, and the ability
to work up that capability in the light of the likely lead times
we may have on any perceptions of potential threats. So the flexibility
to be able to react is still there.
Sir Michael Quinlan: They were
held during the Cold War at 15 minutes' readiness to fire, because
they were our last resort insurance against the hypothesis, remote
though it might seem, of a bolt from the blue by an immensely
powerful superpower. That hypothesis no longer has to be seriously
entertained, and therefore they are held in a much more relaxed
condition, which, of course, if we got into a serious crisis,
could be raised again.
Dr Johnson: I just want to make
a clarification that both the de-targeting and the reduced notice
to fire are operational. In terms of the mechanics of the Trident
fleet, when the submarine goes out, it would in fact mechanically
be able to be fired at any time. So we are not talking about de-alerting.
The warheads are on the missiles and the decision both to re-target
and to greatly shorten the notice to fire could be made simply
by both political decision and computer operation, and the estimates
are that that could be made in 10-15 minutes.
Q7 Mr Hancock: Can I ask a question
about the change over the last 10 years of the missile's capability
and its ability to be re-directed from a blanket target like the
Soviet Union to a more specific target, and the reduction in the
actual capability of individual warheads being reduced to an extent
that they become a useful tool if they were deployed in being
more of a specifically targeted weapon. Is there any evidence
to support the view that Trident has aged well, in the sense that
it is a vehicle that can be changed to suit the change in the
world's situation, or is it still the same weapon it was 15 years
ago?
Mr Plesch: From its own perspective,
the Government has made various changes—successive governments—in
terms of developing what they call a sub-strategic weapon with
a smaller warhead, and both in the SDR and in the New Chapter
there are discussions for the use of the weapon in circumstances
other than retaliation if this country were destroyed, which I
think is the public understanding and rationale for the weapon.
If I might make one other point concerning the future of the credibility,
I think the public understanding is that we have this if ever
again we faced 1940. There is, I think, a strong sense in this
country, going back almost to Trafalgar and the Armada, in our
culture that we have to have something for that contingency. My
real concern is that people do not understand that if we were
in a situation—albeit this is highly unlikely and highly
undesirable—as in 1940, where the United States was neutral,
or in 1956, when the United States had a very contrary position,
then the United States would have every ability, in the short
and particularly in the longer term, to prevent the system from
being used because of our relationship.
Q8 Chairman: That is your 1940 test
in your memorandum.
Mr Plesch: Yes, and I think that
is a very severe problem when we look at the 50-year rationale,
because if the basic rationale is if something nasty turns up,
we need it, the nastiest thing that can turn up for this country
is to fall out with the United States in some unforeseen manner.
Q9 Mr Jones: Can I now turn to the
threat? Sir Michael made it quite clear what Trident was procured
for in terms of the Cold War threat, and clearly that threat is
not there now. Can I ask you to comment in terms of what you perceive
as the actual threat that Trident deters now?
Mr Codner: I think that is a very
difficult question. Clearly, there is the potential for emergent
nuclear powers which may be hostile to the United Kingdom to develop
the capability. At present, there is no very obvious target for
our deterrent. However, if we are looking at replacing the system,
we have to look into the longer term and to a very cloudy future,
and one in which things could change very substantially. There
are some specific issues of deterrence against some of the most
immediate threats, like the terrorist threat, et cetera,
where it is very unclear how a nuclear deterrent could be effective
even against a terrorist threat with nuclear capability, the suitcase
scenario. However, one could create arguments to say that the
deterrent was relevant against nations which may be supporting
that sort of activity. My own view is that when we are coming
to judge what the deterrent is for as far as the United Kingdom
is concerned, obviously, these issues are relevant but they are
probably not the central issue.
Dr Willett: May I just add a bit
of gloss to that? As you say, the whole point about Trident is
that it has never been designed to deal with all the range of
threats. It was always designed to deter threats to the high-end
survivability of the nation. Deterrence as an issue for the UK
is about a broad package of options, political, conventional military,
strategic nuclear, so the Trident system that currently supports
the strategic nuclear deterrent was only ever about deterring
a certain kind of threat. While that threat may not include 7-7
tube bombers, as Michael pointed out, the key point in this is
that we are talking about the 2020-50 time frame, and it is the
"just in case" against what we just do not know.
Dr Johnson: I would like to comment
on that, because I agree with Dr Willett that Trident was not
intended for a broad range of security threats and yet, if we
actually project forward for the next 20-25 years, we see a very
broad range of security threats, including things like environmental
degradation and climate change and depletion of resources, which
are both threats to our security and will generate more traditional
views of security threats in terms of mass population movement.
I list a whole range of them, of which the only conceivable deterrent
role possibly played by nuclear weapons at all, whether Trident,
which is an extremely clumsy instrument in these days, or any
other, would be war between stable, rationally governed nation
states. We have to look at the broader elements of deterrence,
which do not necessarily require a nuclear element at all. Other
countries have deterrents that are well in place, that are this
panoply of other measures, and the problem with constantly calling
nuclear weapons a nuclear deterrent is that you end up with a
tautology: our deterrence deters. That, I think, is lazy thinking
because it prevents people thinking through what actually is the
role that nuclear weapons play in that range of deterrence tools
and in what ways maintaining nuclear weapons would actually diminish
the usefulness and roles of some of those other tools.
Q10 Mr Jones: Can I throw in from
Mr Codner's memorandum[1]
to us a point I actually agree with: the proposal that retention
of a deterrent seems to support is that UK has an influence, indirect
or on its wider security environment, because it retains a nuclear
deterrent. Is that what you are saying? Would you agree that actually
having nuclear weapons not only gives you a seat at the table
but also paints a broader security picture that somehow you are
a senior power which you could not do if you just had conventional
weapons?
Dr Johnson: I think that was largely
true in the Cold War. It was certainly perceived to be the truth
in the Cold War. I think it is less and less true now. There is
a diminishing status value as more and more states seek to acquire
nuclear weapons and there is actually a diminishing security value.
Q11 Chairman: We will come on to
that issue later on. I want to bring in Mr Plesch and Dr Willett
briefly on these questions.
Mr Plesch: I think one of the
problems we face because of our relationship with the United States
is that while a great many countries around the world see multilateral
arms control as something which was important to move much faster
on with the Soviet Union out of the way, we are now in a position
where, really for the first time, we are pursuing a policy which
is nuclear weapons without arms control. That is a key issue,
and indeed, frankly, without disarmament, and if one addresses
the question of status, a great many countries around the world
that we rarely listen to, South Africa for example, are adamant
that the connection between possession of nuclear weapons by the
big countries and the desire for nuclear weapons by those we are
concerned about proliferating, is in fact critical. The powers
with weapons undoubtedly deny that, but the rest o f the world
argues it.
Q12 Chairman: Yes, that is a proliferation
issue rather than a deterrence issue.
Mr Plesch: It is a question of
whether you can have your cake and eat it.
Dr Willett: I wanted to follow
up on a couple of Dan's points and Dr Johnson's as well. With
the panoply of other issues that there are facing the world, again,
deterrence is very specific in what it is trying to do, and its
particular role in certain threats that threaten the UK and global
security as a whole. The point is that the proliferation of nuclear
weapons, nuclear materials, nuclear technologies is only going
in one direction and that is up—proliferation can only go
one way, I apologise, but the way that we are moving is only in
the way of proliferating. There are those that argue that as many
as 35 nations now have the know-how to do this. There are those
that are declared, those that are suspected and those that may
well have this capability in a very short space of time. So the
number is growing, and we do not know what the future will hold.
While others have nuclear weapons, the only thing, in my humble
opinion, that can deter a nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon.
Dan made a very good point about arms control too. I think it
is very valid. What the UK should pursue is a dual-track approach.
We need to look at the arms control issue again at a multilateral
level. The NPT faltered but the nuclear powers and others of this
world should be getting round the table to talk about these things.
Perhaps, as I said previously, the UK could look at options for
reducing its own stockpiles if it decides to extend and replace
the current system. So there are options indeed, yes, for moving
the disarmament debate forward, but it needs to happen at a multilateral
level, and that is not happening at the moment. We cannot risk
living in a Utopian world where we hope these things might happen.
We should try to make them happen but, at the same time, we need
the deterrent there as an insurance policy just in case.
Q13 Chairman: Sir Michael, you indicated
a little earlier that you would like to say something.
Sir Michael Quinlan: Could I make
three very quick points. Firstly, deterrence is an extremely broad
concept. It refers to a whole range of instruments, some of which
may not even be military. We may be trying to discourage Iran
by economic or political pressure, for example. That is deterrence.
I never liked the phrase "the deterrent", as though
it meant just this. This is one of many instruments. Secondly,
reference has been made to the seat at the table argument. I personally
do not think there is value in that. I do not like that argument.
I think one needs much more solid reasons than prestige and status.
Thirdly, could I just lodge the fact that Mr Plesch and I will
be found to have different views on independence. No doubt you
will be exploring that a little later.
Chairman: We will, and no doubt we will
discover exactly that.
Q14 Mr Jenkins: I want to just ask
you a few simple questions from a simple back-bencher here. When
we look at the technical capabilities of Trident, I understand
that in the Cold War we could have launched massive retaliation,
but we are not in that scenario now. What would happen if one
of our naval patrols suddenly got a message that we need to take
out one particular location; we cannot get a conventional bomber
there to take it out; we do not have the bombs and we need to
take that one out? When you fire a missile with multiple warheads,
can you activate one warhead, so that, say, if you have 10 in
the missile, would the one warhead go off and the other nine fall
to the ground? When I wanted to activate the missile, how would
I? If I am sailing round the Indian Ocean and it is decided there
is a target over there, how would I know how to aim the missile
at that target? Would I rely upon satellite technology? Would
I rely upon the American satellite technology? Would the new Galileo
European satellite technology give us a back-up in that respect?
Or does the missile itself have its own device; you can send it
off and it knows exactly where it is going?
Mr Plesch: The fire control targeting
system computer software and satellites are all American-derived.
The Government has stated formally and informally, I think, that
some of the missiles have just one warhead on, and there has been
some discussion that these could be as small as only 300 tonnes
of TNT, 0.3 of a kilotonne, and the system is designed to have
an accuracy within a few metres—not, I think, as good as
GPS, which the Americans now have, but it was originally designed
to be able to attack Soviet missile silos, so it was always designed
to be highly accurate, and of course, it is very fast: less than
half an hour from launch to target.
Q15 Mr Jenkins: So the missile itself,
when it is fired, relies upon nothing else outside itself? There
is no satellite indicator to where it is going, et cetera?
It relies upon nothing apart from what is in the head of the missile?
Dr Willett: My understanding is
that the missile is a totally self-contained package that has
an inertial guidance system that takes it to a point in space,
and the ballistic trajectory then takes it to the latitudinal
and longitudinal point on the target. It does not, in my understanding,
rely on external guidance systems such as American satellites
that have been mentioned.
Q16 Chairman: Sir Michael, I noticed
you reacting a bit about the American software. We will come on
to the independence issue in a few minutes. Did you want to add
something, Dr Johnson?
Dr Johnson: Mr Plesch said that
it is an American guidance system, I agree, but my understanding
is in fact that that guidance system relies also on the GPS system,
and because the guidance system is American, I do not think it
would be adaptable to Galileo, even if Galileo was fully working.
The US was very unhappy about the Galileo system precisely because
it offered a European alternative potentially to GPS in the future[2]
Q17 Chairman: We have been told that
Galileo does not have a military application.
Dr Johnson: We have been told.
Q18 John Smith: I just want to explore
the exact nature of the current military threats that this country
faces in your expert opinion. The threat scenario is usually identified
as a combination of capability that exists and intent. What, in
your view, Dr Willett, are the current military threats to this
country?
Dr Willett: That is obviously
a very open-ended question. I do not want to belittle it by coming
back with the point that we just do not know, but it is worth
looking back at recent history to show that it is littered with
strategic shocks, things that we had not expected: the Falkland
Islands, the first Gulf War, 9-11, 7-7. All of them were things
that we had not predicted, so to try and make a point about what
are the military threats, one could argue that it is as long as
a piece of string; it depends on the person's own view. The point
is that this particular debate is not talking about the current
military threat; it is talking about threats in the 2020-50 time
frame. We cannot begin to try and predict what will be round the
corner in that time frame. It is the argument about the insurance
policy, as always. It is there as a hedge, just-in-case, capability,
should threats that require such a response come to pass.
Mr Codner: As far as the United
Kingdom is concerned, geographically, clearly, where it is in
the Atlantic in the current environment, it is in a pretty safe
place. The biggest threat directly to the United Kingdom is probably
asymmetric response to activities elsewhere, if you call them
responses to those activities, terrorist attack, et cetera,
to the United Kingdom itself. There is one scenario where you
could say the British Government has an obligation as opposed
to a choice to engage overseas, and that would be the rescue of
non-combatant British personnel and perhaps Europeans in some
situation where there was a revolution or whatever. Supporting
what Dr Willett said, we are looking into the longer term and
there is a presumption, I think, in many places that we are not
going to face inter-state war in the old-fashioned sense any more.
Sir Rupert Smith's book makes this point, but there are other
books by equally distinguished people in different areas, such
as Colin Gray, who make the point that we cannot dismiss this
sort of scenario in the longer term.
Q19 Chairman: When you said that
the greatest threat that we faced was a terrorist incident, would
you say that the coming together of a terrorist incident and weapons
of mass destruction was the greatest threat that this country
is likely to face at the moment?
Mr Codner: It is certainly not
the most probable threat. The most immediate threat, you could
argue, is terrorist attack. The most probable threat is not a
nuclear-armed terrorist. There is that possibility, and it would
be pretty horrific.
Dr Johnson: I would like to comment
that we should not forget that military threats are security challenges
that were ignored or were not adequately dealt with at a much
earlier stage, so when we think about the future, we must not
assume that the choice that we make now does not have a range
of other kinds of consequences in terms of opportunity costs for
taking steps that would reduce what we see as the foreseeable
security challenges and military threats in the future.
Mr Plesch: I broadly agree with
my fellow panellists but I think there is one critical point about
capability and not intention that we are in grave danger of overlooking,
and that is that neither the Russians nor the Americans have taken
their strategic nuclear forces off a high alert status, able to
fire thousands of weapons still in under an hour. There has been
considerable political and NGO discussion in the United States
and in Russia on this point, but it has largely been overlooked.
The point about de-targeting, which was issued after the Cold
War, has been found to be largely rhetorical or entirely rhetorical
and there is a very strong technical argument to support that,
and grave concern among many experts that the hair trigger which
people were so concerned about has not actually been removed.
1 Note: Ev 16. Back
2
Note by Witness: Dr Johnson has subsequently checked the
above statement. While Dr Willett is correct that the Trident
SLBMs were designed to use stellar navigation and can work without
GPS, the US global positioning system, they have been modified
and now make use of GPS to increase the precision of their targeting. Back
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