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SND 47 Memorandum from Dan Plesch 1. Mr Chairman, members of the Committee, it is an honour to provide evidence to Parliament on such a grave matter. Any Trident successor could be in service until 2070, so that a renewal decision with influence strongly British strategy throughout the century. 2. The independent nuclear deterrent is something people support for use as a last resort, if Britain was in peril as it was in 1940, at Trafalgar and when facing the Armada. 3. My evidence is that Britain's independent nuclear deterrent fails what I call, 'The 1940 requirement'. In addition, the political price paid to acquire this politically defective system is political dependence on the country that supplies it, the United States. 4. If Britain retains a US sourced nuclear capability for the twenty first century then it is not reasonable to expect that Britain could use it in circumstances where the US were either actively neutral as in 1940 or actively opposed as in 1956 at Suez, let alone where the US were an adversary. Such circumstances are as undesirable as they are unlikely, and yet this is precisely the test that an independent force must pass to be worth the expenditure of financial and political capital. Indeed the government rests its case for renewal on the argument that we must have a system proof against unforeseen events. My testimony is that successive governments have long ago given up that independent capability, though they are loath to say so in public. The restoration of independence would improve the quality of UK-US relations by removing this unnecessary distortion. 5. At the time the present arrangements were made with the United States, we now know that the view of Harold Macmillan's Permanent Secretary was that the Nassau agreement put Britain in America's pocket, while the chief of bomber command wrote that independence was a myth even before Nassau. Of the Prime Ministers, Harold Wilson consistently argued that Britain did not have an independent system. 6. There has long been a general understanding amongst specialists that while Trident is a US missile system, its independence can be sustained by two ideas. These are that Trident can always be fired independently and that the warheads are independently British. My evidence is that the facts do not sustain these propositions. 7. The present system of co-operation is organised under the Polaris Sales Agreement and the Mutual Defence Agreement with its Joint Atomic Information Exchange Group, Joint Working Groups and programmes of visits. 8. The Committee recorded in 1993 that, "The UK purchases its Trident D5 missiles from the US, through the US Strategic Systems Programme. Although specific missiles in the pool of such missiles held at King's Bay, Georgia, will not be identifiably British, the UK Government will take title to the missiles it purchases."[i] The illusion of independence is sustained when the words "Royal Navy" are painted onto missiles that are to be photographed during a test-firing. The US firm, Halliburton controls the company servicing the submarines in Plymouth. 9. The warheads are fitted to US re-entry vehicles and use an arming-fusing-firing system designed and manufactured by the Sandia US national laboratory. The warheads are manufactured at the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Berkshire which is at present 1/3 owned by Lockheed Martin under a long-term agency arrangement. The Committee may want to examine what further independence is lost through the acquisition of Insys by Lockheed Martin since Insys support helps enable the Ministry of Defence to implement its oversight of Lockheed Martin and the other partners in AWE management. 10. The government provides no information on either the amount or the proportion of AWE running costs and capital expenditure spent in the United States. It also does not provide information on the sourcing of the capital equipment used to manufacture the weapons or on the sourcing of the nuclear and non-nuclear materials and components within the weapons. What is known, permits the following matters to be established. The A-90 plant used to manufacture warheads is a direct copy of the T-55 plutonium processing plant at Los Alamos. US nuclear parts are provided by the United States according to de-classified documents signed by Presidents Carter and George H. W. Bush. US non-nuclear parts are included in the warheads, presumably because they are not available in the UK. 11. Documents obtained by the US non-governmental group, the Natural Resources Defence Council, show that since 1960, the US has supplied the UK with the blueprints for weapons including those for the W76 Trident. 12. Since 1958 the UK has needed the Nevada site to test its nuclear weapons and now requires the use of the Nevada site for non-nuclear explosions - the so-called sub-critical tests-- to ensure that the weapons work. The development of new types of weapons without explosive testing remains a contentious issue amongst US specialists. 13. The Committee may wish to examine the status of the modern tactical warhead described in the 1993 Defence Estimates. Why is it not suitable as a basis for a Trident replacement? 14. The allocation of British submarines to NATO means that the patrols would normally be co-ordinated with US officers. In the days of the V-bombers prior to Polaris, the then US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and his officials explained that the British did not operate independently. Today's British submarines need US generated computer software, some supported by US satellites, to provide navigational, weather and targeting data. 15. US opportunities to prevent the use of Trident aside from economic, political and military action, range from the short to the long term. Short notice withdrawal of digital information provided both physically and by satellite has the potential to prevent the system from being used. Over longer time periods the withdrawal of support would cause the submarines, missiles and warheads to cease to function. 16. Any US sourced successor to Trident will be subject to similar dependence. This leads to the question of whether a non-US option is possible. Successive governments have decided that it is neither practical nor affordable. Cooperation with France would fall-foul of the restrictions that the US has placed upon the use of the information and technology it has supplied to the UK since 1944. 17. A number of senior British officials have expressed their disquiet at the influence on British policy that results from the supply of nuclear weapons systems by the United States. It not known how extensive and specific this influence is. On weapons issues, it appears that the US suspended the main operation of the Joint Working Groups in the late 1960s when the UK was not itself developing a new weapon, and that Chevaline was partially driven by the desire to keep the relationship going. In 2004, the Mutual Defence Agreement was renewed until 2014. We do not know if any policy assurances were sought by the Bush Administration on such issues as new nuclear weapons, possible requirements to resume nuclear testing and arms control and counter-proliferation policy. It is easy to assert that the relationship does not work this way, but the facts contradict this. On other issues such as Rolls Royce participation in the Joint Strike Fighter and the British desire for an ITAR waiver, there has been nothing special about the relationship. To suggest that there is no quid pro quo for the Polaris agreement and the exchange of atomic information would be to adopt an idealistic utopian view of Anglo-American amity that has no basis in reality. There is nothing to suggest that British independence is any less of a myth than it was before Nassau or that Britain has left America's pocket since then. I do not mean by this that the relationship has the monolithic and crude character of Soviet satellites, rather that it produces an atmosphere and an understanding of what should be done with a fair degree of latitude, punctuated by more specific exchanges. 18. There is a strong argument that whatever the reality, these are matters of state not for public scrutiny. However it is precisely because these matters may influence policy across the board that it is essential that Parliament and the electorate be properly informed. 19. It is likely that some will argue for the continuation of the status quo for a number of well known reasons. These include that the arrangement gives the UK access to the very best US technology, is a means of access to US decision making, and provides what is called a second centre of decision making in crisis. The second centre argument falls to the same case I have already made, the US has the means to prevent the UK engaging in nuclear war. The issues of technology and influence must be weighed against the loss of freedom of action for the UK. My own view is that whatever was the case in the past it is now essential to national, international and indeed the US interest for the UK to be able to be able act un-fettered by nuclear weapons dependence. Whatever decisions individuals and the nation takes one thing at least should be clear. Do not accept a US-sourced nuclear weapon and then complain when governments follow US policy. 20. Many of the questions that are raised concerning a successor to Trident assume that the UK is an independent and benevolent actor internationally. Some UK partners, including South Africa, continue to argue that the Mutual Defence Agreement breaches Article 1 of the NPT which prohibits the indirect transfer of nuclear weapons between any party. At best the nuclear supply can be considered to use a loophole the like of which the UK would object to if any other state used it. Indeed the US and the UK focus their non-proliferation strategy and arguments concerning the breach of the NPT on partial technology transfers. While the UK and the US may not regard their own conduct as of concern, many other states do and this undermines Britain's ability to act. 21. US-led Western policy since the end of the Cold War has seen the abandonment of arms control in favour of military pre-eminence and pre-emption. Nuclear Weapons were managed during the Cold War with an uncomfortable combination of four approaches. There were deterrence through retaliation, deterrence through the threat and ability to fight nuclear war, arms control and disarmament. Present policy has seen us turn a deaf ear to our many friends abroad, from New Zealand and South Africa to Ireland who urge us to pick up the baton of disarmament agreements from Presidents Bush snr, Reagan and Gorbachev and press on to the finish line. It is no use waiting for others to act- many smaller states are doing what they can and we need to catch-up. It is only in this way that we can create the global consensus necessary to prevent proliferation and terrorist acquisition of nuclear weapons. Our present proliferation policy pays lip-service to the disarmament provision of the NPT and seeks to base security on a policy of "Do As We Say, Not Do As We Do." Such a policy is as futile internationally as it is at home. 22. Arms control and disarmament have been abandoned not merely in order to retain weapons for retaliatory deterrence but to support policies for the tactical or even pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons. In Britain such policies are described in a perfunctory manner in both the Strategic Defence Review and in the Post 9/11 New Chapter. In contrast, in the United States they are expressed fully in the National Security Strategy, Joint Chiefs of Staff Doctrine, in Presidential Policy on Weapons of Mass Destruction and in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review. These documents expound on the utility of using nuclear weapons in many situations in addition to retaliatory deterrence. The British government has not distanced itself from these policies. One conclusion is that the UK has now aligned itself with policies for fighting wars with nuclear weapons and that this is the reality of the twenty first century. Another conclusion is that it is impossible to conceive that Britain and the United States would actually carry out such policies, so that for a policy of no more than bluff the tried and tested tools of arms control and disarmament have been cast aside. In brief, the UK buys weapons that fail the 1940 requirement at the price of being tied to ineffective policies.
6 March 2006 |