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SND 54
Memorandum from Greenpeace
1 Greenpeace welcomes the Secretary of Defence, Dr John Reid's, promise of a full and open national debate on Trident renewal. Such a debate can only take place if the Government provides Parliament, independent experts, civil society groups, and citizens with its case studies of the financial, military and foreign policy consequences of building a new nuclear weapon and of alternative non-nuclear strategies. To date Greenpeace Freedom of Information requests for such case studies have been refused.
2 This makes no sense at a time when, as the Government has stated in its Strategic Defence Review, there is no direct military threat to Western Europe and it does not foresee the emergence of such a threat. It also makes no sense as such studies do not concern current military operations. The large number of Members of Parliament from all political parties signing Early Day Motion 1113 shows that there is a strong sentiment in the House of Commons that these case studies should be released. In order that the House of Commons Defence Select Committee can make a full assessment of the case for and against replacing Trident by a new nuclear weapon system, the Government should provide the Committee with all relevant case studies before it begins its investigations so that it can ask the relevant questions and call on expert witnesses to assess these studies.
3 Since its beginnings in 1971, Greenpeace has campaigned for practical measures to end the nuclear threat, such as a ban on nuclear weapons testing. In that time, half the world's nuclear weapons have been dismantled, and there has been a de-facto end to nuclear testing since 1998. The post-Cold War development and deployment of Trident threaten this progress and is destabilising. The development and deployment of a new nuclear weapon system by the UK would make an already bad situation worse. It would give states across the world an excuse to upgrade their own nuclear weapons or to acquire their first atomic bomb.
4 To appreciate why this is the worst possible time to go ahead with the development of a new nuclear weapon, a look at Britain's existing Trident nuclear weapon system. Trident is a globally destabilising weapon for several reasons.
5 Trident threatens states across the globe. Trident was designed so as to give the US the ability to carry out a nuclear first strike which would destroy Soviet missiles before they could be fired from their silos. This led to the development of a high-speed, first strike, weapon with global reach. A Trident submarine patrolling in the Atlantic can hit targets across the Middle East, Russia and China. The net result of Trident's exceptional capabilities was that its impact immediately exceeded its original anti-Soviet mission specification - making countries across the globe potential targets of a devastating first strike. Moreover, the addition of the UK Trident fleet to the US one has increased the Trident system's globally destabilising effect. The disposition of the US and UK Trident fleets, and the extraordinary range of the Trident D5 missile, means that every day the USA and the UK project massive nuclear force into the Middle East - providing states such as Iran with a not unjustifiable argument for acquiring their own nuclear weapons. The recent shifting of part of the US Trident fleet to the Pacific so that the major part is now based there is especially short-sighted. The relatively small number of Chinese land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles could be easily destroyed in a surprise attack, meaning that the new threat from Trident gives China a strong incentive to upgrade its nuclear arsenal.
6 Trident increases the danger of accidental nuclear war. Even if the UK never intended to use Trident aggressively, its acquisition of a weapon with the capability to take part in a US-led first strike against the Soviet Union made nuclear war more likely. Through increasing the capacity of the USA and the UK to carry out such a strike, it added to the pressure on Soviet commanders who, whenever they received warning that a nuclear surprise attack might be underway, had only minutes to assess whether the alert was genuine or (as frequently happened) a false alarm, and decide whether to fire their missiles or face losing them. In a crisis and time of high alert, Russian and Chinese commanders would face the same dilemma today.
7 The end of the Cold War made a nonsense of the UK Government's official rationale for Trident - deterring a Soviet nuclear attack on UK territory. Since then Trident has been progressively remade so as to enhance its capacity to be used as an instrument of coercion against non-nuclear states - a process which has only added to its destabilising effect.
8 The problem facing US and British nuclear strategists is that they can only use their nuclear weapons as instruments of coercion if the state being coerced actually believes that they might use them. This is at present an incredible prospect in the UK, because the public is overwhelmingly opposed to the first use of nuclear weapons and to their use against non-nuclear states. In a September 2005 Greenpeace/MORI poll looking at British public opinion, 87% were against using nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state, and 77% were against the first use of nuclear weapons. Such actions would also be completely contrary to international law, which absolutely prohibits the use of nuclear weapons as instruments of coercion and the first use of a nuclear weapon against a non-nuclear state.
9 To overcome these barriers of illegality and public opinion, proponents of the continued development of the US and UK nuclear arsenals have developed two tactics:
10 First, presenting some non-nuclear states as constituting an imminent threat which can only be dealt with through the use of nuclear weapons. The first step has been to try to convince the public that their very existence can be immediately threatened by distant non-nuclear states. This has been done by suggesting that by 'rogue' states armed with chemical or biological weapons pose an immediate threat to the US and UK population and by arguing that we have 'vital' interests that are vulnerable to attack by such states, with catastrophic results. Most strikingly, in its 1998 Strategic Defence Review, after stating that "there is today no direct military threat to the United Kingdom. Nor do we forsee the re-emergence of such a threat,' the Government developed a new rationale for Trident. It stated that the size of Britain's Trident force would now be determined by what was 'necessary to deter any threats to our vital interests' - according to the Strategic Defence Review 'vital interests' means UK trade, investments, and access to resources (especially Middle Eastern oil).
11 Second, attempting the impossible task of making Trident a weapon which could be used against military or economic targets without the death of (many) civilians. This has involved research and development to make Trident more accurate, the deployment of missiles with single warheads, and a contact fuse (which enables a smaller warhead to be used to destroy a hardened target). The UK government statements suggest the UK may already have adapted its Trident warhead to give a smaller explosion - effectively transforming Trident into a "mini" nuclear weapon. This work has gone hand in hand with the development of targeting technologies which increase Trident's ability to hit a wide range of targets across the globe as soon as their locations are known (See Annex A).
12 The UK's Trident system is not independent - in fact it is entirely dependent on US technical support(See Annex B). It is inconceivable that the UK would use Trident without US permission. The only way that the UK is ever likely to use Trident is to give legitimacy to a US nuclear strike.
13 There are precedents for the US using UK participation in this way for conventional military operations. The principle value of the UK's participation in the recent Iraq war was to help legitimise the US attack. Likewise the principle value of the firing of UK cruise missiles as part of the larger US cruise missile attack on Baghdad was to help legitimise the use of such weapons against urban targets.
14 It would be a grave mistake for the UK to replace Trident with a new nuclear weapon. We have already given states across the world an incentive to upgrade their nuclear arsenals or to acquire the atomic bomb for the first time through upgrading and continuing to deploy Trident at a time when the Cold War is over and, as the Government has stated in the Strategic Defence Review, there is no direct military threat to us. The development of a new nuclear weapons system would provide a further incentive for states to upgrade their nuclear arsenals or to acquire the bomb for the first time. In particular, while the UK government might claim that this was for the defence of UK territory against nuclear attack, other states would look at how we have upgraded the Trident system and wonder whether we were taking a further step in developing more 'usable' nuclear weapons.
15 The development of a new nuclear weapon would also strike at which stop the spread of nuclear weapons and are vital to the achievement of nuclear disarmament, the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Both Treaties are already on the critical list. The US and the UK's development of more 'usable' nuclear weapons and strategies which involve using nuclear weapons against non nuclear states to protect 'vital interests' is directly contrary to the deal at the heart of the NPT, and strengthened in the 1995 and 2000 NPT Review Conferences, whereby the declared nuclear weapon states are to carry out nuclear disarmament and non nuclear states are not to acquire nuclear weapons. The CTBT, for its part, has not entered into force but has contributed to a de facto end to nuclear testing since 1998. The danger is that the continued deployment and development of the Trident system by the US and the UK will lead other states to ask, why should we continue not to test when the US and the UK are continuing to develop their Trident system and make it more 'usable' without testing?
16 The development of a new nuclear weapon would be against the UK's legally binding commitment under the NPT to take progressive steps to disarm its nuclear weapons, and while it may not be against the letter of the CTBT, it would strike at the heart of that Treaty. Other states would ask, if the UK is upgrading its nuclear arsenal then why should we respect the de facto ban on nuclear testing? Equally seriously, it may not be possible to develop a new nuclear weapon without eventually having to test it and this would almost certainly kill the CTBT completely.
17 This is a critical time. The UK played a leading role in strengthening global cooperation to reduce the nuclear danger after the end of the Cold War. Most vitally the UK played a major role in the negotiation of the CTBT in 1996. The impasse at the 2005 NPT Review Conference show that there is now a danger that global cooperation to deal with the nuclear threat may now unravel. To emphasis the danger, the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan stated on 9th August 2005: "We are witnessing the continued efforts to strengthen and modernise nuclear arsenals. We also face a real threat that nuclear weapons will spread. Without concerted action we may face a cascade of nuclear proliferation."
18 At such a time it would be height of folly for the UK to now build a new nuclear weapon system. Greenpeace urges the Government to uphold its promises and legal obligations under the NPT to reduce, and then eliminate, the role of nuclear weapons in its security policies, by:
Firstly, taking Trident off patrol and storing its warheads in an internationally monitored facility.
Secondly, immediately abandoning preparations to build a Trident replacement;
and Thirdly, working with European partners and other non-nuclear states to restart the multilateral nuclear disarmament process. 19 This is a strategy which members of all political parties can unite behind: It would provide reassurance to those who believe that it would be unwise to be completely without a nuclear option while other countries continue to have nuclear weapons. Moreover, as the 2005 Greenpeace/MORI poll has shown, such a policy would be popular because it would respond to the public's strong conviction that we should not use nuclear weapons first or use them against non-nuclear states. These moves would send a clear and unambiguous message to Washington that it is absolutely opposed to the current US doctrine of pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. It would make clear that the US could not call on the UK to legitimate a US nuclear attack by participating in it. Furthermore, it would make clear the UK's commitment to the NPT and the CTBT and put us at the forefront of the agenda of multilateral disarmament and peace-building which alone can ward off the return of a Cold-War type situation, in which we as a nation are once again threatened by thousands of nuclear weapons.
20 Greenpeace would welcome the opportunity to give further oral evidence to the Committee on the future of the strategic deterrent. Annex A.
Making Trident more usable and more threatening - technical transformation
21 The years since the end of the Cold War have seen major technical changes to the Trident system. These have been partly driven by the US nuclear weapons laboratories, whose current annual budget of $6 billion massively exceeds the Cold War average of $3.8 billion.
22 These changes are often justified by the need to maintain the safety of the stockpile, and also to ensure that, if used, the warheads would be less indiscriminate (they would destroy military and political targets while killing fewer civilians). The latter point represents an attempt to mollify public hostility to any first strike against a non-nuclear state.
23 The changes made also mean that the upgraded Trident can better fit the USA's and UK's new post-Cold War objectives: specifically, it can hit targets across the globe and be rapidly retargeted at mobile missiles and other shifting targets. The key changes to the UK Trident system are as follows:
24 Extending the number of targets and rapid retargeting. The US Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile Retargeting System (SRS) enables Trident submarines 'to quickly, accurately and reliably retarget missiles to targets', and allows 'timely and reliable processing of an increased number of targets'. The system allows the USA rapidly to produce a nuclear attack plan using a small number of Trident warheads in a regional operation. The UK has purchased the fire control system, used to assign targets to the warheads on the submarines, at the core of SRS, and this has been installed in UK Trident submarines.
25 Single-warhead missiles. In 1993 Malcolm Rifkind argued that a hostile leader might gamble that the UK would never use Trident to secure its vital interests because of the public outrage that would follow a full-scale Trident attack. He therefore recommended the development of a 'sub-strategic' Trident. This 'sub-strategic' mission was first deployed on HMS Victorious in December 1995 and involved fitting some missiles with only one warhead.
26 Low-yield warheads. UK Trident may also have been made more 'usable' by reducing the yield of the warheads. On March 19th 1998 the Secretary of State for Defence, Mr. George Robertson, in reply to question by Ms. Roseanna Cunningham MP, stated that 'The UK has some flexibility in the choice of yield for the warhead on its Trident missile.' This flexibility may be intended to help fulfil the sub-strategic mission. A lower yield can be achieved by detonating only the atomic bomb part of the weapon, making it an atomic fission weapon rather than a hydrogen fusion weapon.
27 Further developments now under way in the US are also important. The close technical cooperation between the UK and the US mean that it is very likely that what is being developed in the US will later be adopted by the UK.
28 The US nuclear laboratories are continuing to develop the Trident system in ways that facilitate its use against targets across the globe. In 2005 the US Treasury allocated $1.7 billion for the development of the Trident D5 missile alone. Programmes under way include:
29 Reducing the yield of the W76 warhead. There appears to be a current programme to reduce the size of the nuclear explosion produced by the US W76 warhead. According to a July 2005 report in the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper, the W76 is being modified so as to reduce its yield by 40 per cent to 60 kilotons.
30 Improving the W76 warhead's ability to destroy hardened targets. If Trident's warhead could be made to explode close to the ground, then a low yield warhead could be used to destroy hardened t targets such as missile silos. To achieve this the USA is seeking to give the W76 warhead a radar arming, firing and fusing mechanism similar to those fitted to the W88, which already has such a capability.
31 Improving the D5 missile's accuracy. If Trident was made more accurate, then a lower-yield warhead could be used to destroy a wide variety of targets. Recent years have seen a number of projects underway to give Trident 'GPS-like accuracy' (about 10m). The idea is to use GPS and/or inertial guidance to steer a manoeuvrable re-entry vehicle to its target. Manoeuvrability will be achieved either by adding controllable flaps or a moveable inside weight to the re-entry vehicle. Lockheed Martin has also sought to develop the idea that a super-accurate Trident could be used with a conventional warhead to destroy hardened targets.
32 These programmes are already becoming reality. The US Congress withdrew funding from the Navy's programme to improve the D5 missile's accuracy, but the Navy has been able to continue it using other funding, and in March 2005 the USS Tennessee carried out a test of a new re-entry vehicle with flaps and GPS guidance. Annex BUK's Trident system not truly independent
33 Acquiring Trident gave the UK a greater nuclear weapons capability than it could ever have achieved on its own. This enhanced capacity, however, had significant consequences.
34 The fact that, in theory, the British Prime Minister could give the order to fire Trident missiles without getting prior approval from the White House has allowed the UK to maintain the façade of being a global military power. In practice, though, it is difficult to conceive of any situation in which a Prime Minister would fire Trident without prior US approval. The USA would see such an act as cutting across its self-declared prerogative as the world's policeman, and would almost certainly make the UK pay a high price for its presumption. The fact that the UK is completely technically dependent on the USA for the maintenance of the Trident system means that one way the USA could show its displeasure would be to cut off the technical support needed for the UK to continue to send Trident to sea.
35 In practice, the only way that Britain is ever likely to use Trident is to give legitimacy to a US nuclear attack by participating in it. There are precedents for the USA using UK participation in this way for conventional military operations. The principal value of the UK's participation in the recent Iraq war was to help legitimise the US attack. Likewise the principal value of the firing of UK cruise missiles as part of the larger US cruise missile attack on Baghdad was to help legitimise the use of such weapons against urban targets.
36 The most likely scenario in which Trident would actually be used is that Britain would give legitimacy to a US nuclear strike by participating in it.
37 The well-established links between the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), in Omaha Nebraska and the UK's Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood, London would facilitate the planning of such attacks. In a crisis the very existence of the UK Trident system might make it difficult for a UK prime minister to refuse a request by the US president to participate in an attack.
38 The UK Trident system is highly dependent, and for some purposes completely dependent, on the larger US system. The assembling of information available in the USA, but kept secret in Britain, by John Ainslie in his 2005 report The Future of the British bomb, shows how extensive this dependency is (see table below).
39 The UK's dependency on the USA has operational significance. For example, the UK's reliance on US weather data and on navigational data provided by the US Global Positioning System (GPS) means that, should the USA decide not to supply this data, the capacity of the UK's Trident missiles to hit targets would be degraded.
40 Conversely, the close relationship between US and UK systems also means that the upgrades to the US Trident system have already been incorporated into the UK Trident system. The Royal Navy's adoption of the new US fire control system has most likely already improved its capacity to retarget its Trident missiles rapidly in order to hit a range of targets outside Russia - thereby adding to other states' concerns that they could be the target of a combined US/UK Trident strike.
Note On Sources
Ainslie, John (2005) The future of the British bomb, WMD Awareness Programme. Aldridge, Bob (2002) US Trident submarine and missile system: The ultimate first strike weapon, Pacific Life Research Center. Butler, Nicola and Bromley, Mark (2001) The UK Trident system in the 21st century, British American Security Information Council. Clarke, Michael (2004) 'Does my bomb look big in this?', International Affairs, February. Halliday, Fred (1987) The making of the Second Cold War, Verso. Hare, Tim (2005) 'What next for Trident?', RUSI Journal, April. Kristensen, Hans and Norris, Robert (2005) 'UK nuclear forces 2005', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 61:6, longer web version, available at www.thebulletin.org/article_nn.php?art_ofn=nd05norris Kristensen, Hans and Norris, Robert (2006) 'US nuclear forces 2006', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 62:1, longer web version, available at www.thebulletin.org/article_nn.php?art_ofn=jf06norris Rai, Milan (1995) Tactical Trident: The Rifkind doctrine and the Third World, Drava Papers. Rogers, Paul (1996) Sub-strategic Trident: A slow-burning fuse, London Centre for Defence Studies. Spinardi, Graham (1994) From Polaris to Trident: The development of the US fleet ballistic missile technology, Cambridge University Press.
Greenpeace would like to thank the following for their help in the background research for this submission.
John Ainslie, Scottish CND Bob Aldridge, Pacific Life Research Center Frank Barnaby, Oxford Research Group Hans Kristensen, Federation of American Scientists Robert Norris, Natural Resources Defense Council Greg Mello, Los Alamos Study Group Milan Rai, Justice Not Vengeance Paul Rogers, Bradford School of Peace Studies
7 March 2006
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