Britain’s nuclear deterrent

Divided over Trident

The coalition is at odds over plans for new nuclear submarines

See article

Readers' comments



An independent missile system would do wonders for employment and scientific research. We have the know how in this country to build such a system on our own, and it would signal confidence in our own manufactures to do so. We would have over two decades to get it right, and could use the current system till then.

As for mistaking missiles, who would need to fear them other than those that make an enemy of the UK? As an old saying goes: "Knowledge is power" Sir Francis Bacon.

Germanambassador in reply to Cutters.

Clearly Britain has no choice but to strengthen its military capacities in a very decisive way.
Britain can not play always the first fiddle on the stage of world politics and dodge its international duties they owe to the rest of the world.
It is the fate of Britain to overtake together with France the defense of Europe and its worldwide interests.
The protection of the sea lanes all over the world is nothing but the exclusive duty of Britain and France.
Introducing compulsury service would indeed do wonders for employment.
So I never will understand why Britain is staying since ever and for so long always at the sideline when it comes up to their duties they owe.
Europe does not have much military capacities and so British and French capabilities are more important as ever before.
And both nations can look back on a very long experience.
Britain and France have more than enough resources if they only cut their social budgets and increase some taxes.


The whole British nation is shirking of its clear duties as council-member of its own attitude being one of the last super-powers on this planet.
Britain can not always play the first fiddle on the stage of world-politics and refuse to give its well owed contribution.
As a leading super-power on thuds planet it can be reasonably expected by the rest of the world that Britain has to sacrifice a little bit of its extreme wealth to its leading position they want to play.
Britain can reduce easily its huge and extremely generous social system and its extremely generous pay to its civil servants in favour of its international duties.
Cutting the highest pensions on this planet a little bit and the most generous medical and social care on this planet BRitain could easily give its contribution they deeply owe to the rest of the world.
Britain can not alway play over centuries the leading super-power and stay stingy since ever when they should give a contribution to their role which has been defended over centuries.
Cut the wages, arise the taxes to a normal level in Britain and stop luxury benefits just a little which are given to British for so land so generously and then Britain has more than enough money to buy hundreds of atomic submarines and aircraft carriers.
Britain has never been willing to bring any sacrifice according to their role they want to play.
The Americans had to pay for their military equipment in WW II and probably the Americans still are waiting for all their money.
Britain of today have to learn bringing just a little sacrifice in their unbelievable rich country that is floating everywhere in luxury and wealth.
If the British do not want to bring only little sacrifices they should step back into the 2nd or 3rd row and leave the security council immediately.

Germanambassador in reply to A. Andros

Just ask your politicians and your fellow-countrymen.
Each of them is sure that he belongs to the biggest superpower on this planet.
As I German I say, Britain is a super-power on the very same level as the USA and China.
Britain has the Union Jack and already the Union Jack makes them to a super-power:)


"this newspaper remains in favour" [of UK remaining IN nuclear-deterrence business]

Question: Do you think TE is war-mongering??
Raise your hand those who say YES.

Or maybe this kind of topics are too much for british journalism's reputation of impartialness...

Mr. Marcus

Nuclear detterent maintenance is predicated not on an analysis of a specific threat such as North Korea, Iran, a restrident Russia or others mentioned. The UK, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a NATO member is obliged to project credible hard power. We have neither the population base, finances, infrastructure nor political will to build a military capability sufficient to project a "Pax Britannicus" across the globe independent of our current obligations.

Now discussions about the UN and the Security Council are all perfectly fine. But understand this basic principle before all else.

Germanambassador in reply to Mr. Marcus

Britain has indeed an immense population base as well as all means fulfilling their damned duty as a super-power and as a member of the security council.
It is nothing but a shame that the USA have to give their contribution while Britain as a super- power is reducing anything.
If Britain only would re-introduce compulsory service for all its citizens they could contribute huge armies the same way as they did over centuries.
Britain can not always only take the benefits of a super-power and forget about its duties.
In a certain way also France has been neglecting over many years its duties as a superpower and leading nation on the continent.
France and Britain finally should fulfill their duties they were overtaking as members of the security council.
And both countries easily could spend much more on their armies and represent European interests on the world stage of politics as they have been doing over many centuries.
Being a super-power you have to pay a price for this position being always superior to the others.
So the rest of Europe is n oohing but waiting for Britain and France.
Both have to do their duty.

Mr. Marcus in reply to Germanambassador

Well the arm chair historian and General in me would love to take up your call, call up a conscription, spend what we spend on social security instead on defence (17% of government spending) and retake the empire. I think however the rest of the world might have something to say about it. Germany has approximately 20 million more citizens. The UK represents less than 1% of the global population.

If Europe is waiting on France and the UK to massively increase their military expenditure then conversely is not the rest of the EU waiting on Germany to open the purse strings and save the Euro?

Don't be so hasty to spend other people's ill gotten gains my friend or they might just return the favour.

Germanambassador in reply to Mr. Marcus

Germany is out of any game since more than 70 years. So the German pov is irrelevant however you want to see it.
Germany has not any kind of global interests and Germany is too weak playing any role on the stage of world politics and I hope this will stay for ever this like.
It is France and Britain as military and economic super-powers who have to bear the burden for the rest of Europe and its strategic interests.
The rules have been made over the last 70 years not in Berlin but exclusively in London and in Paris.
So the rest of Europe only can hope that Britain and France are fulfilling their duties for Europe.
Also it is not the job of Germany saving with their money the rest of Europe.
So you never can compare the extreme importance of Britain and France with the inferior part which Germany has been playing since WW II.
Germany has no duties in Europe because Germany never wanted to play an important part over the last 70 years.

Lacking Gravitas in reply to Mr. Marcus

The UK doesn't, but Europe as a whole does, and looked at that way I'm frankly surprised that Conservatives fight so tooth and claw against the EU: a more united Europe will leave the UK and other member states more protected by viture of Europe's sheer size

Mr. Marcus in reply to Lacking Gravitas

Agreed that from a military persepective a unified organisation with C&C and procurement centrally managed would yield benefits of scale that would put the EU back at the top of the league tables.

Your other comments demonstrate some lack of understanding on two points however. The first is that the Tories don't fight tooth and nail at every opportunity to break up or disrupt the EU. There are certain touch points, the "red lines" that will flair up any discussion. Britain is hardly alone in that. Mention the CAP and watch feathers ruffle for example. France has the most number of complaints from other member states against it.

Secondly discussions have been ongoing for a while under the auspices of an EU rapid reaction force. The UK has even mooted sharing one of the new QE class aircraft carriers. Granted that is mainly for budgetary reasons but then the fiscal side has shaped the nature of war for many a long year.

Lacking Gravitas in reply to Mr. Marcus

My comment was at least party influenced by a deep seated and probably irrational belief that Tories will without fail bang the isolationist, nationalist drum at the expense of pragmatism and European co-operation :P Nigel Farage pops into mind (yes I know he's not a tory, but the two look very similar to my liberal mind)
Germanambassador saying that the UK and France are superpowers that should step up seem strange to me, I think I agree with the Economist when it says we're (relatively speaking) declining great-mid powers (hence the new defence co-operation treaties and plans to share military equipment)
I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, but I'll say that a united EU would certantly be big and rich enough to see off any localised threats from Russia or Iran, and together with the US would probably be able to avoid China if it changes course and decides to go hegemonic later in the century
Ah, but that there were no need to talk about hard power in the 21st century

Cutters. in reply to Lacking Gravitas

Great Britain has a long history of being able to defend itself, and that is exactly what a deterrence is for. I see no reason to partner up others except in conflicts where the UK is having to project power.

The defence of the nation comes first and foremost, as today's friend can easily be tomorrows foe.


The Economist overlooks one huge advantage that a UK-developed cruise missile deterrent would have: it would be INDEPENDENT.

Our current nuclear deterrent is American: the warheads are developed jointly with the Americans (Aldermaston is operated by a consortium of 2 American companies and 1 from the UK) and the missiles are American. There will certainly be American physical control over the missile targeting - claims of "operational independence" are not credible. (What president would lease American missiles if they could be fired back at America?)

Trident is one half of the reason that the UK government is in hock to the US (the other being the flow of Echelon intelligence data that lands on our civil servants' desks every day, allegedly keeping them well-informed).

Independence would free our government from the need to align our foreign policy with that of the Americans. It would remove the obligation they feel to support the US military in its rash acts of vengeance such as Iraq. It would save them (and us) from the repressive consequences of new laws introducing secret court hearings, as these have been drafted at the Americans' behest. It might even result in them disallowing widespread American control of our media, with all the insidious effects that has had which we are now seeing at the Leveson inquiry.

In my opinion, all this is worth some extra cost. My vote would be in favour of Britain developing (not renewing, developing) an independent nuclear deterrent.

A. Andros in reply to theSkipper

England is a client state. Its patron for the last seventy years has been the USA. If it decides to become "independent" of American influence then it will have to look for another patron. China and India are unlikely to want the job so that leaves Germany.

Absent a strong patron, no one really cares where the U.K. "aligns its foreign policy." The only reason anyone listens to the Toothless Lion is because they know it has the phone number of the White House.

Cruise missiles are the technology of the 1960s and 1970s. Assuming the U.K. could deploy a force of such weapons by the end of this decade, it would then confront the world with technology almost a half-century old. Even Iran is in the process of developing cruise missiles. Is that what the U.K. is reduced to -- Parity with the Persians?

The U.K. gets a lot of mileage out of the English-language connection and the simple fact that Americans tend to like and trust Brits. The Germans are likely to be tad less sentimental (Hamburg, Dresden . . . and All That.)

England lost its empire and has at last found its role. And, that role is as an escort vessel for the American battleship. It is a clumsy battleship, sometimes, and its wake makes the poor destroyer bob about horribly. But, clumsy as it is, it packs an enormous amount of fire power and, best of all, has absolutely no ambitions in the U.K.'s neighborhood. Germany is not quite as large as the US -- more like one of its old pocket-battleships -- but it DOES want something and that "something" is domination on the Continent. Being one more corvette alongside the German behemoth is likely to be a queasy business.

Alexander A

It seems all those against renewing trident decry those who wish to replace it as being stuck in 'twentieth century mindsets' while they themselves can look no further forward than a few years at most. Rostbeef has said - in 2012 any aggressor wanting to nuke the UK will commit itself to a terrorist act, but we are not renewing trident for 2012. We are renewing it for the middle of this century. I am not merely saying that we cannot be sure of the future so better to be safe than sorry; we must respond to possible threats as their likelihood and severity suggest taking into consideration our ability to afford them, with competing demands on our resources.

This is why one must look no further than a world in which many nuclear states with many global interests compete and jockey for position in a highly uncertain world, for resources, alliances and security, as one can presume might be the case in the future (BRICs, Turkey, Argentina, Indonesia, Mexico, and the current Great Powers). I am not asserting that the UK might need nuclear weapons in the future; we may not. But it seems highly sensible to take this very affordable precaution for our country's future security against threats we either cannot foresee or the ones that we can dimly make-out in the distance as best we can baring in mind it was not one year before the Falklands invasion of 1982 that the UK saw no likely threat in that area.


Utter nonsense: irrelevant 20th century arguments.
In 2012, ANY aggressor wanting to explode a nuclear device on the UK will simply load it into a standard shipping container & import it "in plain sight" amongst the tens of thousands of identical containers passing through our ports: or even detonate it whilst still on board ship in our ports, rivers or coastal waters.
We will not know who attacked us & so could not make a response - even if we had the political will.
NO aggressor is going to spend millions developing rockets when they can simply ship a "box"
NO aggressor would today foolishly advertise their guilt by launching at us a certain-to-be-tracked rocket.
ALMOST ALL of those who hate the UK (enough to nuke us) are stateless groups lacking the installations / facilities to build or launch bombs or rockets: they'll just buy a bomb & courier it.
As usual, the MOD is gearing up to fight the last war, rather than for today. We have totally ignored the evidence/experience of the techniques used against the US in New York and elsewhere.
In short, Trident is a COMPLETE WASTE of taxpayers' money. It could NEVER be used: either we won't know who attacked us - or, should we guess, we will decline to nuke a country because a few radicals are hiding within its millions.
Still, never mind, just as long as Mandarins & Admirals can continue to look forward to cozy retirement posts at grateful defence companies.

awakeling in reply to rostbeef

The only reason that might stack up for having a nuclear capability is the Iran or Nort Korea play; as a way of detering the US or some other as yet undeveloped superpowerfrom stirring up some rebels, establishing a 'no fly' zone and going for regime change. Even if the UK discovered lots more oil, this all sounds very unlikely. The UK would be much better off out of the game.

rostbeef in reply to awakeling

"The UK would be much better off out of the game."
Yes. Almost EVERY other country in the world sleeps soundly at night without owning a nuclear umbrella.
Shift the billions wasted every year on 20th century style defence into things the UK NEEDS.
Stop interfering militarily in other countries: we do NOT understand them and in reality do NOT help them long term. The world is littered with countries struggling* today due to past colonisation / boundary drawing by our Evil Empire.

* usually because of ethnic conflict (the population of foreigners that were brought in en masse to work or to administer the colony) but sometimes also because British plantation policies ruined their agriculture by leaving them dependent on a single crop now unwanted/unprofitable (sugar cane, rubber).

"ANY aggressor wanting to explode a nuclear device... will simply load it into a standard shipping container & import it "in plain sight"... or even detonate it whilst still on board ship in our ports, rivers or coastal waters..."

Let me guess... By any chance you recently watched the film "The Sum of all Fears"?? (based on Tom Clancy's novel) ;)

But I guess the bottomline argument exposed both in your sentence and in the novel are pretty valid: < We shouldn't be really worried about countries that own hundreds of nukes, rather we should fear [terrorist] guys that own ONE >

Connect The Dots

I propose to halve the cost by pooling resources.

Combine a joint French-British deterrent mission exclusively for nuclear retaliation in the event of a nuclear attack on either country.

As joint NATO members, France and Britain are already committed to mutual defense and the obligations to wage war on each other's behalf.

Nuclear weapons used on the UK will undoubtedly affect the French mainland and vice versa. A nuclear strike at Portsmouth is just miles from France.

The UK and France are already integrating carrier task force operations. Submarines will be less complicated than an air wing and 10,000 sailors on deck.

A very good idea that France and Britain were starting a close cooperation.
It could and should be much closer because both nations have the same goals and both nations are still super-powers and members of the the security council.
It is the unalterable destiny of France and Britain to overtake the defense of the rest of Europe and to defend the interests of the rest of Europe in the world.
Libya was an excellent example and so Britain and France should continue and intensivate.
And having a very similar mentality and a close friendship over centuries an extremely close cooperation of both superpowers would make them to an asset for the rest of Europe.
It is the time that Brits and French are serving in mixed units because this would enforce their military capacities enormously.


No article on Trident should ignore the threat to the base at Faslane should Scotland vote for independence. The SNP are committed to close it, and many experts believe there is nowhere else in the UK capable of hosting the subs. Even if somewhere could be found, the cost would be astronomical.



Products and events


Take our weekly news quiz to stay on top of the headlines

