The four horsemen still loom

Back in the mid-1980s, CND was at its zenith and over a million peopled marched in London against nuclear weapons. In those heady days we truly believed we would see the end of trident and cruise missiles. But something went wrong.

Twenty-five years later we are still sitting on a nuclear arsenal and it is clear the vast majority have come to terms with the fact that we hold weapons of mass destruction on bases here in the UK. This is despite the moral issues or the economic costs.

Trident itself is now getting old and many have called for its replacement. The recent strategic review critically explored the costs of replacement and concluded:

 Trident replacement, particularly given its dependence for the provision of missiles and missile launch technology on US-based contractors, will cost more jobs than it will generate
 The cost of replacement, in the context of the existing crisis of the defence budget, will mean that a number of defence programmes scheduled for British industry over the coming decade will either be cancelled or significantly reduced
 The most vulnerable programmes, both from the impact of Trident costs and the overall budget reduction, are in the areas of surface ships, jet fighters, helicopters and armoured vehicles as well as the servicing of airbases and dockyards. The cancellation of such programmes will endanger in excess of 10,000 jobs and is likely to result in the closure of major workplaces
 The difficulty of reconciling the cost of Trident replacement with existing capital spending commitments is, as in past years in similar circumstances, likely to result in the Defence budget being overspent and hence impacting adversely on other government expenditure for public and social services
 The vulnerability to employment loss as a result of Trident’s non-replacement will be most acute in Barrow-in-Furness and to a lesser extent in AWE Aldermaston and Burghfield.

This led to intense debate about whether we can afford to replace Trident, particularly when our deficit problems are so intense and all departments are facing extremely painful austerity measures.

The plan to replace Trident was set out in the White Paper “The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent” in December 2006. Expenditure on this was projected to be £200 million in 2008/09, £300 million in 2009/10 and £400 million in 2010/11. A report by the National Audit Office showed that in 2009/10 £39 million was allocated to concept work on the submarine platform and £64 million for the reactor. Around 150 designers and engineers are currently working at Barrow on the new submarine. Additional staff are employed by Rolls Royce and in the US. A Common Missile Compartment is being developed in America for the proposed British submarine and the US Ohio-replacement. Initial costs were borne entirely by the UK. Further costs over the next few years will be shared.

Although detailed annual costs are not available, the picture is one of an increasing workload and therefore of rising costs each year from 2010 until the peak in the second half of the decade. The projected annual expenditure on nuclear weapons of £2.1 billion is likely to rise to £2.5 billion shortly and then to around £3 billion by 2014. When the House of Commons debated the issue of Trident replacement in 2007, it did so on the assumption that the capital cost of the new equipment would be no more than £20 billion and that it would not come out of the defence budget. This £20 billion did not include the running costs of either the present or successor system or the disposal costs of nuclear waste and contamination. Their inclusion took the bill to at least the £80 billion cited by Lord Bramall. It is now becoming clear that the £20 billion capital cost was itself an underestimate. Public Accounts Committee recommendations included in the MoD’s 2010 Consolidated Resource Accounts draw attention to the submarine’s dependence ‘on a number of monopoly suppliers’ and the need to take action to prevent an escalation of costs. They also highlight the dependence on ‘an American supplied missile compartment’ and that the UK programme is running ahead of the United States’ programme presenting the danger of costly design problems for other aspects of the submarine.

Overall the ultimate capital cost of Trident replacement is therefore likely to be moving towards £30 billion (of which in excess of £2 billion will not be spent in Britain) – as against a lifetime saving of up to £100bn if the whole Trident programme were to be phased out.

Never mind the moral factors here – how can any government legitimise this kind of spending when they are facing a deficit of approximately £160bn? Scrapping Trident alone would save 2/3rds of the deficit at a stroke.

It just doesn’t make sense as seems to suggest that despite the fact we are a small nation, those in power want to make sure we can ‘play with the big boys’. Well, let’s be clear here – if any of those big boys wanted to take control of our country they could at a stroke. The threat will not come from nuclear weapons and it probably would not be chemicals either - both of those would cause mass contamination and could even be carried on the winds to infect their countries as well as ours.

No, the most obvious threat will come through cyberspace – Nuclear or non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NNEMP) bombs, viruses, worms, and hacking. If the governments IT system collapsed totally today its entire infrastructure would be at a standstill. It would affect all communication – our road, rail, sea and air transport systems. Our military option would be highly limited as so much depends on computers. Even our industrial strength is largely dependant on the use of IT.

Any external threat to this country could then just walk in, take control and enjoy the full wealth of the nation without a single loss of life and with the economic infrastructure fundamentally intact once the computer systems are brought back online.

As Libya, Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern countries erupt; we must resurrect the movement for peace. The anti-Iraq war demonstrations show that the British people have not lost their commitment to opposing wars and fighting to eliminate the nuclear threat. But unless governments are brought to heal they will continue to build large-scale WMDs.

A generation ago we thought we had done the job – we hadn’t, the weapons stayed and we gave in. Now another generation face the risk of mass genocide on a level barely conceivable. We cannot afford to let them down.