Nowhere To Run

By Bill Sweetman

Source: Defense Technology International

http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/DT_04_01_2012_p04-440383.xml&p=1

Apart from beer, one area where the U.K. outclasses the U.S. is in antinuclear-weapon activists. The U.S. has mostly gray-ponytailed, Chomsky-spouting relics, while the U.K. Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and activists are a fount of useful data on British nuclear weapon programs, and, by association, U.S. developments.

A new paper by CND's John Ainslie looks at a thorny question on the horizon: What happens to the U.K.'s nuclear deterrent, wholly reliant on Trident-armed submarines (SSBNs), if Scotland becomes independent? (This is a real possibility, with a referendum planned for 2014.)

HMNB Clyde, on Scotland's west coast and 25 mi. from Glasgow, has been the home of the U.K. SSBN force since its inception and is the homeport for the Astute submarine class. It comprises the Faslane dockyard and the Coulport armaments depot. The latter is designed to deal with the risks inherent in handling missiles (each with propellant equivalent to 70 tons of TNT) and nuclear warheads.

Ainslie concentrates on the sites that were considered at the start of the U.K. Polaris program in 1963 and dismisses any “greenfield” sites as politically impossible. The 1963 candidates were on the “Celtic fringe” of the U.K.—Scotland, Wales and Cornwall—because other locations required long transits to reach Atlantic patrol stations.

Devonport (on the Devon-Cornwall line) would be a logical choice, Ainslie says. It is already a major Royal Navy base and hosts older SSN classes. The difficulty is replicating Coulport. Using the site contemplated for Polaris in 1963 would mean obliterating a village and swallowing up Antony House, a National Trust property. In any case, the chances that the depot could be built just across the Tamar River from Plymouth, with a population of a quarter-million, are zero.

Ainslie dismisses other candidates. Security restrictions at Falmouth would wipe out much of the area's tourist industry by driving away pleasure boats. A split operation, with the subs at Devonport and the weapons at Falmouth, would do the same without the compensation of new employment. Barrow, a nuclear-qualified site where SSBNs and SSNs are built, is a nonstarter: shallow waters mean that submarines can enter and exit only at high tide.

Even overseas sites—in the U.S. or France—have been considered. The U.K. Defense Ministry “might be tempted to think that they could save money by using American or French facilities,” Ainslie writes. “However, if they are to comply with the [Non-Proliferation] Treaty, they would have to construct duplicate buildings.” Reproducing Coulport on the French coast is another nonstarter; while U.S. basing would further erode the concept—Ainslie calls it a myth, anyway—of U.K. nuclear independence.

The 2006 defense white paper that confirmed the SSBN as the foundation for the U.K.'s future deterrent did not mention Scotland once. That may turn out to have been unfortunate.

—Bill Sweetman