Pro Nuclear Disarmament Think Tank Recommends Britain Keep its Trident Missile Deterent

A three-year review of the United Kingdom's (UK's) nuclear deterrent by an influential, and pro-disarmament, think tank has concluded that it should keep its current Trident missile-based system.

However, the review from the Trident Commission recommended reducing the number of nuclear warheads used, and proposed the UK reconsider maintaining a continuous at-sea deterrence (CASD) in conjunction with the United States or France, instead of running it independently.

The commission was against the UK keeping nuclear weapons as "a general insurance against an uncertain future", but said they should be retained if there was "more than a negligible chance" that their possession "might play a decisive future role in the defence of the United Kingdom and its allies, in preventing nuclear blackmail, or in affecting the wider security context within which the UK sits."

The Trident Commission comprises two former defence secretaries - Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Lord Browne - as well as Lord Guthrie, former Chief of the Defence Staff, and Sir Jeremy Greenstock, a former UK ambassador to the United Nations, although its report carries no official weight. The commission was formed by the British American Security Council (BASIC), a think-tank dedicated to nuclear disarmament.

The report came out against developing alternative platforms and delivery systems with new warheads "simply on the basis of possible but speculative cost savings".

The commission found there were only three possible decisive uses for the UK's nuclear deterrent. Firstly, if there was a re-emergence of a nuclear threat from an aggressive state that also possessed "overwhelming" conventional forces, such as Russia.

Secondly, if an existing or emerging nuclear armed state gained global reached and entered into "direct strategic competition with the UK".

And thirdly, if a "future massive overwhelming" force emerged, involving weapons of mass destruction that were being used to threaten the UK. This would be deterred by the UK's possession of nuclear weapons.

The commission estimates that the full cost of the Trident deterrent would account for 9-10% of the UK's defence budget, but this would fall to a smaller proportion by the 2020s as defence spending rises.

It said further reductions to the number of warheads used by the deterrent system, currently numbering 40 at sea and fewer than 120 deployed, was possible "without compromising its credibility".

The commission added that the UK's close security relationship with the US "is critical to the maintenance of our nuclear programme", and said that if the US withdrew its co-operation "the UK nuclear capability would probably have a life expectancy measured in months rather than years".

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