Ousted
defence minister Nick Harvey claims military and Whitehall backing for cheaper
alternatives
The
government's review of the future of the Trident submarine nuclear missile
system is likely to suggest a significant downgrading of the UK's nuclear
deterrent, including the possibility of locking the warheads "in a
cupboard" for delayed launch only after several weeks of mounting
international tension.
The
revelation was made by Sir Nick Harvey, the Liberal Democrat who was the
defence minister leading the review until the government reshuffle this month.
The MP for North Devon said he believed the policy could get support in
Whitehall and from senior military figures and Labour.
Harvey
said past policy on Trident had been dictated by the 1980s view that the only
deterrent to a nuclear attack from the then Soviet Union was the belief that
the UK could "flatten Moscow" in retaliation. This led to the UK
building Trident and having at least one armed submarine at sea every hour of
every day since.
Speaking
in detail about the Trident review for the first time since he was sacked as
minister, Harvey said: "If you can just break yourself out of that frankly
almost lunatic mindset for a second, all sorts of alternatives start to look
possible, indeed credible."
He
continued: "The Russia of the 21st century – economically diverse, vaguely
democratic, but definitely a very different sort of place from where it was in
1980 – might find all sorts of damage to be unacceptable short of flattening
Moscow.
"Therefore
to convince ourselves that the only point of having any deterrent at all is the
capability of flattening Moscow is the wrong and distorting lens through which
to view the debate."
Instead
of replacing Trident with a like-for-like 24-hour nuclear armed submarine
presence at sea after the current system is due to be taken out of service in
2028, cheaper alternatives are being considered. These range from stepping down
the patrols, to designing missiles to be launched from aircraft, surface navy
ships or land, to a delayed launch system.
The
delayed-launch model would involve developing a nuclear warhead for a cruise
missile that could be launched from existing Astute submarines, Harvey said,
"but having perfected that technology simply put it away in a cupboard and
keep it as a contingency in case there ever were to be a deterioration in the
global security picture that might need the UK government to take it out of the
cupboard".
In this
situation, the UK would store the warheads in a secure military location, from
where they could be removed, put on the tip of a missile and put to sea within
weeks or months.
Challenged
as to why the review did not consider nuclear disarmament, Harvey said: "I
think you might struggle to persuade the British public to do that, but I think
you might persuade them to go down to the penultimate step: you keep something
for a rainy day, but putting it away and not having it as part of your everyday
activity."
Harvey
told a fringe debate at the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton that the
idea of moving "down the nuclear ladder" had support across all three
armed services: the army, the Royal Navy and the RAF.
He said
one reason for growing support for the review's alternatives was a
"perfect storm" of defence capital costs around 2020, including
building the new joint strike fighter aircraft and Type 26 frigates, a new
generation of unmanned aircraft, and amphibious craft for the navy.
The
army, he said, was "driving around in vehicles which are literally about
to fall to pieces".
If
defence ministers in 2020 were not to be put in an impossible position, the
defence ministers of the next couple of years would have to take the necessary
decisions to avert a crisis.
He said:
"Believe you me there are very senior figures of all three services who
are highly aware of that perfect storm of these costs, who don't believe the
Treasury is going suddenly ride to their rescue with a cheque and who are
asking, 'Is the opportunity cost of having another generation of nuclear
weapons too high, in terms of of what it would prevent us doing on other
fronts?'"
He
added: "I can't say with certainty how they [military chiefs] will
respond, but a number of them made the point to me to not portray it [the
report] in such a political and party way that you don't create the space for
some of us to support you and try and help."
It was
not impossible that the review could get support from the Whitehall security
sector, said Harvey, who was also hopeful that Labour, or parts of the party,
would support the review's conclusion.
He
added: "The UK national security strategy no longer even identifies the
nuclear menace as a tier one threat."
In a
sign of the potential political row brewing over Trident, John Woodcock, the
Labour MP for Barrow in Furness, where new Trident subs would be built, this
week accused the Lib Dems of being in a "hopeless muddle" over the
issue.
"The
Lib Dems are either cosmically ill-informed or seeking to pull the wool over
the eyes of many thousands whose jobs depend on a thriving shipyard," he
said.
Harvey's
response was that creating jobs in Barrow should be the last consideration.
"The idea that you should produce weapons of mass destruction in order to
keep 1,500 jobs going in the Barrow shipyard is palpably ludicrous. We could
give them all a couple of million quid and send them to the Bahamas for the
rest of their lives , and the world would be a much better place, and we would
have saved a lot of money," he said.
"I
had wanted my legacy to be bringing the UK down the nuclear ladder," added
Harvey, who was knighted after his dismissal in the reshuffle.
However,
Professor Malcolm Chalmers, research director at the defence think-tank Royal
United Services Institute (RUSI), raised concerns about possible savings by
scrapping a Trident replacement, saying he was not yet convinced by the
figures.
"If
you end up going for an option which steps down the ladder but you don't save
any money it's a political non-starter," he said.
The
review was made part of the coalition agreement between the Lib Dems and the
Conservatives after the 2010 election because the two parties disagreed
strongly on the issue. After Labour decided in 2007 to replace Trident with a
like-for-like system, the Lib Dems went into the 2010 general election opposing
that policy while the Tories supported it.
The
review is now being headed by Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the
Treasury, who is a Lib Dem.
