Trident
Friday 23rd April, 2010 23:55 Comments: 0
I'm not going to debate whether we need Trident (it's nice to have, but I can understand the perceived hypocrisy), but I will go over the points made by this BBC News article.
Opponents of Britain's nuclear weapons system claim the full cost of replacing and running the Trident system on a like-for-like basis, as both Labour and the Conservatives have pledged to do, will be between £80bn and £100bn in total. That works out at around £2bn pounds per year over the system's expected lifetime of 40 years, or some 5% of the annual defence budget, which currently stands at £38bn a year.
So it's expensive, but it's only 5% of the annual defence budget.
British governments have studied three times whether there are cheaper ways than Trident (or its predecessor) of achieving the same aims, but each study concluded that this type of system provided the most credible and reliable nuclear weapon.
Despite these conclusions, the Lib Dems want to go for a different option.
Trident's ballistic missiles have a long range, of up to 7,500 miles. One alternative that has been suggested is using cruise missiles based on different submarines. However, cruise missiles have a far shorter range, of over 1,000 miles, and are slower and more vulnerable to being shot down.
It's not a huge deterrent if it can be shot down before it reaches its target (assuming it can even reach its target).
Dr Lee Willett, head of Maritime Studies Programme at the defence and security think-tank Royal United Services Institute [...] says a cruise missile has significant consequences in terms of cost, as there is no hypersonic long-range cruise missile on the market - so Britain would have to look at developing one at great expense.
So we might be able to create a cruise missile with a similar range, but it would be expensive to develop (and could therefore cost more).
Others have suggested using a land-based delivery system, to avoid the cost of building new submarines. But that has been rejected in the past as too vulnerable to attack - and impractical on these crowded islands.
You could argue that we have nuclear power plants on this crowded island, so why not stick the missiles on land? I still think it's safer and more effective to have a submarine. I don't know how much it would cost to build something on land that could be protected from attack (but to give a very rough idea, a nuclear power plant costs £2-2.5 billion, so I'd expect it to be a bit more than that), but I'd guess that the cost of a submarine (in 2006 it was estimated at £11-14 billion for four Trident submarines, so just over £3 billion per submarine) isn't too different (might even be cheaper?), and the more nuclear material that's not stored on land the safer we'll be. It's presumably much harder for a terrorist to find and break into a submarine than do so on land.
Some say it would be cheaper to launch missiles from a long-range aircraft. However, the shorter range would again be an issue - and the aircraft could be brought down. The White Paper also examined having a large surface ship that could launch Trident missiles, but judged that the vessel would be too easy to detect.
So Trident, in its current form, appears to be the best approach. Considering how the Lib Dems (and Conservatives) frequently criticise the government for not having the right equipment (despite Labour apearing to suggest that it was a temporary imbalance caused by a change in tactics by the terrorists), it seems odd to go the route where we could end up at a huge weaponry disadvantage.
Opponents of Britain's nuclear weapons system claim the full cost of replacing and running the Trident system on a like-for-like basis, as both Labour and the Conservatives have pledged to do, will be between £80bn and £100bn in total. That works out at around £2bn pounds per year over the system's expected lifetime of 40 years, or some 5% of the annual defence budget, which currently stands at £38bn a year.
So it's expensive, but it's only 5% of the annual defence budget.
British governments have studied three times whether there are cheaper ways than Trident (or its predecessor) of achieving the same aims, but each study concluded that this type of system provided the most credible and reliable nuclear weapon.
Despite these conclusions, the Lib Dems want to go for a different option.
Trident's ballistic missiles have a long range, of up to 7,500 miles. One alternative that has been suggested is using cruise missiles based on different submarines. However, cruise missiles have a far shorter range, of over 1,000 miles, and are slower and more vulnerable to being shot down.
It's not a huge deterrent if it can be shot down before it reaches its target (assuming it can even reach its target).
Dr Lee Willett, head of Maritime Studies Programme at the defence and security think-tank Royal United Services Institute [...] says a cruise missile has significant consequences in terms of cost, as there is no hypersonic long-range cruise missile on the market - so Britain would have to look at developing one at great expense.
So we might be able to create a cruise missile with a similar range, but it would be expensive to develop (and could therefore cost more).
Others have suggested using a land-based delivery system, to avoid the cost of building new submarines. But that has been rejected in the past as too vulnerable to attack - and impractical on these crowded islands.
You could argue that we have nuclear power plants on this crowded island, so why not stick the missiles on land? I still think it's safer and more effective to have a submarine. I don't know how much it would cost to build something on land that could be protected from attack (but to give a very rough idea, a nuclear power plant costs £2-2.5 billion, so I'd expect it to be a bit more than that), but I'd guess that the cost of a submarine (in 2006 it was estimated at £11-14 billion for four Trident submarines, so just over £3 billion per submarine) isn't too different (might even be cheaper?), and the more nuclear material that's not stored on land the safer we'll be. It's presumably much harder for a terrorist to find and break into a submarine than do so on land.
Some say it would be cheaper to launch missiles from a long-range aircraft. However, the shorter range would again be an issue - and the aircraft could be brought down. The White Paper also examined having a large surface ship that could launch Trident missiles, but judged that the vessel would be too easy to detect.
So Trident, in its current form, appears to be the best approach. Considering how the Lib Dems (and Conservatives) frequently criticise the government for not having the right equipment (despite Labour apearing to suggest that it was a temporary imbalance caused by a change in tactics by the terrorists), it seems odd to go the route where we could end up at a huge weaponry disadvantage.