Dead nuclear trigger storage
There’s a remarkable consistency from defence experts when it comes to the question of the relocation of the UK’s nuclear “deterrent” in the event of Scottish independence. Time and again, when anyone who isn’t a politician is asked the question, they give the same answer: it can’t be done.
The latest is Sir David Omand, a man described by the Scotsman today as “Tony Blair’s spymaster”. The former head of GCHQ offered the view that “I don’t see a feasible alternative site at reasonable cost. My fear is that it would precipitate the UK out of the nuclear business”, adding his weight to an opinion previously expressed by the former First Sea Lord, Admiral Lord West and other “senior military sources”.
That opinion is curiously at odds with that of most Unionist politicians – particularly Labour ones who insist that independence would merely move Trident “a couple of hundred miles down the M74” and therefore not make any significant contribution to global nuclear disarmament (and therefore be pointless). It’s easy to see why they would make that claim while trying to defend the Union. It’s rather harder to see why the various defence experts would have to gain from lying about it.
More remarkable still, though, is the second part of the Scotsman’s piece on Sir David, in which he’s quoted by the paper as saying “it should be made clear to Scots that before any referendum that the government of an independent Scotland would be forced to cover the cost of any removal of Trident.”
It’s a suggestion rather akin to if you’d let someone park their car on your driveway as a favour in return for them occasionally picking up some shopping for you in it. Then you decide you’d rather rip up the driveway and have a nice front garden (and get your own shopping in future), but your acquaintance demands that YOU pay to have the car towed away and to build them a new garage to keep it in.
We don’t think those negotiations would last long, do you?
It can’t be assumed that an independent Scotland would require the removal of Nuclear weapons. The Scottish Parliament would have to make the decision surely.
I look forward to the debate! Trident or universal benefits. Over to you JoLa.
Yesterday’s Sunday Express rather contradicts the “remarkable consistency from defence experts” to which you refer.
“WHITEHALL is secretly preparing a contingency plan to move the UK’s nuclear arsenal south of the Border if Scotland votes for independence, it was claimed last night.”
PLAN B WILL TAKE NUCLEAR SUBS TO DEVON
The piece says “it was claimed”, but doesn’t say who actually claimed it. It goes on to add “the MoD yesterday insisted there was no secret contingency plan”.
Ah the fear of “what will we do with our nuclear toys?” you can almost smell it wafting up from Westminster.
Rather than openly admit that their nuke toys will be a problem for them they try and make out it will be Scotland’s problem. This sort of reasoning has never worked in the past so like everything else Independence related Westminster is barking up the wrong tree, as per usual.Rather than openly admit what everyone else knows Westminster tries and fails to push the blame,cost etc of removing the nukes from Faslane and Coulport onto Scotland. If they ever want to see why we will not be paying for the removal of all the nukes from Scotland they only need look over to Russia and see who paid for the removal of nukes from the former states of the USSR when they became Independent.
RevStu – I know that the MOD keeps insisting that there is no planning for Scottish independence, but when I read the Express article about more nuclear submarine pens being constructed in Devon, I immediately thought of plausible deniability. Lord West in his evidence to the Economic Affairs Committee of the House of Lords said that if he had still been in charge, he would have set up a black ops team to deal with the issue of Trident. Maybe someone else had the same idea?
The Nuke negotiations are likely to be reasonably swift – Westminster knows it, the MOD know it and the press must be aware of it too.
The following link is a story covered in the herald some months ago now, it is relevant to this story and has other links including the MOD. Further probing required, but if Scotland is happy to give up trident then there is much to be cleaned up. Perhaps Portsmouth can take the old subs sitting in Rosyth, thereby giving them work. The Scots yards on the Clyde will stay as they have the knowledge and skills to build ships which Portmouth do not have – Food for thought.
link to robedwards.com
The issue as I understand it isn’t the hosting and maintenance of the subs which with some work could be done in Barrow or Devon. The difficulty is the storage of the warheads near to the Subs, there needs to be proximity so its simple and secure to extract and load the weapons.Therefore its entirely possible they can replace Faslane but not so easily Coulport which is the weapons storage area.
I wouldn’t personally bet my mortgage on Scotland being rid of Trident in the first couple of years….
“I wouldn’t personally bet my mortgage on Scotland being rid of Trident in the first couple of years”
No, absolutely not. As we’ve explored previously, Coulport is basically irreplaceable, certainly in the short term, and the subs will represent a massive bargaining chip for Scotland if the UK is determined to hold onto them (which it is). The practical outcome will very likely be an agreement to keep them where they are for several years, for which the Scottish Government will extract huge concessions while still securing a concrete date for their removal.
I’ve just had an outside of the box thinking moment.
Am I right in thinking that once Scotland becomes Independent would the rUK not be required by the International nuclear disarmament treaty that the UK, and post Independence the rUK, is a signatory of to remove all its nukes from a foreign country, namely Scotland.
Surely this International requirement would supersede any requirement from Holyrood and could not be ignored by rUK. Failure to comply with this International treaty requirement would put the rUK in complete opposition to the nuclear non proliferation treaty that it is a signatory of and result no doubt in major questions being asked of the rUK.
Beware the Black Ops Rev Stu. Consider:
Following independence the Scottish government, plausibly SNP, reasonably negotiates with the rUK a departure date of a few years for Trident and the weapons at Coulport. The rUK government then sets about undermining the Scottish government and covertly supports a friendly political party that would be agreeable to Trident remaining in Scotland.
The UK has had plenty of time to plan the logistics of removing Trident and Coulport weaponry, and plenty of skills and experience of Black Ops. I wouldn’t budge on immediate removal. Our bargaining chip would be that we are independent. No bargaining chip perks please for agreeing a delay, just go.What could Westminster offer? Some of their borrowed money?
Westminster cannot be trusted. history shows that only too well.
The Scots nation and public bodies for decades have wanted Trident removed. Westminster’s response? So what.
Now it seems fracking for shale gas and coal gas is to be visited upon the densely populated Central Belt of Scotland.
Earth tremors? water table contamination? Potential related sickness from the toxic chemicals used? So what.
Who is behind and funding Dart the mining company?
Does Scotland want this gas extraction fracking to proceed? Have we been asked?
What progress in decontaminating Dalgety Bay? Has the MOD agreed to fund the work yet?
England will pursue England’s needs irrespective of the considerations of others if she is allowed.
Omand’s evidence is available at link to parliamentlive.tv He’s in the second part of the session (there were just two parts, not three as the blurb says) starting at about 15:54:00. That but of the session lasts 45 minutes, so it wanders around a bit covering nukes, NATO and various “usual suspects”.
As RevStu says, Omand’s comments on Faslane aren’t unique, or even terribly well thought out. If you want to hear about on Faslane and nukes you’d be better off with the first half of that video where Professors Chalmers and Walker reprise their long-running double act. What Omand and Mottram do talk about that hasn’t been covered in previous evidence to HoC or HoL committees is spying. I wasn’t very convinced by what they had to say, not least because the witnesses and committee seem to exaggerate the expense and difficulty enormously.
At one point Rory Stewart MP asserts that it would cost billions to set up a Scottish GCHQ. If all you wanted was to monitor domestic communications – rather than trying to cover Pakistan and Yemen and who-knows-where else as GCHQ do – that would be relatively simple and cheap. The New Zealand equivalent of GCHQ costs about £30 million a year to run. Not a huge amount of money relation to our 2013-2014 policing budgets of £1.2 billion. Foreign MI5-equivalents also tend to be fairly cheap, perhaps £80-90 million in Austria and Denmark and maybe half of that in Norway and New Zealand. (At a guess, the main reason why Austria and Denmark spend a lot more than Norway and NZ is that those budgets are for the equivalent of MI5 and GCHQ, not just MI5.)
Anyway, even if sitting through all these evidence sessions is asking a bit much of RevStu (or even of the so-called quality press), hopefully folks from the SNP and the Yes campaign are watching and taking notes.
The most interesting thing that Omand had to say came right at the end, as the chairman was trying to wind things up (16:39:40 onwards): “Can I just make a very final point, which is to draw attention to the distinction between nationhood and statehood. We’ve been discussing an independent state for Scotland, but you could have an independent nation within a federated United Kingdom and avoid all the problems that we’ve been discussing this afternoon.” I’m surprised that the Scotsman, generally among the cheerleaders for federal devo-jam-tomorrow didn’t lead on that comment.
Arbroath1320 says:”Am I right in thinking that once Scotland becomes Independent would the rUK not be required by the International nuclear disarmament treaty that the UK, and post Independence the rUK, is a signatory of to remove all its nukes from a foreign country, namely Scotland.”
It would depend, I suppose. If we “separate” from the UK, then yes we wouldn’t be liable for the nukes, or the debt, or anything else from UK treaties and would in turn get not a lot either. If we gain “independence” and the Act of Union is overturned, then wouldn’t we be responsible for these treaties too? We will be a successor state. We might not be allowed to send them to the rUK.
To me, the best and most honourable thing to do is keep “our percentage” of the nukes, send the rest to the rUK and then get the UN (or whoever) in and get them decommissioned, get them really gone. If we just send all the nukes down south, it doesn’t mean there’s any less nukes in the world, just less in Scotland. If we keep our bit, we CAN ACTUALLY make sure there ARE LESS nuclear weapons in the world. Now there’s a “radical” idea.
Velofello I am in total agreement with you on the fracking. What lunatic could think that somewhere as energy rich as Scotland would resort to this. Having seen some of the you tube videos about it, it’s quite frightening.
Alex McI: The lunatics appear to be the usual Westminster based suspects. Check out the report on NewsnetScotland and the links provided by bloggers.
Its the same old story.
Personally, I’m thinking a good few at Westminster might be pleased at the prospect of not having to renew trident; will cost an arm and a leg after all, and for what purpose? Scottish independence would provide a convenient excuse for it to fall by the wayside. Neither of the big/only three want to be the first to come out of the closet though.
Britain is very, very far from the power it once was and is soon to come to an end. There are some with heads on shoulders down there that recognise this, hard as that may be to believe at times.
I don’t know why these defence people say nonsense such as “Scotland will have to pay”. Their remit is defence, not finance. They get given a budget, and they spend it. It’s clear with only a moment’s thought that as far as any financial settlements are concerned, they’ll have input to valuations and costs of the split up, in much the same way as the foreign office will, DWP and others, but are exceedingly unlikely to be involved in the overall financial negotiating team.
Basically it comes down to Cameron and Salmond to OK the final package, and that’s an overall figure of £1.8 trillion or whatever to or from whoever. Simple as that.
MOD will have input for timing, and I’d bet my bottom dollar they will want as quick as possible, just in case hard-liners get into government in 2016 or after. If I was MOD I damn sure would want my nukes under my control, not some damn untrustworthy, potentially hostile, load of SNP and CND freaks and misfits, extreme probably Martians, and damn unsound chappies at that. They’re just not British you know, probably reds under the bed.
Whoops, perhaps I’m taking this empathy thing too far
Apart from all that, the LIberals want an Astute version of Trident, rather than new expensive subs. I agree, though the current limitation is range – Tomahawk about 1200 miles compared with 17,000 of the full Trident. It being a Liberal idea, that makes it perhaps upalatable for Tories and Labour, but perhaps in a couple of years Tomahawk will have a better range, 2000 – 3000 miles would be better.
There’s a cost involved in that, I’m not sure whether currently nuke warheads can be fitted to Tomahawks, but I daresay a few hundred billion would do the job – cheaper than 4 shiny new S class subs. And it has the advantage of having – with 4 more Astute – a potential nuclear fleet of maybe 15 or 16 subs, and who would know which of them was fitted with nukes?
As for the warheads:
1). Dispose of the redundant ones
2). Store them in the US – they’re repaired there already.
Two years could do the job, and if plan B isn’t already totally updated and ready to go, in fact in progress already, the whole of the defence staff and the MOD should be sacked on the spot, because they’re not looking after the UK security – currently yours and mine – very well. Yes, and THAT’s the story the MSM should be carrying.
If we can’t find a land base for the warheads, perhaps a deal can be cut with the captain of The World (the cruise ship permanent residence for the tax avoiding mega rich) to store them in the ship’s hold. Business is business.
@Craig P: That’s a perfectly reasonable plan. The US Navy kept their missiles and warheads on ships like this one – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Simon_Lake_%28AS-33%29 – when their ballistic missile submarines were based at the Holy Loch.
Of course there’s a contingency plan.
Kings Bay…..the nuclear sub facility on the East Coast of the USof A.
The British sub-marine fleet already use it, in fact we have a permanent facility and deployment of military personnel there.
The US were considering closing it down until recently….but that plan has been shelved for the time being.