United Kingdom The
United Kingdom was the third country to test an independently developed nuclear weapon in October 1952. It is one of the five "Nuclear Weapons States" (NWS) under the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the UK ratified in 1968. The UK is currently thought to retain a weapons stockpile of around 200 operational
nuclear warheads.
Since the
1958 US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement, the US and UK have cooperated extensively on nuclear security matters. The so-called
special relationship between the two countries has involved the exchange of classified scientific information and nuclear materials such as
plutonium. Britain has not run an independent weapons delivery programme since the cancellation of the
Blue Streak missile in the 1960s, instead pursuing joint development of American delivery systems, designed and manufactured by
Lockheed Martin, and fitting them with warheads designed and manufactured by the UK's
Atomic Weapons Research Establishment and its successor the Atomic Weapons Establishment.
In contrast with the other permanent members of the
United Nations Security Council, the United Kingdom currently operates only a single nuclear deterrent system since decommissioning its tactical
WE.177 free-falling nuclear bombs in 1998. The present system consists of four
Vanguard class submarines armed with up to 16
Trident missiles, which each carry nuclear warheads in up to 8
MIRVs, performing both
strategic and
sub-strategic deterrence roles.
While a firm decision has yet to be taken on the replacement of the UK's nuclear deterrent the manufacturer of the UK's warheads,
AWE, is currently undertaking research which is largely dedicated to providing new warheads
Number of warheads Different sources give the number of test explosions that the UK has conducted as either 44 having passed the necessary legislation on
18 March 1998 as the Nuclear Explosions (Prohibition and Inspections) Act 1998.
Weapons tests Nuclear defence See also: Four minute warning, RAF Fylingdales, Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, and National Missile Defense The UK has relied on the
Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) and, in later years,
Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites for warning of a nuclear attack. Both of these systems are owned and controlled by the United States, although the UK has joint control over UK based systems. One of the four component radars for the BMEWS is based at
RAF Fylingdales in
North Yorkshire.
In 2003 the British government stated that it will consent to a request from the US to upgrade the radar at Fylingdales for use in the US
National Missile Defense system.
Warning systems During the
cold war a significant effort by government and academia was made to assess the effects of a nuclear attack on Britain. A major government exercise,
Square Leg, was held in September 1980 and involved around 130 warheads with a total yield of 200 megatons. This is probably the largest attack that the apparatus of the nation state could survive in some limited form. Observers have speculated that an actual exchange would be much larger with one academic describing a 200 megaton attack as an "extremely low figure and one which we find very difficult to take seriously".
Attack scenarios Main articles: civil defence and Protect and Survive Civil defence See also History of nuclear weapons Weapons programmes Main articles: Tube Alloys and Manhattan Project Tube Alloys and Manhattan Project The United Kingdom started independently developing nuclear weapons again shortly after the war.
Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee set up a cabinet sub-committee, GEN.75 (and known informally as the "Atomic Bomb Committee"), to examine the feasibility as early as
29 August 1945. It was US refusal to continue nuclear cooperation with Britain after World War II (due to the
McMahon Act of 1946 restricting foreign access to US nuclear technology) which eventually prompted the building of a bomb:
A nuclear program started in 1946 under the control of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, that was civilian in character, but was also tasked with the job of producing the fissile material, initially only plutonium 239, that was expected to be required for a military programme. It was based at two former airfields,
Harwell (then in
Berkshire now in
Oxfordshire) and
Risley in
Cheshire. Risley became the headquarters of the Industrial Division of UKAEA, and there were other sites under its control, notably the Calder Hall reactors at Windscale (later
Sellafield) used to produce weapons grade Pu-239. The first British nuclear pile,
GLEEP, went critical at Harwell on
15 August 1947. AWRE was established at Aldermaston by the
Ministry of Supply; later becoming the Weapons Division of the (civilian) UKAEA, before being subsumed into the Ministry of Defence in the 1970s.
William Penney, a
physicist specialising in
hydrodynamics was asked in October 1946 to prepare a report on the viability of building a British weapon. He had joined the Manhattan project in 1944, and had been in an observation plane that accompanied the
Nagasaki bomber, and had also done damage assessment on the ground following
Japan's surrender. He had subsequently participated in the American
Operation Crossroads test at
Bikini Atoll. As a result of his report, the decision to proceed was formally made on
8 January 1947 at a meeting of the GEN.163 committee of six cabinet members, including
Prime Minister Clement Attlee with Penney appointed to take charge of the programme.
The project was hidden under the name High Explosive Research or HER and was based initially at the
Ministry of Supply's Armament Research and Development Establishment (ARDE) at
Fort Halstead in Kent, but in 1950 moved to a new site at
AWRE Aldermaston in
Berkshire. A particular problem was the McMahon Act. Although British scientists knew the areas of the Manhattan Project in which they had worked well, they only had the sketchiest details of those parts which they were not directly involved in. With the start of the
Cold War there had been some warming of nuclear relations between the British and American governments, which led to hopes of American cooperation. However these were quickly dashed by the arrest in early 1950 of
Klaus Fuchs, a
Soviet spy working at Harwell. Plutonium production reactors were based at Windscale, later known as
Sellafield in
Cumberland (now in
Cumbria) and construction began in September 1947, leading to the first plutonium metal ready in March 1952.
Post-war development programme Main articles: Operation Hurricane, Blue Danube (nuclear weapon), and Blue Peacock First test and early systems Main articles: Operation Grapple, Yellow Sun, and Blue Steel missile
Thermonuclear weaponry Main articles: Polaris Sales Agreement, UGM-27 Polaris, Chevaline, and Resolution class submarine Polaris Main article: UK Trident programme Trident Main article: British replacement of the Trident system Replacement for Trident The timeline below shows the development of warheads, nuclear delivery systems and nuclear infrastructure in the UK between 1940 and 2006. Delivery systems are charted to indicate when they were in active service. This does not include development time or decommissioning. Similarly, power plants are charted from when they became active, rather than the date of commissioning or construction. At the end of 1961, the Capenhurst reactor was switched back to
low enriched uranium production for civil use. The Magnox electricity producing power stations could produce Plutonium for use in the UK military nuclear programme. Seven other
Magnox reactors came online between 1964 and 1971 (see
List of Magnox reactors in the UK), although these weren't necessarily used to generate material for warheads.
ROF Cardiff was used as part of the nuclear programme from 1961 until its closure in 1997. The
ROF Burghfield site was built in 1941 and used for the nuclear programme from the early 1950s to this day. It is now called AWE Burghfield rather than ROF Burghfield.
Timeline Until 1992 UK forces also deployed
U.S. tactical nuclear weapons as part of a U.S.-UK dual-key
NATO nuclear sharing role
[2] [3]. The weapons deployed included
nuclear artillery, nuclear demolition mines and warheads for Corporal and
Lance missiles in
Germany; theatre nuclear weapons on
RAF aircraft;
Mark 101 nuclear depth bombs on RAF
Shackleton maritime patrol aircraft, later replaced by a modern successor, the
B-57 deployed on RAF
Nimrod aircraft. The Lance missiles were purchased in 1975
[4], to replace
Honest John missiles which had been bought in 1960
[5]; and were themselves a replacement for the U.S.
Corporal missiles deployed in Germany by the
Royal Artillery. Not generally recognised is the fact that the Royal Artillery deployed a numerically greater quantity of US nuclear weapons than the RAF and Royal Navy combined, peaking at 277 in 1976-78; with a further 50 ADMs deployed with another British Army unit, the Royal Engineers, peaking in 1971-81.
Deployment of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons Research and development facilities Main article: Atomic Weapons Establishment Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston Main articles: Royal Ordnance Factory, ROF Burghfield, and ROF Cardiff Royal Ordnance Factories, Cardiff and Burghfield Politics, decision making and nuclear posture UK nuclear posture during the cold war was informed by interdependence with the United States. Operational control of the UK Polaris force was assigned to SACLANT, while targeting policy for its missiles was determined, as for the V-bomber force before it, by NATO's SACEUR, while maintaining an independent wholly-British targeting policy for some circumstances when a critical national emergency required it to be used alone, without the UK's NATO allies. is that the capacity to launch a very limited strike is a more credible deterrent in the current world situation than use of a MIRVed strategic system.
The stockpile of
"operationally available warheads" was reduced from 300 to
"less than 200" The final batch of missile bodies would not be purchased, limiting the fleet to 58.
A submarine's load of warheads were reduced from 96 to 48. This reduced the explosive power of the warheads on a Vanguard class Trident submarine to
"one third less than a Polaris submarine armed with Chevaline." However 48 warheads per Trident submarine represents a 50% increase on the 32 warheads per submarine of Chevaline. Total explosive power has been in decline for decades as the accuracy of missiles has improved, therefore requiring less power to destroy each target. Trident can destroy 48 targets per submarine, as opposed to 32 targets that could be destroyed by Chevaline.
Submarines missiles would not be targeted, but rather at several days "notice to fire."
Although one submarine would always be on patrol it will operate on a "reduced day-to-day alert state". A major factor in maintaining a constant patrol is to avoid
"misunderstanding or escalation if a Trident submarine were to sail during a period of crisis." The special relationship See also: Politics of the UK The UK's possession of nuclear weapons has appeared essential for successive governments in order to maintain the UK's diplomatic influence abroad; and this policy has had continuous majority support in the population, despite a large number of people opposed to the possession of nuclear weapons. For thirteen years from 1945 until 1958, four years after the first US thermonuclear test in 1952, there was no significant opposition to nuclear weapons in Britain. All significant parts of the Press representing all shades of opinion supported the government's policy, and continued to do so when in 1954 the British government decided to develop and test a thermonuclear weapon. One newspaper, the Guardian, not noted for its support for the then government, or of nuclear weapons in later years, urged the government to go further and develop ballistic missiles, rather than rely on bombers for delivery. Only in 1958 did the Committee of 100 initiate the first large scale protest with its Aldermaston March. Successive Labour governments, while paying lip-service to nuclear disarmament issues have resolutely maintained and renewed the UK's nuclear forces, with majority popular support. Polaris, Chevaline and the early planning for Trident conducted by the Callaghan Labour government are testament to that. Callaghan went further; he ensured that his government's planning papers for Trident were made available ostensibly 'on national security grounds' to the successor Thatcher government. A most unusual departure from the usual Civil Service procedure. A later
Labour Party leader, Neil Kinnock, although a supporter of unilateral nuclear disarmament, changed his stance after the arrival of the Gorbachev regime, on the grounds that a negotiated reduction in nuclear arms was then possible. Perhaps Kinnock also had understood the reality; that a unilateralist Labour Party would never be elected to government. The New Labour administration of Tony Blair also recognised that reality. In the near future, decisions about the replacement of Trident will need to be made (because of the long lead time before a replacement could enter service). It seems that the current Labour government will decide to replace Trident - although some believe that there may be some legal issues relating to the
non-proliferation treaty. More likely, because the
1958 US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement often referred to as the 1958 Bi-lateral, is still in force (and renewed 2005) and pre-dates the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it will be used to justify further legal purchases from the U.S., and further exchanges of data.
The current Trident system cost £12.6bn (at 1996 prices) and costs £280m a year to maintain. Options for replacing Trident range from £5bn for the missiles alone to £20-30bn for missiles, submarines and research facilities. At minimum, for the system to continue safely after around 2020, the missiles will need to be replaced.
[6] Parliament and civil society See also International Court of Justice advisory opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons The
Government of the United Kingdom has announced plans to renew Britain's only nuclear weapon, the
Trident missile system.
Is Trident replacement legal under the
Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT)? Renewal of the Trident system is fully consistent with our international obligations, including those on disarmament. ...
Is retaining the deterrent incompatible with NPT Article VI? The NPT does not establish any timetable for nuclear disarmament. Nor does it prohibit maintenance or renewal of existing capabilities. Renewing the current Trident system is fully consistent with the NPT and with all our international legal obligations. ...
See also
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