Defence: Continuous At-Sea Deterrent

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, I should declare that I am a member of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy. I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, that I take comfort from the fact that the debate on replacing Vanguard has been going on since 2006, when his Government were in power. As for the Liberal Democrats, our thinking about Trident has been an almost continuous feature of Lib Dem angst for the 25 years in which I have been involved in the party’s policy dimension. Perhaps because I am an outlier in that debate, I am not involved in it any longer. However, let me set out my thoughts.

It was because of our appreciation that the political and security environment as well as technology were changing apace that on joining the coalition one of our red lines was that the country should have an independent analysis of the merits of the proposal to renew the Trident submarines. The result was the Trident Alternatives Review, which was the first to be undertaken in this country in the 60-year history of the UK being a nuclear power. It is to the credit of the coalition that its conclusions were made public so that the country at large could appreciate the reasoning behind the conclusions. The main objective of TAR was to assess the viability of different options open to the UK beyond like-for-like replacement of the Vanguard-Trident system, and particularly to look at credible alternatives. TAR concluded, as I think we all agree across this House, that to use nuclear weapons will be a failure of the entire edifice on which our policy of nuclear deterrence rests. The review said that nuclear weapons are,

“a political tool of last resort rather than a war fighting capability”.

Effectively this reiterated that the UK ruled out the actual use of a weapon unless as a final resort under existential threat, and uses its nuclear capability as a deterrent to potential aggressors in a limited fashion, as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, set out.

However, I do not see an independent nuclear deterrent solely as part of our own national security architecture. We also use it to fulfil our international obligations. TAR states that,

“the UK’s deterrent is made available to NATO as a contribution to the Alliance’s collective deterrence”.

That is even more relevant in the week after the 60th anniversary of founding of the Warsaw Pact. This is relevant in that the brave new world of hope for an absence of war has not come to pass. NATO has had to deploy along its eastern frontier again, and faces challenges that we did not contemplate when it established its open-door policy of accepting into membership all those states that were ready. In a world where NATO, in my view, has extended its Article 5 collective defence umbrella too far and fast, it is we, alongside France and the US, who carry the most credible deterrence capability through being nuclear weapons states.

I turn to the arguments for continuous at-sea deterrence, CASD, or the proposal for a like-for-like replacement. TAR looked at alternative systems and alternative postures—continuous at-sea deterrence or reduced levels of patrol. CASD, in order for the UK’s nuclear deterrent to be credible, is the form that we have had all these years. However, credibility is the foundational pillar on which deterrence strategy rests, whether nuclear or non-nuclear. To retain credibility you need to consider five things: readiness, reach, resolve, survivability and destructive power. Alternative systems and alternative postures are interlinked because the former affects the latter. When looking at postures, the criterion for credibility was important. The current CASD posture is capable of delivering high readiness and reach, in the sense that submarines can patrol very far from UK shores. These capabilities demonstrate our resolve. The successor submarines’ ability to be detected only when they launch a weapon means that they would survive an attack and be able to attack again. The Trident warhead was deemed to have sufficient destructive power. All five criteria known to adversaries fulfilled the whole point of deterrence, and it is accepted widely that these capabilities would not be duplicated in the short term by other powers, particularly not by those there is so much talk about which are deemed to be rogue states.

However, I am aware that even in the short space of time since 2013, the political and technological environment has changed. In political terms, we have a more belligerent posture adopted by traditional nuclear weapon states. On the other hand, we know that growing numbers of our citizens are concerned about the threats of the use of force and nuclear proliferation. We also have technological advances such as more advanced ballistic missile defences and antisubmarine warfare. I therefore accept that missile defence shields, cyberwarfare and stealth systems inter alia could potentially render successor systems and missiles redundant. I also accept that in time we may have to move beyond reliance on a single delivery system.

I would have wanted also to consider the arguments about costs because they are very much part of the political debate but time does not permit that and I need to conclude. Suffice it to say that an in-service running cost of around 6% of the annual defence budget, or of 0.13% of total government spending, may be a significant sum but it should be seen as a worthwhile insurance policy. For those reasons I have to say that I am for the Motion.