The British ballistic missile submarine HMS Vengeance. A U.K. parliamentary report cites a U.S. base in Georgia as one possible temporary home for British nuclear-armed submarines if the vessels are forced out of an independent Scotland (Royal Navy photo).
WASHINGTON
-- A new report issued by a British parliamentary panel suggests that the
United Kingdom might consider temporarily basing its nuclear-armed submarines
at a U.S. military seaport if Scotland achieves independence and refuses to
continue hosting the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
Naval
Submarine Base Kings Bay, located in southeast Georgia, has been identified as
a potential option for absorbing one or more U.K. Vanguard-class vessels;
maritime facilities in France are another possible alternative, according to
the panel of British legislators.
“Any
agreement whether to relocate the U.K. nuclear deterrent outside the British
Isles, possibly in France or the USA, would be a decision for the U.K. in
discussion with its allies,” states the Oct. 25 report, authored by the House
of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee.
Four days
earlier, Alex Salmond -- the first minister of Scotland and head of the
Scottish National Party -- said he thought London might do well to arrange
basing for the Trident D-5 missile-carrying submarines elsewhere in the United
Kingdom or even abroad.
The British
government "could either relocate Trident to another facility in the rest
of the U.K. or, alternatively, they could use the nuclear facilities in
America, or in France for that matter,” Salmond said on a BBC news show.
“Trident is effectively an American weapon.”
The
parliamentary assessment warns, though, that it “would be very difficult, both
logistically and politically,” to base the U.K. nuclear force abroad. Defense Secretary
Philip Hammond last week said his government is “confident that the Scottish
people will choose to remain part of the United Kingdom” and “we have no plans
to move the nuclear deterrent from there.”
Yet, with
the matter as-yet unresolved, the question of how Scottish independence might
affect London’s deterrence force is beginning to loom. Lawmaker Nick Harvey, a
former armed forces minister, said it was “hard to think of any single item
that would be larger in [British-Scottish] negotiation.”
All four
U.K. ballistic missile-armed submarines currently use Faslane on the River
Clyde’s Gareloch as their home port, while warheads are stored and mated with
the missiles at Coulport, eight miles away on Loch Long. The nation maintains
one Vanguard submarine on patrol at all times.
Future
basing has been thrown into doubt in the run-up to a 2014 Scottish referendum
on independence. Salmond has said his organization’s long-sought expulsion of
nuclear arms from an independent Scotland could be formalized in a new
constitution. Earlier this month, the party said an SNP government would
“negotiate the speediest safe transition of the nuclear fleet from Faslane.”
There are
no clear alternative naval facilities in the United Kingdom that offer both
deep-water access for military submarines and secure areas for warhead-marrying
operations, which must be located a safe distance from industry and population
centers, according to some experts.
If
secession proceeds, it might be possible for the U.K. government to negotiate a
transition plan under which the nuclear-armed submarines could remain stationed
temporarily in Scotland. However, it is far from clear if this option would
prove politically viable.
“Nuclear
weapons in Scotland could be disarmed within days and removed within months,”
and the submarines that carry them could be banished within two years,
according to the parliamentary report.
Salmond
last week indicated some interest in imposing on an estranged United Kingdom
“curtains for Trident,” using the separation as a means of effectively
denuclearizing London, possibly for decades.
“We
recognize that such speedy action would inevitably create the prospect of
unilateral nuclear disarmament being imposed upon the Royal Navy and U.K.,
since the construction of facilities elsewhere could take upwards of 20 years,”
stated the committee, comprising seven Scottish and four English members of
Parliament. “It is not clear how quickly the U.K. could restore continuous
at-sea deterrence.”
Committee
Chairman Ian Davidson is a Labor Party lawmaker representing southwest Glasgow;
his multipartisan panel includes just one member of the Scottish National
Party.
The top
British defense official last week said his government would never allow such a
forced denuclearization to occur.
“Our
continuous submarine-based nuclear deterrent is the ultimate safeguard of our
national security,” Hammond said in response to the parliamentary report. “We
have made a clear commitment to maintain that deterrent and there is absolutely
no question that the U.K. will unilaterally disarm.”
“The U.K.’s
preferred option is for nothing to change,” according to the committee’s
30-page document. “Failing that, the next best option would be securing an
agreement that enabled the submarines to operate out of Faslane until an
alternative base was found elsewhere.”
If Scotland
were to drive out the Trident-carrying submarines, one domestic British option
might be to store warheads and mate them to missiles at upgraded nuclear
facilities in Berkshire, about 50 miles west of London, the document states.
Under this scenario, the submarines could be based at Devonport on England’s
southwest coast, where they now go for routine maintenance, the analysis
states.
Francis
Tusa, editor of the U.K. monthly Defense Analysis, told legislators that
although it would not be an ideal setup, “it does not mean you cannot do it,”
the report states.
Norman
Polmar, a naval expert who has advised several top U.S. Navy civilians and
brass, agreed, saying of the Devonport option: “Why not? Just expand the port.”
Interviewed
on Tuesday, he played down the safety risks of attempting to duplicate Coulport
functions proximate to a population center, saying similar activities typically
take place near large U.S. cities.
The
Scottish Affairs Committee said it could not estimate relocation costs, but
experts said the price tag would probably reach billions of dollars. The
question of who would foot the costs to develop new Vanguard basing likely
would be a major focus of any Scotland secession negotiations.
The
lawmakers called the storage and loading of warheads outside the British Isles
a possible “temporary measure,” noting that two deep-water ports with
submarine-servicing capacity being mulled are “French facilities in Brittany or
the U.S. facilities in Georgia.”
Kings Bay
is currently home to six of the U.S. Navy’s 14 U.S. Ohio-class nuclear-armed
“SSBN” vessels, as well as two conventionally armed “SSGN” submarines,
according to base spokesman Scott Bassett.
The facility
likely could accommodate additional submarines from the United Kingdom in the
near term, some experts said. More space will be freed up as the U.S. Navy
reduces its Trident ballistic missile-carrying fleet to 12 vessels by 2028, and
to just 10 vessels between 2032 and 2040, according to these sources.
The British
government intends to replace its Vanguard-class boats with Successor
submarines beginning in 2028, though there remains heated debate within the
leadership coalition over whether results of an analysis of alternatives
expected early next year might alter those plans.
With most
federal offices in the Washington area closed on Monday and Tuesday because of
Hurricane Sandy, a U.S. Defense Department spokeswoman did not respond by press
time to a reporter’s query regarding basing prospects or any bilateral
discussions on the issue.
Washington
and London have long had a close relationship in nuclear-weapons matters, to
include significant cooperation in submarine and ballistic missile operations.
Among the
joint activities today is a leasing arrangement under which the Royal Navy
operates with Trident D-5 missiles from the U.S. arsenal, which are assembled,
stored and maintained at Kings Bay, Bassett said. Missile loading onto British
Vanguard-class submarines -- each of which can carry 16 D-5s -- also takes
place at Kings Bay, Bassett said.
Since 2010,
U.K. policy has been to carry no more than 40 warheads on each vessel, though
the Trident missile has a capacity of up to 12 warheads.
Polmar said
the logistics of basing British submarines at Kings Bay would be so challenging
as to rule out the option entirely.
“Absolutely
not,” in part “because of the support facilities involved,” he said, noting
that the Vanguard submarines and nuclear reactors “are all different from
ours.”
However,
another nuclear-arms expert did not find the notion to be altogether
far-fetched.
“There is
infrastructure there” for Trident-armed submarines at Kings Bay, said Hans
Kristensen, who directs the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of
American Scientists. “The only question is whether they can squeeze in more.”
Polmar also
cited two additional factors why such an arrangement would be “totally
impossible”: cost and transit time to U.K. patrol areas.
Kristensen
agreed the long steaming distances could be an obstacle, saying, “That burns up
a lot of core fuel.”
“Setting up
a base two to three thousand miles away is ludicrous,” Polmar said. “It would
be easier and cheaper to buy the city of Faslane.”
Even if
logistics were determined to be feasible, U.S. basing might prove politically
unworkable, according to experts.
Home-porting
the submarines overseas could “raise questions about how independent the U.K.’s
deterrent was,” the parliamentary panel said.
When
Trident was first procured, the idea of mating warheads to missiles in the
United States was explored but “was seen as just a step too far to being
perceived as not having an independent deterrent,” Malcolm Chalmers, a defense
policy expert at the Royal United Services Institute, told the panel. That view
prevailed, leading to the use of Coulport for this sensitive task.
Nor would
sending the submarines to French naval facilities be an easy fix, in the view
of some.
“The idea
of dumping off the boats there for a few years while we sort out a long-term
solution would be a little tricky to manage,” British legislator Peter Luff, a
defense equipment minister at the time who has since lost his post, told the
committee in June.
The notion
of a “sovereign base” located in a newly independent Scotland -- or perhaps
sovereign or jointly run facilities in the United States or France -- might be
explored as a means of preserving independent nuclear control, the
parliamentary report suggests.
As things
stand, some Kings Bay military commands, including the Strategic Weapons
Facility-Atlantic, fly both the U.S. flag and the Union Jack to reflect the
ongoing Trident partnership, Bassett said.
Given the
“special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom, basing
the Vanguard vessels at a U.S. port would not be such a stretch, one former
U.S. nuclear officer said last week.
“We
probably won’t go to nuclear war without them,” said the former officer, who
asked not to be named in discussing sensitive military and diplomatic matters.
“So what difference does it make where you’re stationed?”
"We rely on
Diego Garcia,” a British territory in the Indian Ocean, for staging bomber
operations, said the ex-officer. “We station our nuclear bombs in Europe on
foreign soil. I don’t see it as that big of an issue.”
In London,
though, indications are mounting that the U.K. government and Royal Navy
actually would see basing abroad as a huge issue, given that the entirety of
the nation’s nuclear arsenal is in question, rather than logistics for a select
few assets.
Still,
there remain many bridges yet to be crossed, not the least of which is the 2014
referendum vote that might, in the end, dispense with the notion of Scottish
independence -- an outcome that many in the British capital are hoping for.
For the
time being, “we were told that the Ministry of Defense was not making
contingency plans for the event of Scotland becoming a separate country,”
according to the parliamentary report.
The
ministry, legislators learned, “had not been approached or had discussions with
the Scottish government about defense matters” should independence be formally
embraced, the report states.
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