Stockpile Stewardship: Continuing Co-Operation with the United States

    There is a high level of ongoing co-operation between the US nuclear weapons laboratories and Britain's AWE on stockpile stewardship and management of the Trident warhead. This is seen as essential for maintaining the ability to replace Trident in the future. The SDR, for example, stated that "for as long as Britain has nuclear forces, we will ensure that we have a robust capability at the Atomic Weapons Establishment to underwrite the safety and reliability of our nuclear warheads". It also concluded that it would be "premature to abandon a minimum capability to design and produce a successor to Trident should this prove necessary".

Earlier in 1995 the UK Ministry of Defence stated that the UK's stockpile stewardship would be "undertaken in continuing co-operation with the United States, which will contribute to the safe stewardship of Trident throughout its service life as well as sustaining capabilities to meet future requirements".

Britain participates in regular exchanges on a wide range of research and technology under the auspices of the 1958 agreement, involving all three US National Laboratories: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Co-operation under the 1958 agreement is conducted through Joint Working Groups (JOWOGs) and Exchange of Information and Visit Reports (EIVRs). As of January 1998, there were US-UK Joint Working Groups on a wide range of nuclear-related topics, including all aspects of nuclear warhead development.

In addition, under the 1998 'Polaris Sales Agreement as amended for Trident', the United Kingdom is involved in a "Joint Steering Task Group, supported by the Trident Joint Re-Entry Systems Working Group and the Joint Systems Performance and Assessment Group".

Under the Labour Government, the level of co-operation has continued to be extensive. For example, the UK Government has confirmed that Sandia National Laboratory in the United States carried out "development, evaluation, production and stockpile surveillance of the UK's Trident re-entry body system" on its behalf at a cost of between F600,000 and 1.5 million in 1997. The UK Government also continues to receive "briefings on the scope and outcome of US sub-critical experiments carried out at the Nevada Test Site". The AWE is clearly interested in a number of ongoing US programmes concerning refurbishment, revalidation and life extension of the US Trident warheads, in particular W76. According to the 1998 AWE annual report:

AWE participated significantly, as an independent contributor, in the United States Dual Revalidation Programme, which reviewed the status of the American Trident warhead, the W76... Other more focussed exchanges, with the United States continued in support of the current Trident programme and in preparation for the refurbishment that will be required for Trident early in the next decade.

Furthermore, in its 2000 Annual Report, the AWE notes that:

Life extension [of the Trident programme] could offer cost savings by reducing the number of times a warhead is rebuilt within its required full-service life. Continued production of Trident - although only at trickle rates - will enable us to replace the oldest warheads, while exercising and maintaining our assembly capability.

A key aspect of AWE's work is "maintaining capability through science". According to the 2000 Annual Report, "four major areas of research are central to AWE's capabilities to maintain the United Kingdom's nuclear deterrent - hydrodynamics, laser physics, high performance computing and materials science". Many of these areas of research are already covered by Joint Working Groups, or are areas where the AWE receives assistance from the United States:

Hydrodynamics and physics provide the basis for a broad range of collaborative work and experiments with scientists in the United States. One exciting example of this is the Billi-G project where experiments designed and fabricated by AWE are working to develop a more complete understanding of proton radiography at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Centre.

Similarly, with regard to laser physics, in June 1999, Britain announced that it intended to invest in the US National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) for a 10 year period at a cost of F100 million. The investment in the NIF was described as "an affordable and cost-effective way of discharging the undertaking we gave in the Strategic Defence Review that we would ensure the safety and reliability of our nuclear weapons". However, there are concerns in the United States that the cost of the NIF is escalating and there are outstanding questions regarding the effectiveness of the facility. In addition, AWE is working on a re-configuration of its existing HELEN laser at Aldermaston using "available components (worth approximately F2M) from LLNL through the United States Department of Energy".

In the area of high performance computing, AWE is also following the US lead and is acquiring a F15 million new supercomputer. High performance computing is also a key aspect of the US stockpile stewardship programme, in particular the US National Nuclear Security Administration's Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI), which aims "to develop the simulation capability needed for conducting stockpile stewardship and maintaining nuclear weapons reliability".

Increasing US-UK Co-Operation

    In recent years, contact between personnel working on the respective UK and US nuclear weapons programmes appears to have increased dramatically. During the period 1 June 1998 to 31 May 1999, 235 visits were made by British personnel to US nuclear weapons facilities under the auspices of the 1958 agreement, nearly double the number of visits that were made during the early 1990s.

Between 1 January and 30 September 1999 (the last period for which official figures are available), 381 United States personnel visited AWE Aldermaston, including representatives of the US government, weapons laboratories and nuclear industry corporations.

In addition, as of 1998-99 there were five UK personnel stationed in the US as part of the 1958 Agreement, three AWE employees on short-term appointments at Los Alamos and Lawrence Liver-more national laboratories, and a further 15 British personnel in the United States as part of the 'Polaris Sales Agreement, as amended for Trident'. In turn there were four US personnel based in the United Kingdom as part of this latter agreement, but no US personnel based in the United Kingdom under the terms of the 1958 agreement.

In October 2000, AWE hosted a meeting of Joint Working Group 32, under the terms of the 1958 agreement, covering "the more extreme end of weapon functioning, in terms of understanding the interaction and performance of nuclear components at high temperatures and pressures. The exchange attracted significant interest with 27 United States' delegate attendees met by a comparable number of AWE personnel". The involvement of US company Lockheed Martin, and the multinational Serco, alongside British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (which itself has extensive interests in the United States) in the running of AWE is likely to further cement the links between AWE and the US nuclear weapons industry.

Trident: a US Missile System

    Following the US Government's announcement to proceed to full development of a Trident II D5 missile in 1981, the UK Government also switched to the D5 missile in order to avoid the "penalties of uniqueness" - that if the United Kingdom continued with the C4 missile it might have to cope "without the benefit of detailed United States advice". As a result, Britain's Trident submarines use US Trident II D5 missiles produced and serviced in the United States by Lockheed Martin. The United Kingdom does not actually own the missiles, but has access to a pool of Trident II D5 missiles held at the Strategic Weapons facility at the Kings Bay Submarine Base, in Georgia, US. The British Trident submarines conduct missile test firings at the US Eastern Test Range, off the coast of Florida.

In operational terms, British Trident submarine patrols are closely coordinated with US Trident patrols. British Trident submarines routinely visit the US Kings Bay submarine base and US Trident submarines have visited the British Trident base at Faslane.

As it shares the US Trident II D5 missile pool, Britain is completely dependent on the United States for its Trident ballistic missile procurement, testing and servicing. If it wishes to retain Trident, the UK Government therefore has little choice but to accept whatever developments the United States decides to pursue for the future of its Trident missile forces.

Implications [of a More Aggressive US Nuclear Posture] for UK Nuclear Policy

    The strong indications that the Bush administration is undertaking a shift in nuclear policy that could dramatically lower the threshold for nuclear use suggests a probable collision course with UK policy priorities. While the UK Government remains ambiguous on the question of first use, and the targeting of non-nuclear weapon states in retaliation for attacks from biological or chemical weapons, it has long sought to distance itself from the idea of using low-yield warheads to target deeply buried and hardened targets. In his 1993 keynote speech on nuclear weapons policy after the Cold War the then secretary of state for defence, Malcolm Rifkind, laid out the UK government's position:

There is sometimes speculation that more so-called "usable" nuclear weapons - very low-yield devices which could be used to carry out what are euphemistically called "surgical" strikes - would allow nuclear deterrence to effective in circumstances where existing weapons would be self-deterring. I am thoroughly opposed to this view. The implications of such a development of a new war-fighting role for nuclear weapons would be seriously damaging to our approach to maintaining stability in the European context, quite apart from the impact it would have on our efforts to encourage non-proliferation and greater confidence outside Europe. This is not a path that I would wish any nuclear power to go down.

Similarly, in its submission to the International Court of Justice in 1995, the UK Government argued that its nuclear weapons policy would not contravene international law on the grounds that:

Modern nuclear weapons are capable of far more precise targeting and can therefore be directed against specific military objectives without the indiscriminate effect on the civilian population which the older literature assumed to be inevitable. Moreover, the United Kingdom's and NATO's current doctrine emphasizes that nuclear weapons would only ever be used in a defensive role and that the threat posed by an aggressor which would invite a nuclear response would be of a scale which would make that nuclear response proportionate. ...

So far as the principle of proportionality is concerned, it is often assumed both that any use of nuclear weapons would cause extensive civilian losses and that such losses would necessarily be excessive in relation to any military advantage which might result. These assumptions tend to be based on assessments of the likely effects of a nuclear attack on or near a city. The reality, however, is that nuclear weapons might be used in a wide variety of circumstance with very different results in terms of likely civilian casualties. In some cases, such as the use of a low yield nuclear weapon against warships on the High Seas or troops in sparsely populated areas, it is possible to envisage a nuclear attack which caused comparatively few civilian casualties.

    Protection of civilian populations, the need to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants and non-targeting of civilians are important components of international humanitarian law. The use of even a low-yield nuclear weapon against a sparsely populated area would be devastating in terms of the environment, human life, and wider non-proliferation efforts. A recent report from the Federation of American Scientists stated that:

No earth-burrowing missile can penetrate deep enough into the earth to contain an explosion with a nuclear yield even as small as 1 percent of the 15 kiloton Hiroshima weapon. The explosion simply blows out a massive crater of radioactive dirt, which rains down on the local region with an especially intense and deadly fallout.

The close ties that the United Kingdom retains with the United States, particularly via NATO, would make any shift towards a more aggressive nuclear posture on the part of Washington a very uncomfortable issue to deal with, and would further highlight the conflict between nuclear weapons and international law.