The MAGA movement is disillusioned with the project of “regime change”. Yet that could be precisely the consequence of Donald Trump’s coercion of Nato leaders as he forces them to raise their military spending to 5% of GDP. And at this week’s summit, Mark Rutte et al were falling over themselves to impress “Daddy”. So in keeping with Trump’s demands, the Nato leaders committed to a sharp acceleration in military spending. By 2035, military spending will reach 3.5% of Nato members’ GDP, a sum that will be accompanied by broader “security” and “infrastructure” spending of 1.5%. This constitutes military spending at levels unheard of since the Eighties nadir of the Cold War.
Britain is no exception. Here, Labour MPs are agitating over their government’s plan to cut disability benefits — mere days after Kier Starmer, announced in Brussels that the UK will acquire 12 nuclear-capable fighter jets for the RAF at a cost of around £1bn. These jets are the Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft, which can be armed with nuclear bombs. The purchase is incongruous for a party of the Left, and its announcement is of a piece with the existing Starmer narrative that the UK is under threat. The new jets, then, are the latest of a long list of populist signals that wrap Labour in the Union Jack. Starmer continues to paint himself as a politician with little to nothing in common with his party-leader predecessor.
No doubt there was also inter-service lobbying behind this announcement. The RAF has always lamented the decision to acquire another heavier, more expensive and less capable variant, the F-35B, to share with the Navy. The F-35B can take off and land vertically, rather than via a runway, thus making it an appropriate fit for the relatively small size of the UK’s two aircraft carriers. These aircraft were to be flexibly shared with the Navy, meaning that the RAF could lose precious squadrons on naval deployments for months at time. The purchase of the F-35A jets means that the RAF gets a dozen devoted aircraft as well as upgrades to its base upgrades at Marham. So the Airforce will be happy — up to a point.
“Nato nuclear-sharing, then, is essentially symbolic and political.”
The intriguing angle is the not-so-welcome nuclear mission these aircraft will be given. They have been bought with a single purpose in mind: to deliver American B61-12 free-fall nuclear bombs under Nato’s nuclear sharing arrangements — an understanding that already operates in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Belgium. Accordingly, the host state buys the American aircraft and provides a base, support, and a crew. A wider set of Nato states provide support operations, including essential refuelling and force protection under the so-called SNOCAT missions.
But the bombs remain under the control and protection of the United States until they are released to allied nations. This can happen only after an order, issued in wartime, from the American Nato Supreme Allied Commander, and such an order would presumably enable strikes against Russian targets. Given that the UK is a nuclear weapons power with its own, ostensibly independent, Trident deterrent, the logic of the procurement is unclear.
As well as being redundant in these terms, their deployment is a risk. Aircraft can be shot down far more easily than a submarine can be sunk. With this in mind, the MoD, when considering alternatives to Trident in 2013, rejected the far cheaper air-delivered option on the grounds that this method risks the planes being destroyed before they can deploy their bombs. Were the President to decide to use nuclear weapons, it seems far more likely that the United States would use its submarine-launched ballistic missiles, fired from the sea, or land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, fired from a silo. Missiles are far quicker and more reliable. They do not require complicated international arrangements whose durability has rightly been questioned.
It is true that these arrangements are diplomatically fragile. They are regularly criticised for violating the ban on Non-Proliferation Treaty member states transferring or receiving nuclear weapons. Nato argues that these transfers would only occur in wartime, when — in Nato’s view — the Treaty would no longer apply. But this disagreement exacerbates the already festering resentment felt by rival or smaller countries that have surrendered any ambition to deploy nuclear weapons. To them, it smacks of discrimination and double-standards.
Nato nuclear-sharing, then, is essentially symbolic and political. It ensures that non-nuclear members “dip their hands in the blood”, as some reports put it, of nuclear deterrence, while expecting that the heavy lifting of nuclear deterrence will rest on the nuclear-armed strategic ballistic missiles of the United States, Britain and France.
So why is Starmer doing this — buying planes that amount to little more than a diplomatic signal — when this particular consideration clearly does not apply to the UK? Is this announcement really just another Starmer expression of flattery and subservience to Donald Trump?
Or could it be that MoD has finally lost confidence in its Trident system?
Technical problems over the renewal of Trident, through which the Vanguard class of submarines will be replaced by Dreadnoughts, have been widely predicted for many years. Dominic Cummings has warned darkly of “rotting infrastructure” draped in state secrecy. Now, in public, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) has warned of severe problems with Rolls Royce’s production of the nuclear propulsion system, the PWR3. All other major elements of the renewed submarine system are under review, and present a cause of serious concern over delivery. These assessments are likely to be harbingers of further delays and costs. This is a major problem, because there were already concerns that there would be a break in the availability of the submarines to patrol in the transition period. The Royal Navy places great value on its claim to have achieved a “Continuous At Sea Deterrence” posture since the first Polaris submarines were launched on 15 June, 1968. Could the F-35A procurement be an expensive insurance policy to cover that gap?
But the problems may go even deeper. The submarine system itself suffers a number of vulnerabilities that will only worsen as technology advances. Because the vessels are large, complex and singular, and because their production took an extraordinary 25 years, much of their design is inflexible, and will be outdated by the time they enter into service. In contrast, more modular, networked anti-submarine warfare assets can be produced far more quickly. They benefit from continuous tech development and renewal, and units are far cheaper, more expendable and replaceable. In the well-established and unending game of cat-and-mouse, the submarine has significant weaknesses.
The rapid development of autonomous drones above and below the water, as well as communication systems, sensors, and fully networked interception capabilities, together mean that the new Dreadnought submarines could be redundant before their first patrol, scheduled to be around seven years from now (unless there are significant delays).
If an adversary has the ability to track and destroy a submarine on patrol, this would not only neutralise the submarine’s deterrent effect. It would also lead to a highly destabilising dynamic at the worst possible time. Faced with the risk of imminent loss of Britain’s nuclear submarines in a crisis, would a prime minister be tempted to pre-emptively launch an all-out attack? It could feel like a use-it-or-lose-it situation. Within a few years, it could be the case that the very worst place for one’s nuclear arsenal would be in international waters.
We should pay close attention, then, to the little-reported corner of the Strategic Defence Review in which we are told that the Government should “define the requirement for the post-Dreadnought nuclear deterrent within this Parliament”, 30 years before the submarines’ planned retirement.
Remember for a moment the UK’s international legal obligation as a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty: “To pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.” The failure of the nuclear weapon states to make progress on their disarmament commitment is the core reason why the nuclear non-proliferation regime is in a continuous crisis, and why states resist stronger non-proliferation arrangements. Signalling an inflexible commitment in this Parliament to new a nuclear weapon system planned for deployment between 2060 and 2085 hardly sits comfortably with that legal obligation.
In any case, committing to and nailing them down this far ahead is strategic and technological madness. Such an inflexible commitment to particular platforms and delivery systems is extraordinarily reckless at a time of rapid technological change and likely redundancy.
Unless, that is, MoD is anticipating an earlier requirement for a new strategic deterrent system. The new submarines’ planned lives run to at least the late 2050s, but if there is concern that they could be compromised well before then, this alone might justify a relatively modest additional capital investment of a couple of billion on this additional F-35 system.
But the F-35A free-fall bomb system currently proposed is no substitute for Trident, for it surrenders sovereign decisions on warhead control and nuclear release to the Americans. If the Trident submarines come to be judged a liability and the UK’s nuclear capability then came to depend upon the aircraft, the UK would need to buy more F-35As and either join the ranks of the other Nato non-nuclear weapon states or instruct Aldermaston, the British nuclear weapons facility, to develop the UK’s own free-fall nuclear weapon.
Not counting the cost of warhead modernisation, the Government has so far spent in the region of £25 billion on the Trident renewal programme. Whatever the challenges, it seems highly unlikely that officials would contemplate abandoning the project. But if there is a significant possibility that confidence in the system would be in doubt, we could be witnessing the start of an investment in a limited and unsatisfactory plan B.
Kier Starmer may talk tough and make big announcements, but the underlying reality could be very different. His announcement of a sustained increase in the UK defence budget has captured the headlines. But even were these plans to survive contact with the enemy — that is, competing public spending priorities and the state of the economy — the top-line budget dimension may be less critical than the need to ensure that taxpayers’ money is spent well and that waste is tackled head-on.
Britain’s submarine-based nuclear deterrent system is at high risk of becoming another example of an expensive failed infrastructure project that is not fit for purpose, a legacy of a past strategic context, and an reflective of an obsession with symbolism over substance. As competitors race ahead with accelerated technology developments and the world becomes more volatile, we need to reassess our priorities.
