Defence, nuclear

IWM, Film and Video Archive, DED 46A, The Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment Porton Down,Volunteers for Porton , i966.The film was apparently shown to service officers and NCOs at the Defence Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical School at Winterbourne Gunner and at army units through the Army Kinema Corporation and Astra cinemas Operation Antler, Witness Statement Richard B.M. Skinner, 9 January 2001. 

Defence Nuclear Safety Board (DNSB) publishes... 

The United Kingdom s Defence Nuclear Weapons Programme. Plutonium and Aldermaston — An Historical Account. Published as part of the Strategic Defence Review, 2002. 

Bickford, D. F. Janzten, C. M. 1984. Devitrification behaviour of SRL defence waste glass. In McVay, G. L. (ed) Scientific Basis for Nuclear Waste Management VII. Materials Research Society Symposia Proceedings, 26, 557-566. 

Sir Richard Clarke to Sir Leslie Rowan, 21 Jan. 1965, and Clarke to Sir William Armstrong, Insight on defence costs , n.d., CLRK 1/3/4/1, Churchill College, Cambridge. In addition to The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age (Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press, 1960), Clarke also recommended McKean s useful essay , Cost-benefit analysis and British defence policy , in Alan Peacock and D.J. Robertson (eds.). Public Expenditure Appraisal and Control (Edinburgh Oliver and Boyd, 1963), pp. 17-35. 

The advent of the hydrogen bomb led to even more radical changes in defence policy than those set out in the 1952 Global Strategy paper, but enhanced nuclear deterrence was not the only factor. John Baylis has remarked on the extent to which British strategy was driven by... 

In mid-1959 the Minister of Defence, Sandys, on the advice of his permanent secretary, Powell, established an independent British Nuclear Deterrent Smdy Group, with representatives of the three services, the Foreign Office and the Treasury, under Powell s chairmanship. The group compared Blue Streak with two American ballistic missiles, the submarine-launched Polaris and the air-launched Skybolt. Rising estimates for the costs of research and development and of underground silos hardened the Treasury s opposition to Blue Streak, and the Chiefs of Staff were in favour of a mobile system. Once President Eisenhower had indicated to Macmillan in March 1960 that Skybolt would be available on satisfactory terms, the Defence Committee took the decision to cancel Blue Streak as a weapons system. The vulnerable Thors were taken out of service by the end of 1963. 

The main thrust of the Swinton Committee s report in November 1954 was its support for the RAF s case for a nuclear deterrent of 240 V-bombers. It was argued that the very survival of Britain in war would depend upon the prompt elimination of Soviet air bases, and that that task could not be left to the US Strategic Air Command as there could be no assurance about American priorities as regards targets. This argument was publicly stated by Churchill on 1 March 1955 in the debate on the 1955 Defence White Paper, which announced the decision to develop the hydrogen bomb. ° Yet the priority for the nuclear deterrent was not absolute the White Paper also stated that Britain must play its part in defending the interests of the free world as a whole, and particularly the Commonwealth and Empire , in the Cold War, for which role the army and navy were required. ... 

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