Nuclear deterrent

The tritium that is needed to maintain the nuclear deterrent will be produced in commercial nuclear power plants which is inefficient and a compromise ofimportant and long standing nonproliferation practice plutonium-238 needed for space exploration is being purchased from Russia. 

Gowing, Independence and Deterrence vol. I, pp. 164, 168-9, 174 Humphrey Wynn, The RAF Strategic Nuclear Deterrent Forces Their Origins, Roles and Deployment 1946-1969 (London HMSO, 1994), pp. 9-10, 18. 

The British aircraft industry appeared to be backward compared with its American and Soviet counterparts, but this was mainly because the expectation that the maximum danger of war lay in the future, about 1957, led to a gap in British development and production of a number of important weapons systems. The timing of up-to-date strategic bombers was linked to the development of the British atomic bomb, which, although first tested in October 1952, would not be ready for operational use until about 1956. Meanwhile Britain was wholly dependent on the United States for nuclear deterrence. 

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... 

Much of what follows is based on Wynn, RAF Nuclear Deterrent. 

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. 

Healey, Time of My Life, p.273 Sean Straw and John W. Young, The Wilson government and the demise of TSR-2, October 1964-April 1965 , Journal of Strategic Studies, 20 (1997), no. 4, 18-44 Wynn, RAF Nuclear Deterrent, pp.501, 504, 523-43. 

Robert H. Paterson, Britain s Strategic Nuclear Deterrent From Before the V-bomber to Beyond Trident (London Frank Cass, 1997), pp. 45—6. 

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. ... 

Wynn, RAF Nuclear Deterrent pp. 129—34. Grove, Vanguard to Trident, pp. 183-97. 

The White Paper was able to cite official NATO strategy in support of reliance on nuclear deterrence. However, the American administration was concerned about the extent of proposed British cuts in conventional forces and, as noted above (see p. 281) seems to have hoped that Anglo-American nuclear collaboration would make these reductions unnecessary, since the British would be saved the expense of research and... 

Figures calculated from appendix 3 to Freedman, Britain and Nuclear Weapons p. 144. Paterson, Britain s Strategic Nuclear Deterrent, pp. 138-45.

W Tin, Humphrey, The RAF Strategic Nuclear Deterrent Forces Their Origins, Roles and Deployment 1946-1969, London HMSO, 1994. 

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