Robert H. Paterson - Britains Strategic Nuclear Deterrent: From Before the V-Bomber to Beyond Trident

ROBERT H. PATERSON

First Published in 1997 in Great Britain by

Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016

Transferred to Digital Printing 2010

Copyright 1997 Robert H. Paterson

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Paterson, Robert H.

Britains strategic nuclear deterrent: from before the V-Bomber to beyond Trident

I. Nuclear Weapons Great Britain History 2. Deterrence (Strategy) 3. Great Britain Strategic aspects 4. Great Britain Military policy

I. Title

355.8251190941

ISBN 0 7146 4740 3 (cloth)

ISBN 0 7146 4297 5 (paper)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Paterson, Robert H.

Britains strategic nuclear deterrent: from before the V-bomber to beyond Trident

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 0714647403 (cloth). ISBN 0714642975 (pbk.)

1. Nuclear weaponsGovernment policyGreat Britain. 2. Deterrence (Strategy) 3. Fleet ballistic missile weapons systemsGreat Britain. I. Title

UA647.P29 1997

355.02170941dc21

9637620

CIP

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Routledge and Company Limited.

Typeset by Regent Typesetting, London

Publishers Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent.

ABM

Anti Ballistic Missile

ALCM

Air Launched Cruise Missile

ASBM

Air to Surface Ballistic Missile

ASMP

Air-sol moyenne porte

ASW

Anti Submarine Warfare

BAOR

British Army of the Rhine

CENTO

Central Treaty Organisation

CEP

Circular Error of Probability

C3I

Command Control Communications and Intelligence

CIS

Commonwealth of Independent States

CND

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

CSCE

Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe

CTBT

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

DAC

Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War

EC

European Community

ECM

Electronic Counter Measures

EMF

European Monetary Fund

EMT

Equivalent Megatonage

EU

European Union

GDP

Gross Domestic Product

GLCM

Ground Launched Cruise Missile

GPALS

Global Protection Against Limited Strikes

IAEA

Independent Atomic Energy Agency

ICBM

Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile

IFOR

UN Peace Implementation Force in Bosnia

INF

Intermediate Nuclear Forces

IRBM

Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile

JSTPS

Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff

kt

Kiloton

MAD

Mutual Assured Destruction

MARV

Manoeuvrable Re-entry Vehicle

MAUD

Military Application of Uranium Detonation

MIRV

Multiple Independently-Targetable Re-Entry Vehicle

MLF

Multilateral Force

MRV

Multiple Re-Entry Vehicle

mt

Megaton

NACC

North Atlantic Co-operation Council

NATO

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

NCANWT

National Council for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons-Tests

NPT

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

NSC

National Security Council

PFP

Partnership for Peace

R&D

Research and Development

SAC

Strategic Air Command

SACEUR

Supreme Allied Commander Europe

SALT

Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

SAM

Surface to Air Missile

SEATO

South East Asia Treaty Organisation

SIOP

Single Integrated Operational Plan

SLBM

Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile

SLCM

Submarine Launched Cruise Missle

SRAM

Short Range Attack Missile

SSBN

Nuclear Powered Ballistic Missile Submarine

SSCN

Nuclear Powered Cruise Missile Submarine

SSN

Nuclear Powered Submarine

TERCOM

Terrain Contour Matching

TSR

Tactical Strike and Reconnaissance (Aircraft)

USAF

United States Air Force

USN

United States Navy

WEU

Western European Union

T HE AUTHOR IS grateful to the Controller of HMSO for permission to reproduce Crown copyright material and to Oxford University Press for permission to reproduce material from Navias M.S. Nuclear Weapons and British Strategic Planning 195558, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991.

T HIS BOOK IS about Britains strategic security policy in the second half of the twentieth century. I have had a professional interest in this subject for much of my life and I was able to complement that experience during a period of postgraduate research in the early 1990s. I hope that I have been able to combine these two perspectives to maximum effect while writing this book.

A primary duty of all states is to ensure their continuing survival as independent entities. When the states security is threatened it requires its citizens to contribute directly to its survival. Twice during the first half of this century British citizens responded magnificently to the call to protect Britains vital national interests, albeit with very considerable loss of life. Sadly our record regarding the development of rational strategic security policies has been rather different. The armed forces make a unique, but by no means exclusive, contribution to the nations security policy. Indeed the move from reactive defence to proactive deterrence requires policies to be perceived as credible, both at home and abroad. This, in turn, requires the contribution of informed politicians, officials, academic analysts and, increasingly, a spectrum of citizens. Without the contribution of the latter the legitimacy, and therefore the credibility, of national security policies will remain open to question. This book seeks to help a wider public acquire a greater understanding of Britains strategic security requirements. More specifically it should be of interest to those who wish to understand why Britain chose to procure and deploy a succession of strategic nuclear deterrents and what the implications of that policy have been.

The period that this text covers corresponds to my life span. I was born a few months after the theory of nuclear fission was first published. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki took place a month before I started school. By the time I had left school the V-bombers were operational, Britain had conducted her first H-bomb test and had adopted the doctrine of massive retaliation. In the summer of 1961, when the Berlin Wall was erected, I was a platoon commander in an infantry battalion in West Germany. When American and Soviet tanks faced each other at Checkpoint Charlie we were placed on operational stand-by to drive up the Helmstedt corridor to Berlin. Happily the international tension dissipated and we were not deployed but I can still remember the adrenaline pumping and my imagination running riot! During the early 1960s I led a number of operational patrols along the Inner German Border. Throughout that period the minefields and other obstacles just to the east of the border were continually being improved to stem the flow of men and women to the West. The opportunity to witness these events on a day-to-day basis, literally on the border between East and West, made a profound impact on my understanding of the division of Europe. By the mid-1960s I was in Cyprus where the V-bombers, based at RAF Akrotiri and capable of reaching targets in the Crimea, were being phased out, leaving Britain without a viable strategic nuclear deterrent. During the early 1970s, by which time the Polaris fleet was operational, I contributed to the planning, conduct and evaluation of the WINTEX series of exercises NATOs biennial command post exercises that rehearsed procedures for the transition to war and operational procedures up to, and including, selective nuclear release. By the late 1980s I was working in a British Embassy in Western Europe. At the start of my tour of duty Britain was maintaining pressure on her allies to deploy land-based cruise missiles in response to the earlier deployment of Soviet SS-20 missiles in Eastern Europe. By the time I left both the intelligence community and informed open sources were reporting massive and startling changes within the Warsaw Pacts force structure. The Berlin Wall was breached in 1989 and a year later Germany was reunified. Half my military service had been spent in Western Europe and the division of Germany had been the focus of my professional life for three decades. The Moscow coup took place in August 1991 and three years later the first Trident boat sailed from the Clyde on an operational patrol. These were momentous events that heralded major changes in Britains security requirements.