Trident alternatives review to be published despite MoD opposition

Ministry of Defence resisted release of any material that might be used against its ambition to upgrade nuclear system

In the face of fierce opposition from the Ministry of Defence, next week the government will publish a long-promised document on alternatives to the Trident nuclear missile system in a move that will set the terms for an intense debate about Britain’s military and diplomatic status.

MoD resistance to the release of any material that might be used against its ambition to upgrade the existing Trident system at a cost of tens of billions of pounds provoked a bitter dispute in Whitehall, the Guardian has learned. One well-placed source described the row as “pretty bloody”.

So serious was the dispute that David Cameron told the cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, to bang heads together to reach an agreement on what information should be released and what should remain classified.

The result will be revealed in the Trident alternatives review, a key plank in the 2010 coalition agreement, due to be released on Tuesday, two days before the Commons rises before its long summer recess.

The review was triggered by the belief within the Liberal Democrat leadership that a like-for-like replacement of Trident based on continuous deployment of up to 40 nuclear warheads ready to fire, underpinned by a requirement to flatten Moscow, was no longer needed. A smaller, cheaper system that reflected contemporary strategic threats and economic realities was more appropriate, it argued.

Lib Dem leaders are understood to have abandoned initial proposals to place nuclear warheads on cruise missiles in submarines, on planes or on missiles based in silos on land. These options are widely regarded as too expensive, unreliable and ineffective.

Instead, the document to be published next week will focus on how to slim down a system based on some new Trident submarines whose design has already been paid for, equipped with missiles supplied at cut-price by the US.

This could be achieved by reducing the number of submarines and missiles but, crucially, by abandoning Britain’s posture of Continuous At Sea Deterrent, known as CASD. There is an increasingly widespread view in parliament, and among independent defence experts, that CASD is no longer viable and may never have been so, even during the cold war.

This year Sir Nick Harvey, a Lib Dem MP and former defence minister, described plans to spend billions of pounds on a like-for-like replacement of Trident as based on “outdated and ludicrous” ideas about deterrence.

Harvey, whose job overseeing the Trident review was taken over by Danny Alexander, the Treasury chief secretary, last year, strongly questions the need for CASD. “A great national debate, with the focus on likely alternative postures, not alternative systems, is needed,” he told the Guardian on Thursday.

Lord Des Browne, Labour’s defence secretary when the Blair government decided to replace the existing Trident system – and had to depend on Conservative support in the subsequent Commons vote – in 2007, has made it clear he believes a CASD posture is no longer needed.

“Important things have changed …read more