Luke Akehurst critiqued my CentreForum paper Retiring Trident: An Alternative Proposal for Nuclear Deterrence on these pages earlier this week. I am grateful to Progress for the opportunity to respond and clear up a few misconceptions.

First, my proposal set out to answer the question ‘What is the cheapest way for the UK to provide a credible, independent nuclear deterrent?’ This is exactly what Ed Miliband said he was looking for at his January campaign launch.

The key word here is ‘credible’: I used the recently declassified definitionof minimum deterrence developed by the Cabinet Office’s joint intelligence committee in 1978, and reconfirmed in the depths of the cold war in 1982. The Duff-Mason criteria, named after its authors, define minimum deterrence as the ability to destroy 10 cities other than Moscow or St Petersburg, or to deliver 30 warheads against Russian targets. CentreForum’s proposal meets these criteria, and demonstrates in considerable technical detail how successful deterrence would be achieved; it also shows that Trident is gold-plated overkill, which comes at a very high price.

Second, my report shows that the ‘bolt from the blue’ attack that Luke refers to is both unrealistic – the United Kingdom has always assumed that there would be at least 24 hours’ strategic warning of conflict – and mitigated by our deployment plans. His fear of a (presumably Russian?) ‘attack pre-emptively by enemy aircraft, special forces or nuclear attack for the land base; or, in the case of the aircraft carrier by air attack, submarines, conventional warships or nuclear attack’ is not credible given the state of Russia’s forces and the vanishingly unlikely probability that Vladimir Putin wants to start a nuclear war.

Third, it is vital to look at defence spending in the context of the European Union and Nato. There is no Group of Soviet Forces in Germany to pose a conventional threat to the UK and western Europe today, and so the cold war fear that the United States may renege on its alliance commitments if Europe was occupied by the Soviets – the whole basis for the UK independent nuclear deterrent – is redundant. Proponents of Trident replacement have to recognise these realities.

Fourth, Nato, the US and the EU all need the UK to be able to play a global conventional role in peacekeeping, peacemaking and, ultimately, in combat far more than they need a UK Trident submarine on patrol. No party is going into the 2015 election looking to increase defence spending – in fact, the most likely outcome is that the defence budget will fall to 1.5 per cent of GDP by 2020-21.This means spending in 2020-21 would be 23.2 per cent lower than the two per cent Nato target would require.

As was made clear in a Commons debate on 20 January, Trident’s budgetary burden may well mean cutting the army to 60,000 men and women – a previously unthinkable figure. Such small conventional forces would render the UK unable to play a leading role in – or indeed, meaningfully contribute to – the multilateral operations that support our diplomatic and development agenda worldwide.

Is Luke proposing to slash the UK conventional forces to pay for Trident? Presumably not. But if that is the case, the government would need to increase defence spending by £30bn out to 2032. Luke does not explain how it is going to do this.

Fifth, with all 138 dual-role F-35 aircraft available for the nuclear mission, the package funds significant investment in the supporting conventional forces. Benefits would include five new Astute nuclear-powered-but-conventionally-armed-submarines, four additional Type 26 frigates, conversion of both new aircraft carriers to catapult take-off arrested landing configuration, six ship-borne airborne early warning aircraft and four carrier-capable cargo aircraft, updating the RAF Voyager tankers and eight land-based maritime patrol aircraft to replace the Nimrods scrapped in 2010.

On top of these enhancements, the proposal saves £5-13bn for recapitalising the conventional forces, which, despite what Luke says, is no insignificant sum. Again, the question he needs to answer is how he would pay for conventional force enhancements while buying Trident. Without a major budget increase, he can only offer conventional force cuts – risking the UK becoming a one-trick nuclear pony.

Sixth, my proposal is designed to protect the nuclear submarine and atomic weapons’ industrial base. This means that BAE’s Barrow submarine building yard and Rolls-Royce at Derby will continue, as will AWE Aldermaston. What it also means is that in the extremely unlikely event of a new cold war – for which you would have to imagine Russian troops based in Poland and Germany – the UK could return to Trident in future if it needed to.

Seventh, my proposal creates jobs with additional frigate ordered from Govan and the refit programme of the carriers in Rosyth. The bulk of the additional savings are likely to go on re-equipping the army, which has a strong record of buying British equipment.

Finally, as a committed multilateralist, my proposal is a clear step down the nuclear ladder, and if the circumstances are right for further disarmament, then precisely because these investments are dual-roled, we are not going to have to throw away a £30bn investment in submarines that are hard to use in any other role.

The 2015 general election provides a unique opportunity for Britain to select a 21^st century nuclear force that is fit for role, and supports the conventional force. Let us seize it, rather than getting locked into a gold-plated cold war weapons system for another 40 years.

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Toby Fenwick is research associate at Centre Forum

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