Prime Minister David Cameron confirmed before Parliament today that based upon a completed “value for money review” of the United Kingdom's deterrent, “the decision to start construction of the new submarines need not now be taken until around 2016.”
The Prime Minister also highlighted other changes in the nuclear posture:
Paul Ingram, BASIC's Executive Director, discusses decisions around the United Kingdom's Trident nuclear weapon system.
“The threat perceptions of Turkey and the other NATO alliances are overlapped to some extent but not completely……. That's where the real debate inside NATO comes from; it's from differing threat perceptions.”
Dr Ian Kearns, BASIC's Research Director was interviewed after the roundtable along with other particpants.
Read more: “http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/108218/-jtw-interview-leading-experts-…“>
This roundtable meeting, jointly organized by the Arms Control Association, the British American Security Information Council, the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy Hamburg, International Strategic Research Organization, aimed to evaluate the role that deterrence and nuclear weapons play in Turkey's security policy and NATO's defense posture.
Read more:
This month we launched our new website, which has been designed and re-focused on our Getting to Zero programme.
The United Kingdom has maintained unbroken nuclear weapons patrols since 1968. The rationale for this doctrine of continuous deterrence has been based on several pillars that are irrelevant in today’s environment. Rather than an absolute need for continuous deterrent, there is instead a great opportunity for Britain to take the lead as the most progressive of the nuclear weapons states by reducing the readiness and size of its
strategic force. Article originally published in RUSI Journal, Vol. 155, No. 2.
Please select the PDF icon below to read the full article.
Britain's Liberal Democrat armed forces minister, Nick Harvey, indicates that the final decision on the replacement of Trident will be delayed until October 2015 – after the next general election. This would allow the Liberal Democrats and their Conservative coalition partners to do battle over the future of the submarine nuclear missile system in the election campaign.
www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/sep/22/trident-decision-delay-expected-2015.
