Is Britain's nuclear deterrent still operational?

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A former director of nuclear policy at the British Ministry of Defence, Rear Admiral Philip Mathias, said in The Telegraph that the UK was "no longer capable" of managing its nuclear submarine programme, citing record delays, shocking vessel availability and an operational workload that has increased from 70-day patrols during the Cold War to more than 200 days per crew today.

According to him, the combination of industrial delays, a maintenance backlog on the Astute class, and succession and skills management difficulties places the Silent Service in an unprecedented situation that requires "radical" measures. Specifically, the Astute-class attack fleet is accumulating prolonged downtime: HMS Ambush has reportedly spent a total of 1,222 days in dry dock, while the submarines Artful and Audacious have spent more than 950 days out of the water, with Astute and Anson also in port and six of the seven planned units in service. The commissioning of Agamemnon, hailed as an industrial feat, took more than 13 years, a record for the Royal Navy, illustrating the drift in schedules and the increase in associated costs.

Russian pressure in the North Atlantic is intensifying, with activity in British waters up by more than 30% according to Defence Minister John Healey, while Vladimir Putin claims to be ready for war in Europe, reinforcing the need for deterrence and presence. Mathias calls for Dreadnought to be the last generation of British SSBNs and for the AUKUS submarine pillar (the US-Australia-UK partnership to build submarines for Canberra) to be cancelled , judging that it will not meet the capacity or schedule requirements of London and Canberra, in favour of "more cost-effective" solutions such as aerial drones and smaller unmanned submarines. He points to decades of budget cuts, repeated reorganisations of nuclear programmes, a major failure in the management of key personnel, and the role of industry in the delays, also recalling that none of the 23 decommissioned nuclear submarines have been dismantled since the withdrawal of HMS Dreadnought in 1980.

The issue is sensitive given that British deterrence relies on four Vanguard-class SSBNs, one of which is permanently on patrol, despite failures during Trident II D5 missile tests in 2016 and last January off the coast of Florida. In response to this criticism, the Ministry of Defence insists that Dreadnought remains on schedule, reaffirms its commitment to modernising deterrence and securing the dismantling process at Devonport and Rosyth, and highlights a financial effort described as the largest since the end of the Cold War, including £15 billion over the legislative term for the sovereign nuclear warhead programme. The Telegraph

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