The House of Commons is set to vote later today on the principle of sustaining the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent. Ubiquitously dubbed ‘Trident’, the vote is actually on the merits or otherwise of replacing the Royal Navy’s current fleet of four Vanguard-class submarines (SSBNs) that carry the Trident D5 ballistic missile with a like-for-like replacement, dubbed Successor. Such a vote is already overdue: Tony Blair’s 2006 White Paper recommended that development of a new SSBN class should begin to enter service in the early 2020s, a target that has already slipped by a decade, if safe and secure continuous at-sea deterrence (CASD) patrols are to be sustained.
Today’s vote is in some ways less momentous than it seems. On the one hand, it still stops short of providing ‘Main Gate’ procurement authorisation to proceed with construction of a full, four-boat Successor fleet. On the other, design and development work is already underway anyway, with many long-lead items for the new submarine class already
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