Trident

If your next door neighbour were to aim a cannon from the bottom of their front garden squarely at the front of your house what would you do?

Obviously this is a loaded question (ha ha).

You could try to sabotage the cannon because you’re never going to be able to armour your house enough to withstand the shot. You’re never going to be able to shoot the cannon ball out of the sky with a surface to air missile, you simply won’t have time and won’t have enough speed and momentum to change the outcome.

What you do is buy a cannon and aim it at the front of your neighbour’s house.

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).

When your neighbour comes home and sees your cannon aimed at his home he might decide to buy a second cannon and point it at your house. The neat thing is you don’t have to keep up with the Joneses. One cannon is all it takes to level his house no matter how many he points at you.

All he gets from multiple cannons is redundancy, the ability to maintain one (and remove your sabotage attempts), and the ability to use one for training. All the time another still points at your house.

We’ve mentioned sabotage a number of times which demonstrates why it would be better if the weapon were difficult to detect, track and target. Submarine anyone?

Threat Mitigation

So, of the threats listed in a previous post the following highlighted ones are now deterred:

Tier 1

1. Terrorism
2. Cyber Attack
3. Natural Disaster
4. Overseas Military Crisis (drawing in the UK)

Tier 2

1. Chemical, Biological, Radiological or Nuclear Attack
2. Overseas Instability (leading to points 1, 2 and 4 above)
3. Organised Crime
4. Communication Disruption

Tier 3

1. Conventional Attack
2. Smuggling (weapons, criminals, immigrants, narcotics)
3. Energy Disruption
4. Nuclear Accident
5. Resource Supply Disruption

So none of the tier 1 threats but certainly the high impact ones!

The thing about Trident is that it is very, very expensive but unfortunately the only real credible deterrent against large-scale attack against the UK. Without it we would be sitting ducks prone to nuclear blackmail and extortion.

Nuclear Terrorism

What about non-state actors obtaining a nuclear warhead and detonating it in London?

As can be seen by recent news footage of the Iranian nuclear programme it is very difficult and expensive to produce weapons grade materials. In addition it should be relatively simple to appreciate that the relative purity of these materials is difficult to control exactly. Uranium is purified using centrifuges. These are mechanical devices and cannot remove 100% of other heavy elements. Therefore when the bomb detonates, the fallout that remains gives us a distinct signature that will correspond with a single production batch.

This means we know who manufactured the warhead. We can hold this nation responsible and retaliate accordingly. It is part of the deterrent for even getting into the nuclear business in the first place. One of the responsibilities of playing God.

If you play with fire you must be prepared to be burned.

Threats

So how do we go about defending the UK?

Firstly we should qualify what we mean by the “UK”. We mean the UK and our overseas territories. But we mean this from the perspective of “dug in” defence. Efficient use of local topology and resources. Generally this has the effect of suggesting that having a whopping great navy capable of retrieving an island from the clutches of an evil megalomaniac is unnecessary. It should not be taken in the first place.

The last line in the previous paragraph implies that we may well have to scale up (or down) any deployed capability to deal with changing situations.

Physical Threats

Without delving deep in to the National Security Strategy we can appreciate that some threats are likely and some have a massive impact. Others are less likely and have minimal impact. Some threats might be very unlikely (e.g. a nuclear strike) but may have a catastrophic impact.

The ones that are either likely or have a large impact such that ignoring them would constitute gross negligence are:

1. Terrorism
2. Cyber Attack
3. Natural Disaster
4. Overseas Military Crisis (drawing in the UK)

Below these are:

1. Chemical, Biological, Radiological or Nuclear Attack
2. Overseas Instability (leading to points 1, 2 and 4 above)
3. Organised Crime
4. Communication Disruption

And below these again:

1. Conventional Attack
2. Smuggling (weapons, criminals, immigrants, narcotics)
3. Energy Disruption
4. Nuclear Accident
5. Resource Supply Disruption

We’re not going to worry about financial threats at the moment.

Bickering

I don’t work in the UK defence sector. All I see is what the media reports and what I studied at University.

I fully understand the reasons for all the bickering. It’s competition like rats at the only food source. Competition for money.

Carriers, Typhoon, FRES, each of the services are as bad as the others.

Since I am a parent and since I can rewind 20 years, I can safely say “bang their heads together”. Nowadays however we’re not allowed to do such things (never hurt me) so we have to put our hands on their shoulders and ask if they should think about what they’re doing.

So ditch the Royal Air Force, ditch the Royal Navy and ditch the British Army. Make them work together intrinsically. Focus on the duty rather than the realm in which they once operated (land, sea and air). There has been far too much overlap to allow a division by asset/hardware type over recent decades and centuries. The Royal Marines and the British Army, the Fleet Air Arm and the Royal Air Force, the RAF owns the Chinooks to transport the Army but the Army Air Corps own Apache.

If the Army get Apache then they should have had Harrier GR too. They’re both CAS aircraft. If the Army got those they should certainly get Chinook. Doesn’t leave the RAF with much though does it. It means the RAF have to cling on to a reason d’être, even though there’s no doubt they are Fighter Command. Trouble is they need to learn that Bomber Command went to the Navy a long time ago.

Anyway I digress.

Our force structure should concentrate on the primary duty or task: Defending The UK. After this we can defend our friends and allies. Then we can defend any assets we feel are important on foreign soil. Only then should we can dabble with “nipping problems in the bud” and exerting influence elsewhere.