Senior UK military and political figures have urged for proposals to retire the Trident nuclear deterrent and replace it with a more modern equivalent to be re-assessed. The Trident replacement - which would cost £20 billion - is no longer economically viable for the UK, they said, adding that the country's range of defence mechanisms should be slimmed down to concentrate on specialist areas, rather than such a spread of military capabilities.

The report issued on June 30th was titled Shared Responsibilities, and was the product of the UK Commission on National Security. In it, the authors stressed the need for a full-on review of the UK's planned defences for years to come, including Trident, the pair of Future Navy Carriers and the Joint Strike Fighters set to serve the Fleet Air Arm from 2014 onwards.

UK Defence Spending

The authors - ex NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson among them - stopped short of stating that the UK did not need any kind of nuclear defence, but queried whether taking Trident out of service in favour of a newer model was either cost-effective or strategically viable. Britain, they said, required some form of deterrent for the 21st century, but defence spending factors, etc, still needed to be factored in.

The detailed review called for by the authors must give consideration to "whether we should replace the Trident system as currently planned, seek to extend the life of the current system further or decide that some other system for providing Britain's deterrent in a nuclear armed world would be better suited to the strategic circumstances in which we then find ourselves", they stated.

In this way, in-depth evaluation of whether Trident could still be cost-effective and right for the job in hand from 2024 onwards should be taking place, right now. And this, said the authors, would transmit positively to the international community, "...in particular to the non-nuclear weapon state signatories of the NPT." Furthermore, it was crucial that the UK avoided "....locking itself into a Trident extension programme any earlier than was absolutely necessary."

"It [the in-depth evaluation] could also push some of the heavier spending years of the Trident programme further into the future, take some shorter-term pressure off budgets and give the UK extra decision-making flexibility, should we find ourselves a few years down the line in a context in which major US and Russian cuts in strategic arsenals might begin to impact on the US programmes on which the UK's Trident deterrent depends", the study explained.

UK Defence Technology

Among the other types of UK defence technology covered in the report were aircraft and tanks. The 350+ Challenger 2 tanks in service with the British Army, it said, were "arguably...far more than we need", while the Royal Air Force's Tornado fleet could also be slimmed down, "especially given the recent decision to buy Tranche 3 of the [Eurofighter] Typhoon."

In conclusion, the report wrote that the best military capabilities available were now out of Britain's financial reach and, as a consequence of this, Gordon Brown and his colleagues should look at "capability downgrading and quantity reductions as well as complete cancellation of some equipment programmes". They should also create a unified defence budget to cover all aspects of defence spending, including when it touched on other areas like Transport and Health.