nuclear-news

UK 1970s plan – Trident nuclear missiles to kill 10 million Russians

Secret files from 70s reveal Trident strike needed ‘to kill 10m Russians’, Whitehall documents written in 1970s and marked ‘personal and top secret’ show logic of British Cold War deterrent  *Rob Edwards * guardian.co.uk, 26 December 2010
The British government opted for the Trident nuclear weapons system because it estimated it could kill up to 10 million Russians and inflict “unacceptable damage” on the former Soviet Union, according to secret Whitehall documents written in the 1970s.

The macabre calculations that underpinned the decision in 1980 to replace Polaris nuclear missiles with Trident have been revealed by a Ministry of Defence memo, marked “personal and top secret”. In a nuclear war, Britain would have had to be prepared “to finish what we start”, it said.

Other MoD documents set out in chilling detail exactly how an attack on Moscow and St Petersburg could cause enough death and destruction “to bring about the breakdown of the city as a functioning community”……..

an effective deterrent required “options an order of magnitude higher than this” of up to ten million dead. The Soviet Union’s “threshold of horror” was different from the UK’s because it had lost more than 20 million people in the second world war………

The documents were found in the National Archives in London by Brian Burnell, a former nuclear weapons design engineer who now researches atomic history. Some of them were being studied earlier this year by the Cabinet Office, which is writing an official history of Chevaline, a secret upgrade to Polaris in the 1970s.

…………John Ainslie, the coordinator of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, pointed out that the 120 nuclear warheads that the current government wanted to remain operational were enough to kill several million people.”These documents give a glimpse into the world of Dr Strangelove, where mathematicians calculate precisely how many people Britain must be able to incinerate in a nuclear war,” he said.

The MoD declined to comment on the grounds that the documents were “historical”.

The birth of Trident

The original prime contractor and developer of the submarine-launched Trident missile was Lockheed Martin Space Systems in the US. In 1982 a deal was reached between Britain and the US to purchase the Trident II missile system (designated D5), to replace the ageing Polaris. It was only in 1994 that Trident came into service after the Soviet Union collapsed. Britain made a 10% contribution to research and development. Despite running costs of about £2bn a year, Trident was cheaper for being a US franchise.

There are four nuclear submarines – Vanguard, Victorious, Vigilant and Vengeance – carrying up to 16 Trident ballistic missiles. Each missile is capable of travelling at least 4,000 miles and carries three nuclear warheads. Proposals to replace Trident were passed by the Commons in 2007, although in November the government extended the life of the programme by four years, which means they will be due for replacement in 2028, so delaying any decision until 2016….

Secret files from 70s reveal Trident strike needed ‘to kill 10m Russians’ | UK news | The Guardian

December 27, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, UK, weapons and war