Facing Down the Soviet Union

Britain, the USA, NATO and Nuclear Weapons, 1976-1983

Kristan Stoddart

• Editore: Palgrave Macmillan
• Anno: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137440334
• Argomento: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Categoria: Militärpolitik

Facing Down the Soviet Union reveals for the first time the historic deliberations regarding the Chevaline upgrade to Britain's Polaris force, the decisions to procure the Trident C-4 and then D-5 system from the Americans in 1980 and 1982. It also details the decision to base Ground Launched Cruise Missiles in the UK in 1983.

1

The British Labour Government and the Development of Chevaline, 1976–1979

By the time James Callaghan replaced Harold Wilson as Prime Minister in April 1976 Labour was still operating as a minority government, meaning it required the support of other political parties to pass legislation leading to a pact with the Liberal Party from 1977–1978.¹ Britain was still facing major economic problems with double-digit inflation and rising unemployment with nuclear weapons a divisive issue within the Party. Despite long-standing support from many Labour ministers and within the Parliamentary Labour Party for nuclear weapons, their 1974 General Election manifesto stated that: ‘Starting from the basis of the multilateral disarmament negotiations, we will seek the removal of American Polaris bases from Britain. We have renounced any intention of moving towards a new generation of strategic nuclear weapons’.² For these reasons Callaghan and his inner-Cabinet imposed an extremely high level of secrecy on British nuclear weapons policy, especially in regards to the strategic deterrent, and deliberately excluded the full Cabinet from the policy process whilst actively minimising parliamentary debate.

The Chevaline modification to Polaris, designed to allow the UK’s Polaris force to overcome Soviet anti-ballistic missiles defences (ABMs), was already a hugely controversial issue. It was now moving rapidly into a high-tempo development programme. Chevaline used a combination of penetration aids housed in a Penetration Aid Carrier (PAC) in place of one of Polaris’ three warheads. These were carried on board a Bus that could manoeuvre the payload in space prior to the separation procedures through the upper (exo) atmosphere. These would produce a ‘threat cloud’ of decoys which would allow the two remaining warheads to penetrate through the Soviet ABM system. Designing and developing this project was the most technologically demanding yet attempted by Britain.

Project management and technical developments

As detailed in The Sword and the Shield, although Chevaline had survived a meeting of the Public Expenditure Survey Committee (PESC) in December 1975, management of the project was being reorganised and comprehensive annual progress reports on the project’s rationale and progress had been initiated.³ This was intended to help contain the escalating costs, aid the Royal Navy in discharging responsibility for the overall management of the project, provide a sense of the scale of the future work involved and provide a realistic timescale for Chevaline deployment. The opening report was submitted to ministers on 1 April 1976.⁴ This was the first comprehensive assessment of the project that had been undertaken, and it led to a significant increase in the estimates of Chevaline development costs. The existing £400 million cost estimate had increased to £594 million, including a contingency of £35 million, with the in-service date estimated to be between July 1981 and early 1982.⁵ By this time, as Kate Pyne (AWE’s Technical Historian) recounts, there were significant technical developments taking place in the Chevaline programme. These included:

AWRE designed penetration aids used Skylark sounding rockets for their initial flight tests from a payload designed by the RAE. The fourth Skylark trial was successfully fired in February 1975 and as usual, an on-board camera photographed the behaviour of all the penetration aids. In April, more penaids were successfully tested in NASA facilities at Cleveland, Ohio, and again, correct operation was observed. Skylark S5 was launched in July 1975 and once more everything worked satisfactorily. Penetration aid work seemed to be going well ... As with ReB [Re-entry Body/Re-entry Vehicle] development and warhead development, the penetration aid workload at AWRE was high. Submissions for freezing the designs would be made by the end of May 1976, although development was about six months behind schedule.⁶

Chevaline was thus entering the development phase, having survived the prospect of cancellation – at least for the time being. However, Britain’s economy in 1976, latter 1970s and into the 1980s was in difficulties across a number of industries.⁷ These economic problems not unnaturally impacted on the defence budget, and Chevaline’s costs were rising due to development work and inflation, and the threat of cancellation still hung over the project. Chevaline was deemed to be essential to guarantee the ‘Moscow Criterion’. This was initiated by the Joint Intelligence Committee in 1962 which British governments had judged to be the central plank of the National Retaliatory War Plan since. This was defined able to:

severely reduce the Soviet Union’s economic and military strength in its struggle to overtake the United States and dominate the world ... [the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC)] deliberately ignored the psychological, technical and political factors, but felt that it would not be unreasonable to say that the Soviet leaders would consider that the certain destruction of their five largest cities would put them at an unacceptable disadvantage in relation to the United States.

The selection of the five largest cities was made on a points system, marks being awarded for: size of population, civil and administrative centres, centres of economic control, military command posts and telecommunication centres. The list that resulted from adding the marks together was headed by Moscow, which then gave its name to the UK’s national strategic targeting criteria.⁸

Chevaline and challenges to the ‘Moscow Criterion’

With this in mind, two months after Callaghan became Prime Minister he was approached by Roy Mason, the Defence Secretary. Mason reiterated the centrality of the ‘Moscow Criterion’ and that Chevaline was vital to reinstituting the ‘Moscow Criterion’ which had been diminished, if not completely removed, earlier in the year.⁹ Mason explained:

We have already recognised that, as from the early part of this year, we would be unlikely to be able to inflict unacceptable damage on the Moscow area by firing missiles from the Atlantic. Until 1977 it is estimated that we could hit Moscow with certainty from the Mediterranean; from 1977 to 1979/80 we could do so whenever we have two submarines on station; but we will not have the assured capability to penetrate the anti-ballistic missile defence of Moscow once the Russians have achieved full battle management radar coverage of the South-west approach to Moscow. This they might do by 1979/80. The ability to inflict unacceptable damage to Moscow is, of course, fundamental to our national criteria for strategic nuclear deterrence and this underlay the decision last year that we should proceed with Chevaline. I continue to believe that this is so. The alternative would be not to improve Polaris further; and to rely, as the basis for effective deterrence in the longer term, on inflicting damage on the undefended cities outside the range of Moscow’s anti-ballistic missile defences. But the decision to accept a reduced capability would leak. The consequent damage to the credibility of the deterrent would be considerable. I believe therefore that the need for Chevaline is unchanged. Meanwhile, we must recognise that, although alternative target options are prepared, these do not meet our fundamental criterion; and for a period we shall be unable to guarantee the destruction of Moscow. This makes it all the more important that Chevaline should be progressed with all urgency.¹⁰

Mason indicated that the recent review of Chevaline had led to the estimated costs for the project to rise from £337 million (at September 1974 prices) to £594 million (at September 1975 prices) of which £153 million was real cost increases and £104 million due to inflation. The £153 million increase covered provisioning for known technical problems and a contingency fund against unforeseen difficulties. Mason realised these cost rises needed to be considered against the background of the PESC and the wider defence budget which was already under major challenge. Mason concluded ‘I remain convinced that the Chevaline project is viable and that it continues to deserve the highest priority. Its completion would give us a credible strategic deterrent capability for a period of at least twelve years from 1982 onwards ... but not to plan for a successor system. I recommend that we endorse the continuation of the project at full speed to completion’.¹¹ Mason added he hoped to discuss these matters with Callaghan personally prior to discussions with the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, Tony Crosland, and Chancellor, Denis Healey.

The new management team that Mason had set up in 1975 had identified technical difficulties in the design and performance of Chevaline which indicated continuous deployment would now slip to early 1982. This meant a longer ‘deterrent gap’ capable of inflicting ‘unacceptable damage’ on Moscow by firing from the Atlantic. That could be achieved until 1977 from launching from the Mediterranean and from then until 1979/80 when two submarines were available for continuous-at-sea-deterrence (CASD). After this date the Soviets were expected to upgrade the radars they used for their Galosh anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs) to achieve full battle management radar coverage encompassing the south west approach to Moscow.¹² Pavel Podvig describes developments from the Soviet side:

By 1972 the industry presented a draft design of an integrated early warning system. Since the new system was intended to be fully integrated with the existing and future Moscow missile defense system, the first step of the program was to incorporate the radars of the A-35 Moscow missile defense system – Dunay-3 (Dog House) in Kubinka and Dunay-3U (Cat House) in Chekhov – into the early warning network. This work began in 1973 and continued until 1978. In addition to finishing construction of the Dnepr radars that were built at sites in Balkhash, Mishelevka, Sevastopol, and Skrunda, the program called for construction of an additional Dnepr radar at a new site in Mukachevo, Ukraine. These Dnepr radars complemented the existing Dnestr-M radars in Olenegorsk and Skrunda and formed the backbone of the new early warning system. The system was brought into operation in two parts. The first part, which consisted of radars in Olenegorsk, Skrunda, Balkhash, and Mishelevka, was commissioned for combat duty on 29 October 1976. The second one, which included radars in Sevastopol and Mukachevo, went operational on 16 January 1979 ... The next stage of the development of the early warning radar network was the effort to deploy large phased-array radars of the Daryal (Pechora) type ... In 1975, based on the experience of Daugava operations at Olenegorsk, the Soviet government ordered construction of two Daryal radars at new sites in Pechora and Gabala, Azerbaijan. The Daryal (Pechora) type radars in Pechora and Gabala were intended to complement the network of Dnestr-M and Dnepr (Hen House) radars that was still under construction. This network was eventually completed in January 1979, when the radars in Sevastopol and Mukachevo were brought into operation.¹³

As a result of these developments of the Soviet ABM system Mason again indicated in a follow-up approach to Callaghan that ‘although alternative target options are prepared ... for a period we shall be unable to guarantee the destruction of Moscow’.¹⁴ For Mason this reinforced the case for Chevaline to ensure the reinstatement of t...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1 The British Labour Government and the Development of Chevaline, 1976–1979
• 2 The Callaghan Government and Polaris Replacement 1976–1979: The Duff-Mason Report
• 3 Britain, the US and NATO LRTNF Modernisation, 1976–1979
• 4 ‘Gone Bananas’ – The Conservative Government and Chevaline, 1979–1983
• 5 Mrs Thatcher and the Trident C-4 Decision
• 6 Follow-on Negotiations for Trident C-4
• 7 Mrs Thatcher, MISC 7 and the Trident II D-5 Decision
• 8 Creating the ‘Seamless Robe of Deterrence’: Great Britain’s Role in NATO’s INF Debate
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index