Britain and Nuclear Weapons

London: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1980. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Good/Good. xv, [1], 160 pages. Ex-library with usual library markings. DJ in plastic sleeve, glued to boards. This was published for The Royal Institute of International Affairs. The contents include: List of Abbreviations, Introductions, Chapters on The Nuclear Bias; From Skybolt to Polaris; The Problem of Strategy; The Labour Government and Nuclear Weapons 1964-1970; Chevaline; The Problem of Replacement; Cruise Missiles versus Ballistic Missiles; Defence Priorities; Arms Control; The Strategic Context; Nuclear Politics in Europe; and Rationales. This work includes Appendices on: Submarines; Characteristics of SLBMs; Expenditure on Nuclear Weapons (current Lm); Breakdown of Costs of Nuclear Strategic Forces; Manpower; Polaris Missile Tests; and Underground Nuclear Tests. There are also Notes and an Index. Sir Lawrence David Freedman, KCMG, CBE, PC, FBA (born 7 December 1948) is Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London. He has been described as the "dean of British strategic studies" and was a member of the Iraq Inquiry. Freedman held positions at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) before he was appointed, in 1982, Professor of War Studies at King's College London. He was head of the department until 1997. In 2000, he was the first head of the college's School of Social Science and Public Policy. From 2003 to December 2013, he was a Vice Principal at King's College London. He retired from King's in December 2014. Freedman was the official historian of the Falklands campaign. In 1952, the United Kingdom became the third country (after the United States and the Soviet Union) to develop and test nuclear weapons, and is one of the five nuclear-weapon states under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The UK initiated a nuclear weapons program, codenamed Tube Alloys, during the Second World War. At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, it was merged with the American Manhattan Project. The British contribution to the Manhattan Project saw British scientists participate in most of its work. The British government considered nuclear weapons to be a joint discovery, but the American Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (McMahon Act) restricted other countries, including the UK, from access to information about nuclear weapons. Fearing the loss of Britain's great power status, the UK resumed its own project, now codenamed High Explosive Research. On 3 October 1952, it detonated an atomic bomb in the Monte Bello Islands in Australia in Operation Hurricane. Eleven more British nuclear weapons tests in Australia were carried out over the following decade, including seven British nuclear tests at Maralinga in 1956 and 1957. The British hydrogen bomb programme demonstrated Britain's ability to produce thermonuclear weapons in the Operation Grapple nuclear tests in the Pacific, and led to the amendment of the McMahon Act. Since the 1958 US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement, the US and the UK have cooperated extensively on nuclear security matters. The nuclear Special Relationship between the two countries has involved the exchange of classified scientific data and fissile materials such as uranium-235 and plutonium. The UK has not had a program to develop an independent delivery system since the cancellation of the Blue Streak in 1960. Instead, it purchased US delivery systems for UK use, fitting them with warheads designed and manufactured by the UK's Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) and its predecessor. Under the 1963 Polaris Sales Agreement, the US supplied the UK with Polaris missiles and nuclear submarine technology. The US also supplied the Royal Air Force and British Army of the Rhine with nuclear weapons under Project E in the form of aerial bombs, missiles, depth charges and artillery shells until 1992. Nuclear-capable American aircraft have been based in the UK since 1949, but the last US nuclear weapons were withdrawn in 2006. In 1982, the Polaris Sales Agreement was amended to allow the UK to purchase Trident II missiles. Since 1998, when the UK decommissioned its tactical WE.177 bombs, the Trident has been the only operational nuclear weapons system in British service. The delivery system consists of four Vanguard-class submarines based at HMNB Clyde in Scotland. Each submarine is armed with up to sixteen Trident II missiles, each carrying warheads in up to eight multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs). With at least one submarine always on patrol, the Vanguards perform a strategic deterrence role and also have a sub-strategic capability.