RUSI Analysis, 26 Jul 2013 By John Tesh CBE, Associate Fellow

The 2013 National Risk Register (NRR) of civil emergencies was published by the govt. on 11 July. The danger profile for many communities and businesses remains complex and unpredictable, heightening the cost of the overall measures of resilience and business continuity planning that the NRR promotes.

What is the National Risk Register?

The National Risk Register (NRR) is a list of the major sorts of emergency which can affect public, private and voluntary sector organisations and businesses, and members of the general public within the UK.

The first NRR was a fabricated from the primary National Security Strategy in 2008. This concluded that the UK’s domestic risk profile was complicated and hard to foretell and, in its most extreme forms, potentially as dangerous as international security threats. a better level of national resilience was needed, as portion of a methodology to advertise not only the safety of the nation but in addition the security of its people.

Resilience – even then a comparatively new term inside the security lexicon – comprised the flexibility to anticipate, reply to, maintain essential supplies and services throughout, and get over, quite a lot of emergencies. Professional front line responders would have a major responsibility.  But, especially in larger scale emergencies, resilience was everyone’s business. And knowledge at the risks must be a lot more widely available.

The obvious source of knowledge was the National Risk Assessment (NRA) – a confidential assessment of the hazards of all types of emergency updated by the cupboard Office annually since 2005.   The NRA assesses the possibility and certain impact of a few 80 to 90 kinds of emergency. In 2010 it provided much of the underpinning evidence for the Government’s National Security Risk Assessment, supplying examples of the key domestic risks posed by international terrorism, natural hazards, and cyber attacks.

Producing a public risk register brought obvious challenges:  public mistrust of presidency publications of this type;  and the right way to set out enough detail to be useful without itemising every kind of emergency, or implying that the past is anticipated to copy itself sooner or later.  The 2008 model of a transparent but dispassionate document, designed to tell but not compel work by organisations to enhance their resilience, have been built on.   But later editions were less inhibited by considerations of classification – a big problem given the secrecy surrounding much of the government’s risk assessment work – and more driven by what people have said they need to grasp and by advances inside the science of emergency risk assessment. The 2013 edition follows this trend, being more open both in regards to the risks and about what’s not within the register.

What Does the 2013 National Risk Register Show?

This is demonstrated most clearly inside the matrices on page 10 of the Register. These provide  broad-order comparisons, using a scale for comparing likelihood where the bottom probability events are four orders of magnitude less likely than the best. The impact scale is in a similar fashion stepped.  Taking the ‘top tier’ of risks inside the National Security Risk assessment first, the NRR shows that:

• The highest impact risks posed by international terrorism are that terrorists might obtain effective mass impact biological agents or a functioning nuclear device. The possibility of this happening within the following couple of years is expounded to be low but not negligible. These remain a central authority priority for the ‘Prepare’ programme under the ‘Contest’ strategy.
• The highest risks of natural disasters are of an influenza pandemic, coastal flooding, and a gas-rich volcanic effusion at the scale of the 1783-84 Laki eruption in Iceland. The latter is distinguished from the ‘ash cloud’ risk which scientific opinion rates the lesser of 2 forms of risk from Icelandic volcanic eruptions.
• Interestingly, the NRR is more sanguine concerning the near term risks of cyber attack than the NSRA is for the long run, both reflecting a central authority view that the hazards listed below are prone to grow because the UK economy and its peoples’ life-style increasingly depend on the net.

The more common risks fall within the low to mid range of impact – serious but not game-changing within the way disasters in say Japan could be. Their disruptive effects are sometimes more pronounced than the threat they pose to life and limb.  Of these, the events likely to disrupt our lives are, unsurprisingly:

• Extremes of weather: an increasing feature of life in Britain because the climate continues to alter, or even as average temperatures and sea levels continue gradually to extend: the extremes include low temperatures and heavy snow but in addition heatwaves, storms and gales.
• The consequent risks – also rising over the years – of inland flooding, and conversely of drought particularly in water-stressed areas of the South-East, which the government’s 2012 climate change risk assessment has identified as two of the early onset symptoms of climate change. The hot kid at the block this is the chance of severe wildfire, particularly at the urban fringes, with the 2011 Swinley Forest providing a cautionary tale.
• Relatively localised terrorist attacks using ‘conventional’ weapons (bombs or firearms). During this the NRR follows the assessment within the latest annual Contest report that, although depleted in numbers and capability, Al-Qa’ida remains able to conducting terrorist attacks inside the UK and other countries, and that Al Qa’ida affiliates around the globe became a comparatively greater threat of their own right to UK interests including on this country.
• Risks of non-pandemic infectious disease – with the danger of SARS providing the reasonable worst case pending a review of those risks that needs to take note of the manager Medical Officer’s concerns about anti-microbial resistance. The NRR also notes the rising risk of zoonotic and non-zoonotic animal disease which – because the 2001 and 2007 outbreaks of Foot and Mouth Disease showed – may cause significant disruption even if the outbreaks are effectively contained as they were in 2007.

What Does it not Show?

To those using the NRR to enhance their preparedness for emergencies, knowing what it doesn’t cover can also be important. Adoption of the definition of an emergency from the Civil Contingencies Act, and a definition of likelihood that excludes implausible events or those whose return periods will not be known and can’t be guessed, implies that the NRR is not going to assess the possibility of serious asteroid strikes or earthquakes in populated areas  although these are at the ‘reserve list’ of risks which the cupboard Office maintains for annual review. The NRR eschews ‘composite’ emergencies where two or more other kinds of emergency coincide, for the reason that difficulties of assessing likelihood here will be formidable.   Everyday events equivalent to street crime, which many would view as being more threatening than large scale disasters., are excluded because  the purpose of the NRR is to aid the nation and its people handle unusual circumstances as opposed to to itemise all the pieces that may make life a misery.

Assessment

In 2009, the OECD praised the NRR as ‘innovative best practice in risk communication to the public’, observing that its publication was “the beginning of a dialogue with the general public” and so – in effect – praising the initiative while reserving judgment on how effective this was more likely to be.

Five years later, the product is still improved, and portion of this seems to be as a result of increased demand from one of many key stakeholders: businesses increasingly curious about business continuity but strapped for resources and wanting an accessible, objective, but authoritative catalogue of emergency planning scenarios.

Infrastructure Resilience

Pressure from big businesses, particular within the infrastructure sectors, to make accessible more of the detail underpinning the National Risk Register is growing. Key business sectors are showing a better interest in embedding disaster risk management of their business processes, and to comprehend the character of a few of the dangers – just like the risks of non-nuclear electro-magnetic pulses emanating from the sun – which require the type of cross-disciplinary scientific analysis it is increasingly the hall-mark of the NRA.  

This year’s Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR ’13), highlighting the effect of disasters on long-term business competitiveness and sustainability, will whet business appetite for objective data at the risks. And the publication of ‘sector resilience plans’ for every of the most UK national infrastructure sectors shows that there’s at the very least the beginnings of a move to balance investment in reducing vulnerabilities with business continuity; and to factor the future risks into investment plans for brand spanking new build infrastructure.

Business Continuity

In the meantime, government efforts to advertise business resilience – including publication within the NRR of entry level data on risks to business – could have helped to advertise the broader reason behind improved business continuity planning.   A 2012 CMI survey[i] showed that, between 2008 and 2012, business continuity management increased from 42% to 60% in not-for-profit organisations surveyed, and from 43% to 52% in private sector organisations. Business continuity planning in medium sized organisations increased from 42% to 61%;  but micro and small businesses still lag behind for the apparent reason that they probably think they can not afford even an entry level investment in resilience. The collaborative, public/private sector, publication of a ‘Dummies’ Guide’ to business continuity – in keeping with the NRR – may change that.

Community Resilience

The NRR – and community risk registers which tailor the national risk picture to local circumstances – was a status reference document for Community Resilience since 2008. The hot Peer Review Report of the UK’s progress in implementing the Hyogo Framework for Action on Disaster Risk Reduction (HFA), while generally complimentary of the UK’s efforts, points to the difficulties:

‘The public has access to lots of knowledge, but it surely just isn’t clear whether people actually take action in keeping with this risk information. It sounds as if … citizens aren’t yet especially willing to do so themselves at the ground …. changing people’s behaviour and making individuals personally responsible remains a challenge: the culture of prevention and risk awareness continues to be seen as low (reportedly around 12 per cent one of the general population).’

In resilience, as in such a lot of other areas of public policy, it remain the case that you’ll be able to take a horse to water but can’t force it to drink.

 Note

1. The Chartered Management Institute: ‘Planning for the worst: the 2012 Business Continuity Management Survey’, March 2012

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RUSI Analysis, 6 Dec 2013 By Shashank Joshi, Research Fellow

Iran’s nuclear programme was temporarily capped. However the details of the endgame remain shrouded in uncertainty.  How can we get from here to there?

In a prior piece of research, I examined the content of, and reaction to, the historic Geneva agreement agreed between Iran and the E3+3 (Britain, France, Germany plus the usa, Russia, and China) on 24 November. But where will we go from here?

One of Israel’s greatest – if mistaken – fears concerning the agreement with Iran is this short-term deal will harden right into a long-term one, legitimating an oversized Iranian nuclear programme. The agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program is worded carefully to preclude this: although its six-month duration is renewable, it also commits both parties ‘to conclude negotiating and commence implementing’ a last deal within a year’. But bridging the distance between the interim period and an extended-term settlement will prove exceptionally difficult.

An Endgame in Three Acts

Three phases of the agreement

For something, the endgame is clearer than it was – but still opaque. To grasp this, we must always divide the agreement into three phases.

First comes the six-month period of the interim deal itself. Next week, experts from the E3+3 will meet with Iranian counterparts to finalise the deal’s implementation, and therefore when this six-month period is to start. Iranian officials have said it’ll begin in January. This era is ‘renewable by mutual consent’, though, as I discuss below, this will surely precipitate a brand new push for brand spanking new sanctions and would clash with the commitment to succeed in a last deal within a year.

Second is the ‘comprehensive agreement’. In this period, Iran is granted ‘a mutually defined enrichment programme with practical limits and transparency measures’, and all sanctions are lifted. It will be important to notice that this isn’t, technically, a last status since it is to last only ‘for a period to be agreed upon’. This can be a concession from Iran, which desired to fix precisely how long it’d be bound by these limits. Jofi Joseph, until recently the NSC’s top Iran official and participant in talks with Iran, has suggested that Western powers might push for something  ‘on the order of twenty or maybe thirty years’, partly at the basis that Iran could be more likely to have evolved in a more positive political direction over any such long period. Other analysts from E3+3 member states have suggested more modest periods of only some years. But what’s clear is that while the Geneva agreement calls this the ‘final step’, it’s actually more like parole.

This defined period could also be defined temporally, nevertheless it can even likely be associated with a so-called ‘broader conclusion’ from the IAEA that no military nuclear activities are continuing within Iran. But once the sort of conditions are met and this era concludes, the Geneva agreement is obvious that  ‘the Iranian nuclear program may be treated within the same manner as that of any non-nuclear weapon state party to the NPT’. This suggests that the ‘practical limits’ of the excellent agreement will disappear. Iran would be free to change or develop its nuclear programme because it wishes, in the terms of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

From interim period to comprehensive agreement

Negotiating the second one of those phases, the great agreement, is the hard part. Iran have been granted a conditional right to complement, however much the united states insists otherwise and Iran spins that it’s ‘inalienable’. It gets to complement within ‘mutually agreed parameters according to practical needs, with agreed limits on scope and level of enrichment activities, capacity, where it’s performed, and stocks of enriched uranium, for a period to be agreed upon’. That’s a creative compromise that permits either side to return away claiming victory. But those ‘parameters’ may be hotly debated.

Take ‘practical needs’, working example. Iran has before claimed it might build 10-20 nuclear power stations. Indeed, just because the Geneva agreement was being finalized, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) announced that it was now considering the second one and third of those (after the Russian-built Bushehr). In a November 2013 interview with the Financial Times, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared, ‘how much we can expand enrichment or … how big the dimensions goes to be is dependent upon our needs for nuclear fuel’. Western powers are unlikely to simply accept either the enrichment capacity or enriched uranium stockpile commensurate with any such programme – it might involve a variety of Iran’s present enrichment – and may instead ask that Iran import its fuel, because it does for Bushehr.

How much enrichment is simply too much? Iran presently has over 19,000 centrifuges installed and over 10,000kg of uranium enriched to under 5%, with which it may ‘break out’ – produced sufficient High Enriched Uranium (HEU) for one bomb – in around two months. Western powers would need that point to elongate to a year, a minimum of. As Scott Kemp has explained in graph form, that might mean both centrifuge numbers and the enriched uranium stockpile must fall to a fragment in their present levels: one option can be 2,000 IR-1 centrifuges and 800kg of enriched uranium, roughly what Iran possessed before 2008, or even fewer centrifuges if any were to be more efficient second-generation variants.

The Arms Control Association’s Darryl Kimball has proposed ‘no greater than 3,000-4,000 centrifuges’. The Financial Times cites Western officials as claiming that Israel is pushing for ‘between 1,000 and a couple of,000’. These figures will be compatible with quite a lot of breakout times counting on how much enriched uranium Iran retained; it makes little sense to consider centrifuges alone.

For individuals who wanted Iranian enrichment to forestall altogether – including Israel, and plenty within the US Congress – this can be as unacceptably large a programme because it could be unacceptably small for Iranian hardliners. Iranian officials have frequently emphasised that their priority is at the principle of enrichment in preference to the extent and amount, and this long-held point of emphasis will constrain their rhetorical and bargaining options over the following six months. In practice, most foreign suppliers of civil nuclear technology would even be wary of signing contracts with Iran that didn’t include strict provisions on how fuel was handled – and therefore Iran’s energy needs are presently zero. Iran might conform to maintain a small fuel-manufacturing programme as an insurance plans against disruption of foreign supplies, whilst accepting that almost all of its fuel will be imported. However the psychology of loss aversion makes it harder to just accept large reversals in enrichment capability. For Iranians, the reference point for the nuclear program is 2013; for the E3+3, it would be 2002, when Iran’s enrichment programme was in its nascent stages. Bridging this gap often is the most time consuming aspect of the subsequent six months’ diplomacy.

After the excellent agreement

Once the great agreement expires – whether it lasts for years or decades – there might then be further haggling. The agreement says Iran ‘will be treated inside the same manner as that of any non-nuclear weapon state party to the NPT’. Iran is bound to argue that this suggests the removal of all limits, whereas Western powers could mention that many NPT members voluntarily accept restrictions on their programs, and that Iran should accomplish that too. Much would depend, here, on how Iran’s political system had evolved in the meanwhile period. If Iran had progressed in a more democratic direction and was on better terms with the arena and its neighbours, Western concern would diminish greatly.

In addition to the deeply-buried Fordow enrichment plant, the long-term status of Iran’s heavy water reactor at Arak may be especially problematic. Iran will claim that its decision to forego reprocessing (essential to separate plutonium from spent fuel) is a sufficient safeguard. Additionally, as Jofi Joseph notes, ‘Iran may argue that its continued operation during a CBM [interim] phase establishes a precedent for its permanent acceptance’; indeed, that Arak safeguards are even mentioned within the Geneva agreement is probably seen to imply that activation will occur sooner or later. However the West will want Iran to dismantle the entirety or – something alluded to within the Geneva agreement – convert it right into a more proliferation resistant light water reactor (something that some experts caution would mean dismantling the entire thing and building a brand new facility).

But if and when the IAEA declares with confidence that there are not any military nuclear activities occurring in Iran, imposing these limits may prove impossible. However Iran did convert Arak right into a light water reactor, then it can theoretically have the precise to construct a heavy water reactor when these limits expired. This isn’t going to sit down well with some inside the E3+3, like France, who raised a storm at the issue of Arak inside the first round of Geneva talks earlier this month, but others, like Russia, might see significant commercial opportunities in giving Iran more latitude.

Ultimately, Iran is not going to accept any agreement where it’s treated as an unequal member of the NPT. It’s because the Geneva agreement sensibly includes the promise of in depth ‘international civil nuclear cooperation’, which might incentivise Iran to restrict its nuclear programme voluntarily even after a comprehensive deal expires. To the level that a democratic Iran on better terms with the area would be viewed in less threatening terms, non-nuclear rapprochement – however distant it’s now – would also reinforce confidence in Iran after limits expired.

Domestic Politics

Iranian politics

Finally, despite the fact that the 2 sides could find common ground on a last status, either side would face domestic political obstacles to a deal. Up to now, Iranian hardliners have largely withheld their reservations, perhaps end result of the imprimatur given to the agreement by the Supreme Leader. But there may be disagreement within Iran’s parliament, the Majlis, around its authority over an enduring accord. The spokesperson for Majlis’ presiding board has argued that what’s confirmed by the Supreme Leader doesn’t should be confirmed by parliament, but others have protested this judgment and stated that Article 77 of Iran’s constitution requires parliamentary approval (all links in Persian).

At the very least, the Majlis would need to ratify Iran’s Additional Protocol, an agreement between Iran and the IAEA that enables intrusive inspections that the Khatami government signed in 2003 but later disavowed. Moreover, the interim agreement specifies that only ‘nuclear-related’ sanctions might be lifted within the comprehensive agreement: although these impose the best economic cost on Iran, many Iranian legislators won’t have realised that numerous non-nuclear sanctions, referring to terrorism and human rights, will remain in place.

American politics

On any other side, america Congress has expressed bipartisan scepticism towards the interim deal, and plenty of legislators appear to think, mistakenly, that it’s going to or will result in the dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program. Because the agreement is arguably this administration’s most vital foreign policy achievement so far, and that new sanctions would explicitly violate its terms, President Obama is definite to veto any sanctions bill that Congress passes.

A presidential veto over a foreign policy subject will require a two-thirds veto in both the home and the Senate (for international readers: lower and upper houses of the united states legislative branch, respectively), but this has not happened since Congress’ overturning of sanctions imposed by President Reagan in 1986 over apartheid in South Africa – today, Obama will require just thirty-four senators to stay loyal.

But if a sanctions bill provides for conditional sanctions triggered after the six month interim period is up – as Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Robert Menendez has proposed – then a veto might meet with greater bipartisan resistance. Any attempt by the E3+3 or Iran to resume this agreement can be seen in Congress as a troubling sign that the united states and Iran were colluding to show this right into a permanent agreement, despite the US’ protestations on the contrary. As Michael Krepon notes, the lesson from Cold War arms control is that follow-on accords ought to be negotiated as quickly as possible to bypass spoilers disrupting the method.

More importantly, considering current sanctions involve not only 16 executive orders but in addition nine congressional acts, a comprehensive agreement might require that Congress pass new legislation, which in turn will require that they consent to whatever compromise Iran and the E3+3 arrive at at the list of remarkable issues discussed earlier. Presidential authority to waive sanctions can be utilized within the first stages of a comprehensive agreement, but eventually Iran would have to see irreversible steps being taken. Meanwhile, quite a few legislators are going to take issue with the undeniable fact that issues like Iran’s missile programme have gone unaddressed, and should seek to impose unrealistic conditions onto the E3+3 that transcend the terms of the roadmap agreed this weekend.

The interim agreement has put Iran farther from a nuclear weapon, demonstrated that america and Iran are able to holding sustained and effective high-level talks, untied one of the most greatest knots within the dispute – Iran’s claimed right to enhance – and established an ambitious timeline for resolving the dispute as a complete. It’s a chic diplomatic fix. But the majority of the important points are yet to be filled in, or even then the political hurdles to a last deal are daunting. 

This text is customized from an earlier article at Foreign Policy’s Middle East channel.  

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RUSI Analysis, 23 Jul 2013 By Hugh Chalmers, Research Analyst, Nuclear Analysis

The security risks posed by another ‘non-continuous’ nuclear posture, as outlined in last week’s Trident Alternatives Review, are inherently subjective. Financial (as opposed to strategic) arguments may come to dominate the choices debate – something the Liberal Democrats should have in mind.

Last Tuesday, the Coalition government announced the result of its review into alternatives to a like-for-like replacement of the UK’s ‘Trident’ nuclear system – a force of 4 nuclear-armed submarines maintaining a continual patrol. This method is because of get replaced within the mid-2020s, with an expected price ticket of between £17-23 billion (FY2013 prices), and an overall lifetime cost which can approach £97 billion.[1]

Bearing this cost in mind, the review explores quite a few alternative mechanisms and strategies for operating a nuclear force which can provide a reputable deterrent threat to potential aggressors. Overall, the review concludes that there are options to the present system that may inflict such damage, ensuring that ‘most potential adversaries around the globe can be deterred’.

For the Liberal Democrat party, that is certainly a welcome conclusion. The party rejected a ‘like-for-like’ replacement to the Trident system of their manifesto for the 2010 election, and in a speech at RUSI last Tuesday, Danny Alexander – Liberal Democrat ‘overseer’ of the review – used the occasion of the review’s launch to set up the principles of the Liberal Democrat argument for an alternate strategy to the UK’s nuclear future.

Mr Alexander acknowledged that moving far from a system of nuclear submarines armed with ballistic missiles isn’t cost-effective today, and suggested that the united kingdom should instead seek to finish permanent continuous submarine patrols, allowing the procurement of fewer replacement submarines. Of their place, the Liberal Democrats point towards four complementary postures outlined inside the review that may vary the frequency and duration of patrols (from near-continuous to no regular patrols), and the benefit where the united kingdom can move from one to a different as necessary, dependent on perceptions of the threats facing the united kingdom on the time.

Whether the united kingdom adopts this versatile way to non-continuous patrolling will ultimately depend on a parliamentary vote in 2016, when a last ‘main gate’ decision at the way forward for the UK’s nuclear force should be made. The review alone cannot make this decision. As a study commissioned by two parties with ‘very different approaches’ to this issue, it avoids making any overt cost-benefit calculations about each alternative, and opens by declaring that it’s not a press release of presidency policy. Rather, it leaves to ‘political confidence’ whether the united kingdom should operate a non-continuous nuclear posture.

Non-Continuous Nuclear Postures

Central to questions of ‘political confidence’ in a non-continuous posture is the truth that, by definition, any such policy would expose the united kingdom to periods by which its nuclear forces are inactive – susceptible to a possible pre-emptive strike and incapable of responding.

The duration and frequency of those periods of vulnerable inactivity vary between the four postures outlined within the review. A ‘focussed’ deterrent would maintain a continuing patrol for a selected amount of time in an atmosphere of heightened tension or conflict, with periods of inactivity defined only by necessary recuperation. Within the absence of such an atmosphere, the UK’s nuclear forces could move to a lower level of readiness akin to a ‘sustained’ deterrent (which might always have one submarine ‘on duty’ either patrolling or preparing to patrol), or a ‘responsive’ deterrent (by which submarines would only patrol in sporadic, irregular periods).  In a purely benign environment, the force could even adopt a ‘preserved’ posture wherein submarines only deploy to hold out non-nuclear tasks and to retain the power to maneuver to at least one of the more alert postures outlined above.

The Risks

The ‘political confidence’ a celebration has in this sort of flexible technique to nuclear posture depends on a fundamental assessment of the threats the united kingdom might face sooner or later.

The Trident Alternatives Review assumes that while the united kingdom faces no heightened tension or active conflict, inactive nuclear submarines are highly unlikely to be the objective of a no-notice surprise attack. While the reviews admits that this won’t be the case during a period of hostility, there’ll be a period of escalation to hostilities wherein the united kingdom might be ready to reduce the vulnerability of its nuclear forces by moving them from a lower-level posture (resembling a ‘sustained’ or ‘responsive’ deterrent) to a stronger-level posture (comparable to a ‘focussed’ deterrent). With this in mind, confidence during this non-continuous approach rests at the following questions.

First, once the united kingdom has moved its forces to a high-readiness ‘focussed’ level, can it keep them there throughout the duration of a crisis with a small fleet of submarines? A solution to this query relies on speculation concerning the nature and length of potential future crises, and the reliability of replacement submarines – something that can not be known at the moment, or (within the latter case) estimated without access to classified information. While the review states that a 3-boat fleet ‘would risk multiple unplanned breaks in continuous covert patrolling’, it cannot clarify how frequent or protracted such breaks may be: the design of the successor submarine has not yet been finalised.

A second question follows on from this: could a break in continuous covert patrolling during a period of crisis prompt a pre-emptive strike against inactive forces? Here the term covert patrolling is essential. The UK’s nuclear force currently needs several days notice to fireplace, suggesting that it already experiences periods wherein it cannot fire. However, these periods don’t reveal the presence of a submarine, making it prone to attack. If this covert presence is suddenly and unexpectedly made overt in a crisis, a submarine may become a horny (and potentially irresistible) target of opportunity to a possible foe.

However, a temporary break in covert patrolling won’t present a foe with much of a target. Submarines patrol in vast areas, and an exposed submarine could be very hard find, or even harder to credibly strike before any unexpected faults are remedied and the submarine returns to covert patrolling. Furthermore, the hazards of an exposed submarine becoming the victim to an opportunistic strike should be tempered by the specter of a retaliatory strike by forces allied to the united kingdom. So long as the united kingdom remains allied to america, such retaliation will always weigh within the minds of a possible aggressor. While you will need to question whether the united kingdom can rely upon the specter of such retaliation to discourage an attack, additionally it is important to bear in mind that twenty-five states within NATO (besides Japan and South Korea) are happy to take action.

Nevertheless, in a period of crisis, the chance of a pre-emptive attack on inactive UK forces can’t be ruled out entirely, and the threat (or realisation) of an unexpected and unavoidable interruption to patrolling in a crisis might pressure UK decision-makers into positions or reactions they won’t normally adopt.

A third question pertains to the nature of the threats the united kingdom might face. If a threatening adversary were to emerge, how would it not react to the flexibleness inherent inside the technique to non-continuous patrolling outlined within the review? Because the review states, while a rise in patrolling might cause an adversary to back off in a crisis, it can also pressure an adversary into increasing its threats – therefore escalating (other than de-escalating) a crisis. Furthermore, the specter of such inadvertent escalation might discourage the united kingdom from bringing its forces as much as a ‘focussed’ period of constant patrolling, therefore potentially encouraging an adversary further. With no clear picture of ways a future adversary would interpret a metamorphosis in posture, this query is again open to speculation.

While prominent approaches to diplomacy suggest that an adversary would judge the UK’s intentions totally on changes to its military capabilities, a up to date study of past crises means that an adversary is prone to judge intention not on military capabilities, but on a subjective interpretation of plenty of signals, including personal relationships and ideologies.[2] a transformation within the UK’s nuclear posture may therefore not be the decisive think about the escalation or de-escalation of a crisis.

The Rewards

There are not any entirely objective answers to those questions, and the arrogance held in a non-continuous deterrent may ultimately depend more upon gut feeling than speculations about future threats. Hence, the balance between the hazards of a non-continuous posture and the financial rewards offered by a smaller fleet of submarines may play a significant role in determining the way forward for the UK’s nuclear forces as much as 2016 and beyond. The Conservative party has already drawn upon this to argue that abandoning permanent patrols will be a ‘huge gamble’ for a ‘tiny saving’.

The review provides a large amount of information that permits readers to make their very own assessment as to if the savings are significant. It estimates that a three boat option would save £4 billion in procurement and support costs over the period 2016-2060 compared to a 4 boat option, when measured at constant 2012 prices. These savings would fall almost entirely in the course of the decade from 2025 to 2035, when savings can be around £350-400 million a year. Assuming that equipment spending continues to grow at 1% in real terms, this saving could be akin to around 5-6% of the projected equipment procurement budget within the late 2020’s.

For project evaluation purposes, a further annual discount on spending of three.5% per year is generally applied, to mirror the preference for spending one day rather then now. Using this ‘Net Present Value’ approach, the complete saving from a three boat option falls to just £1.7 billion. This can be the figure it is in most cases cited by Defence Secretary Philip Hammond. The Liberal Democrats, against this, wish to use the £4 billion figure, that is more relevant for comparisons around the defence budget. Both figures are right.

Both estimates seem to assume that few savings can also be made out of adopting the three boat option before 2025, for instance from retiring a number of of the leading edge boats previous to expected, or from postponing the beginning of labor at the first new submarine. If such savings were possible, total savings can be higher than estimated inside the Report.[3]

[1] Louise Edge, Inside the Firing Line: An Investigation into the Hidden Cost of the SuperCarrier Project and Replacing Trident, Greenpeace, September 2009

[2] Keren Yarhi-Milo, ‘In the attention of the Beholder: How Leaders and Intelligence Communities Assess the Intentions of Adversaries’, International Security, Vol.38, No.1 (MIT:Harvard) pp.7-51

[3] i’m grateful to my colleague Professor Malcolm Chalmers for help on this analysis of the budgetary aspects of the Review.

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