The SDSR’s Trident Decision: Clever Accounting or Playing with Fire?

By Chris Jones
 

Big week in the United Kingdom, to say the least. In addition to cutting 500,000 public sector jobs, the U.K. rolled out a new National Security Strategy and the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR). While there were some major cuts in the 8% taken from the defense budget, the SDSR had a very short 3 pages section on the British deterrent. After setting the context, it announced a negative security assurance very similar to the NPR (which makes one wonder if something similar also might show up in the NATO Strategic Concept?). It also announced warhead cuts that will occur. But the 130 million pound question remains largely unanswered: what about Trident modernization?  In the press, it was portrayed as delaying a decision until 2016. Presumably, this allows the coalition government to defer much of the cost of modernizing the Trident during the darkest days of the budget cuts and largely sidesteps the related political battles for the time being. While it is true that the SDSR punts a lot of the major acquisition decisions about Trident until after the next election, this should not be viewed as Britain delaying the decision in hopes they can scrap a nuclear submarine altogether 5 years from now. For example, Kate Hudson said:
 

Pushing this decision back to after the next election will hopefully allow politicians to catch up with what the majority of the public and a growing number of military voices acknowledge - that nuclear weapons are a costly irrelevance to the threats Britain faces.
 

The SDSR, however, is very up front that:

The Government will maintain a continuous submarine-based deterrent and begin the work of replacing its existing submarines. We will therefore proceed with the renewal of Trident and the submarine replacement programme, incorporating the savings and changes set out below. The first investment decision (Initial Gate) will be approved, and the next phase of the project commenced, by the end of this year.
 

While the “Main Gate” decision in 2016 will resuscitate the divisive debate about some of the Trident modernization specifics, such as 3 boats versus 4 boats, this seems much more like a how and when question as opposed to an if question. With that in mind, what does the British Trident decision mean for U.S. submarine modernization efforts? According to Joe Cirincione, we should take a cue from the British and delay decisions on our submarines:
 

But will we need hundreds of sub-based nuclear missiles in 2040? If we need fewer, do we need to design a new sub? If we do, can't we find a design that costs less than $7 billion each?
Gates would do well to learn from the British budget disaster: Delay a decision on a new U.S. nuclear sub until we know if this sub is really necessary. Preserve the weapons we truly need by letting go of the weapons we don't.
 

Delaying such a decision, however, would be imprudent for two reasons. First, building a new class of submarines is not an easy endeavor. Kevin Kallmyer broke down the dates a few weeks back on the blog. The first Ohio-class SSBN is due for retirement in 2027. To deal with this, the Navy has proposed procuring the first SSBN(X), the new nuclear submarine, in 2019. The initial technology development, however, is already underway to make sure the Navy can meet the 2027 deadline. The 2010 NPR explains why time is of the essence:

By 2020, Ohio-class submarines will have been in service longer than any previous submarines. Therefore as a prudent hedge, the Navy will retain all 14 SSBNs for the near-term. Depending on future force structure assessments, and on how remaining SSBNs age in the coming years, the United States will consider reducing from 14 to 12 Ohio-class submarines in the second half of this decade. This decision will not affect the number of deployed nuclear warheads on SSBNs. To maintain an at-sea presence for the long-term, the United States must continue development of a follow-on to the Ohio-class submarine. The first Ohio-class submarine retirement is planned for 2027. Since the lead times associated with designing, building, testing, and deploying new submarines are particularly long, the Secretary of Defense has directed the Navy to begin technology development of an SSBN replacement. [Emphasis mine]

The longer you delay a decision on a new nuclear submarine, the larger the chances you run into serious problems transitioning from the old subs to the new subs. Delays, which are known to happen occasionally in DoD procurement, loss of intellectual capital and production capacity, and shipbuilding inflation outpacing general inflation (which the CBO found likely in May) are just a few obstacles that become significantly more worrisome the longer submarine decisions are delayed. In Britain’s case, Shadow Defense Minister Kevan Jones argued:

Delaying Trident raises significant issues about whether you will have to take out nuclear capability before its replacement is in place . . . This is playing fast and loose with the nuclear deterrent in a way that is reckless
 

The same very well could be true of a U.S. decision to defer on new submarines. Delaying vital military upgrades in the hopes that they can fade into obsolescence is a very dangerous gamble. By waiting to decide in hopes the U.S. might need fewer to no new nuclear submarines, the United States runs a huge risk that they will actually need them but lack the adequate time to produce them.

The second flaw with the argument that delaying submarine decisions could buy time to determine whether they are truly needed is the timeframes involved. In the case of a large procurement program like nuclear submarines, the United States needs to decide what sort of force structure it needs in 2040 sometime this decade, probably on the very early end. It is unlikely that the United States could reasonably conclude this decade that it can confidentially predict that a security environment in 2040 will no longer require a significant nuclear submarine force. Despite some small progress by the administration to move toward a world without nuclear weapons, there are a lot of worrying issues that very easily could make a 2040 world much less stable than a 2010 world. Even if a 2040 security environment did not require nearly the same demand for need for nuclear submarines and SLBM’s, which is a pretty optimistic hypothetical given the probable pace and likelihood of future nuclear reductions, there is no way the United States could make that call in good faith sometime this decade.  Given the downward pressures the defense budget will face over the next decade, there are tough force structure questions that need to be asked but in the case of the SSBN(X), a delay of a few years won't change the security environment much but it will significantly compound the difficulties of brining a new fleet online in time.

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