US support to maintain UK’s nuclear arsenal is in doubt, experts say

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/08/us-support-uk-nuclear-arsenal-in-doubt-trident-france?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

by AdaptableBeef

28 comments

  1. Time to wake the fuck up put the kettle on and get ready

  2. Isn’t this essentially a private contract with Lockheed Martin with UK buying a service.  this not DOGE saving money, this is political to appease Putin.

  3. Surely it can’t be that difficult or expensive to develop adapt warheads onto Storm Shadow missiles as a back up just in case

  5. I think the chances of the US reneging on their treaty obligations with regards to nuclear weapons collaboration is still overwhelmingly unlikely. They could not take away the UKs deterrent at any time, just impose a lot of costs on us as we scramble to ramp up maintenance ourselves and a replacement program. If they do that then we’re inevitably going to share our information with France, which they clearly don’t want. They have other ways that they can impose costs on us which don’t come with that risk, which all lends itself to the view that this is unlikely.

    On top of that, it’s not like the US doesn’t benefit from the collaboration. People like to say the UK isn’t independent because the US make bits of our deterrent: Babcock UK [is making launch tubes](https://www.babcockinternational.com/news/babcock-awarded-multimillion-pound-missile-tube-contract-extension-by-electric-boat/) for American SSBNs.

    The suggestion that’s often made that the US might simply stop supplying missiles is certainly out – we own them, they can’t refuse unless they’re stealing them in which case they’ll have just forfeited a colossal amount of US military equipment that’s based in England.

    That said, if we want to hedge our bets there’s action we can take to reduce reliance that doesn’t fundamentally change the arrangement. We could load more missiles in each submarine so that we have the maximum possible number of missiles on hand. At the moment we probably buy Tritium from the US for example, but we could make it in the UK in our reactors instead. At the moment the US refurbished the missiles every 7 to 10 years or 10, which arrangement was made to avoid the costs of upgrading RNAD Coulport to do the job – we could carry out those upgrades and bring maintenance back in house here.

  6. I’m actually surprised many countries didn’t cotton on the last time Trump was voted in. That the support of the USA is a transient thing and you really need to make sure your country isn’t reliant on them for protection.

  7. I would’ve thought all forms of cooperation with the US are in doubt. Plans for defense sans-USA surely began a while ago.

    Less said about Brexit the better, lets just look forwards and keep improving ties with reliable allies like the EU, Canada, Australia etc.

  8. I don’t think you can understate just what a seismic shift this is for the UK. Since 1945 we’ve been able to rely on the US and have done, that’s why our deterrent uses missiles with US Navy serial numbers that are maintained for us in the US.

    The warheads are ours mind, although here there’s always been many many rumours of cooperation.

    Plus when the Astute SSN programme went bad in, oh 2003 or thereabouts Electric Boat sent over a bunch of people to retrain UK staff to get over sacking everyone in the 90s as part of the peace dividend.

    So right now every single decision maker, both political and military, is seeing one of the vital foundations our defence rests on suddenly evaporate. No wonder they’re in shock. But that’s no excuse for not doing what needs to be done.

    Plus it turns out that the French were right all along, their deterrent might not be as shiny or as cheap as ours but it is truly independent.

  9. This is an opportunity for us, and Europe as a whole, to do things ourselves.

  10. There must be a plan in place for this happening on the Governments risk register or perhaps the Tories couldn’t be bothered when they were in power like they failed to prepare for a pandemic

  11. The problem with trade with America, is we can no longer trust them to honour contracts.

    We need to remove as much American influence from our country as possible. Rejoin the EU, replace American tech companies with local alternatives and yes. Develop our own truly independent ICBM system.

  12. The US doesn’t like to admit it, but the UK makes some critical components for strategically important American weapon systems.

    If America was to even contemplate the Polaris sales agreement, which is mutually beneficial to both parties. Then we could counter with equally critical hits to their military.

    This is bullshit spouted by people completely out the picture.

    We pay more than our fair share for the trident system, it’s not a target for savings and our removal from the programme will leave billions they’ll have to plug.

  13. Pretty terrible article to be honest not until right at the very end is there a mention that the USA does the major maintenance of the missiles and the warheads (the actual nuclear arsenal) are British built.

  14. At this point let’s add to the list of possibilities for the year: US armed forces to start a coup to remove russian assets from power

  16. This is a huge opportunity to create a lot of very high skilled jobs in the UK.

  17. It’s safe to say that anything that the US knows about the UK, Europe, NATO in general is completely open for Russia.

    The US is completely compromised and the threat it now poses to the civilised world is only going to get worse.

  18. I think the whole thing is garbage and a false story intended to stoke engagement on various social media platforms.

  19. I think we needed this wake up call – relying on your cousin to turn up & sort out the bully & letting him own the key to your arms cabinet is stupid. Now when he’s said he doesn’t care, it’s time to get down the gym & the range …

  20. So rather than trying the maintain the current partnership with an ally who can just flip off a switch on a whim, we should replace it at great expense and work with another ally who can just flip off the switch on a whim.

    When we left the EU we were barred from accessing a number of projects we had already contributed funding to, and had provided funding for well past the leaving date. Galileo being one. The EU have a track record of acting in out spite towards us and barring us from collaborative projects, same as Trump is now with other countries.

    We’re the only nation that had a space program and abandoned it. Maybe if we invested in that, and taxed the rich to pay for it, we would have our own independent solution.

  22. Hello? France? It’s your old buddy Great Britain! We’ve got a proposal for you.

  23. Tbf it was already in plan for the UK to only share the missiles. We are developing our own warheads dor trident 2 as we for some reason are not fans of MRVs

  24. It’s fine commards. Britania good. No necessary nuclear machine boom.

  25. The government has it’s fingers and it’s ears,

    >“The UK’s nuclear deterrent is completely operationally independent.”

    They will keep parroting this again and again, their will be no debate. the next time the contract for Trident comes up the UK will just push it through without any meaningful debate.

    The UK will keep using Trident or any future American replacement.

  26. If memory serves we have everything required to maintain Trident ourselves and eventually produce an alternative, bar the physical facilities themselves which is why we send them to Kings Bay.

    Furthermore if the US were to break faith on this scale I’d seriously doubt anyone anywhere would purchase American arms again.

  27. Nah, the Americans subsadise our nuclear program. Our entire defence capability is all based on American logistics. If we are to go independent it would cost an ungodly fortune. Americans are also all over our think tanks, our intelligence networks. It would literally take an invasion of Canada to break the UK out of it’s vassel like status.

  28. It was foolish to trust anyone with any part of our nuclear arsenal.

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