Just came across this link by accident. I'm looking for some topsoil locally. Fascinating discussion on nuclear safety
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Are there any examples that you can give to the ladies and gentlemen about as you have described incidents in the past or threats of use in the past ? --- Well if I could take one, perhaps the most relevant one and not quite in the British context but very relevant, is what has happened this week. Up until Tuesday morning it would be reasonable to assume that the Pakistani and Indian nuclear forces were at a quite low state of alert. On Tuesday morning there was a military coup in Pakistan. I have no doubt whatsoever that the Indians immediately raised the alert status of their nuclear forces. This morning the new Pakistani military government closed down the Pakistan Parliament and sent the MPs home. So, in the space of 72 hours in that sub-continent we have moved from a state of relative calm to a state of real tension. If I could give an example from the post-Cold War period, after the tensions between East and West had died down, in January 1995 the Americans and the Norwegians launched a very large scientific rocket off the north coast of Norway for the acceptable purpose of studying aspects of the polar atmosphere. As was routinely the case, a message was sent to the appropriate Russian authorities warning of this, but because of the chaotic bureaucracy in government in Russia it did not get through to the Russian defence people, and when the rocket was launched it had characteristics thought to be similar to the Trident missile, and it was launched from a part of the world where the United States does patrol its Trident missiles. It was mistaken by the Russian early warning system for a possible attack on Moscow, and as a result of that, the three so-called nuclear briefcases held by President Yeltsin, his defence minister, and the chief of staff of the armed forces, were activated, and they got ready for a possible retaliation. The problem is that a Trident missile at a range from the north of Norway to Moscow has a flight of only 20 minutes. So, there is a very brief period for them to check that it was a false alarm. They did indeed check and it was a false alarm and the alert was stood down. That is a recent example. Going rather further back, but very relevant, you would have to take the Cuban missile crisis, and that is where our new knowledge of the Cold War I think is very relevant to the present because it is now known that although the Soviets as they then were and the Americans misjudged each other seriously at the time of that crisis in October 1962, at one stage the Americans were prepared to invade Cuba because they were not prepared to have the Soviet Union station its long range missiles there. The Americans did not know that the Soviet Union already had army tactical weapons, nuclear weapons, in Cuba, and if the Americans had invaded with their Marines the Russians would have in all probability gone nuclear as the only way to counter the invasion. This was learnt in joint discussions between American and Russian participants meeting in Moscow about four years ago when relations were much better .
In relation to our country, Britain, have there been any instances where Britain has been involved which came close to the use ? --- There is one major incident in relation to Britain as part of Nato, and this was in the fairly recent past. In the early 1980s and both the Soviets and Nato were deploying new kinds of nuclear weapons. The Soviets had one called the SS 20 and Nato had cruise missiles and a missile called the Pershing 2. In 1983 the Soviet Union was in a leadership crisis. Brezhnev had died and Andropov was very ill. It was at a time of huge tension. Since September that year we had an Korean jet shot down by mistake in the Sea of Okkhutz. President Reagan had made his "evil empire" speech and had talked about the possibility of war with the Soviet Union, and in the autumn of that year Nato involving Britain started an operation to test the deployment of its new missiles. It was called Operation AbelHardship ( sic ). I have talked to one of the British senior planners who was involved in this operation - this is in the public domain now - and in that operation they deployed the cruise and Pershing missiles from their bases to possible locations for firing to see if everything would work. The Russians who were watching this very carefully with their own satellites and intelligence officers mistook this for preparation for the real thing. They thought Nato might launch a surprise attack and the Nato policy was one potentially of first use. There was near paranoia in Moscow, and the Soviet forces were put on a higher state of alert. Fortunately for all of us Nato counter-intelligence and surveillance picked up that this was happening and the Nato planners realised that the Soviets were mistaking Nato's intentions, and they quickly scaled down the operation. I understand that no such exercise was ever held again by Nato because of the risk of crisis escalation .
I have asked you, professor, about targeting under the Nato umbrella. Is it possible for Britain to target independently of Natal ? --- It is possible, and has been possible throughout history of British nuclear forces. It is believed to be somewhat difficult with Tridents because although this is not clearly in the public domain, there is evidence to suggest that for Trident to be completely accurate it needs American assistance, but I think the consensus amongst the independent experts is that Trident can be used but with perhaps lower accuracy if it is used independently. There is certainly an history of Britain deploying nuclear weapons outside the Nato context - for example in the Falklands war and probably in the Gulf crisis, and probably this year as well as. There have been two incidents in the last 12 months where there is evidence of a British Trident deployment which relate to international policies. One was at the time of the Gulf crisis with Iraq last December when it was reported that a Trident submarine made its presence known at Gibraltar. That is a very unusual circumstance which appears to have been sending a signal that a Trident submarine was available. Much more recently during the conflict in Kosovo earlier this year at the height of that conflict Russia, which was very antagonistic to Nato's actions declared - at least it was not done officially but unofficially - word was given that the Russians were going back to targeting Nato facilities. It had claimed it was not doing that previously, and by a coincidence shortly after that a second Trident submarine put to sea from Faslane. That was reported in the Daily Telegraph in London and was reported as sending a message to Russia that Britain had its full capabilities available.
So, that procedure was unusual ? --- It was. It was certainly unusual .
But was it meant to as you say send a signal ? --- It was meant to send a signal and I think the problem is that it was very subtle. It was a sort of almost imminent response to changing circumstances, and I suppose that you have the combination of a system always deployed with the possibility of a sudden crisis developing at any time. The other context I mention was that this week with India and Pakistan, quite unexpectedly and suddenly India and Pakistan are in a state of tension. I could not have predicted that on Monday. Similarly, it is possible that virtually any day that a new crisis could arise in Iraq. There is an ongoing war there and there are bombing raids on Iraq at least twice a week at present and Iraq has only to retaliate and suddenly a crisis would develop .
I ask you about sending a signal. It may be obvious but if you can explain to the jury what was that signal ? --- The signal was a signal of capability of intent. It is sending a message to another state that we have this capability, and we can use it .
You mentioned the Falklands war in your evidence. What happened there ? --- The evidence there now comes from a sufficient number of sources for one to be pretty sure. During the Falklands war a number of the Royal Navy ships sailed to the South Atlantic with tactical nuclear weapons on board. There is evidence of a very severe row within the British government as to whether this was wise, and it appears that most of the weapons were taken off the ships at Ascension Island and they were put on to a Royal Fleet Auxiliary, RFA Regent, which was not into the war zone itself, but prior to that row the weapons were actually deployed on the ships and were available for use. They were mainly massive anti-submarine nuclear depth bombs. More worrying in many ways, there is now sufficient evidence to say that a Polaris strategic missile submarine was diverted from its normal deployment area to within the range of Argentina in the event that the war went disastrously wrong for Britain .
So, you evidence is in recent history that this is not a one-off. It has happened more than once ? --- It has happened more than once, and it is a feature of nuclear deployments. I think in the public mind nuclear weapons are solely weapons of massive last resort deterrence. This is what is called the declaratory policy, and all the major nuclear powers express that commonly. The reality is different. It is a deployment policy which is about the potential use of nuclear weapons, even potential use in conflicts which fall short of world war, and there is abundant evidence of this in British and American and of course in Russian thinking as well .
You mention Russia. Are there any moves within Nato that affect the thinking of Russia ? --- There are two aspects to this. The first is that Nato has expanded eastwards and we have Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary now members of Nato. The Russians regard this as threatening to them. They see this as a Nato encroachment eastwards towards them, whatever Nato says and however reassuring that is for the Poles, this is how Russia sees it. The second problem is that the Russian economy is in dire straits. Its military forces are a tiny shadow of their former self 15 years ago and in fact one recent estimate says that the entire Russian army could probably mount only two fully equipped divisions, that is, maybe 25,000 troops. That is actually less than the British army could mount at present, but far less than the combined Nato forces. As a result, the Russians are feeling very vulnerable. More worryingly, they are relying more on their nuclear weapons because they have so few conventional forces, and so you have the double problem of Russia feeling rather paranoid as Nato expands and also not having the conventional forces to defend itself .
You say that Russia feels vulnerable. Is that vulnerable to attack ? --- It is vulnerable to Nato influence and possible Nato interference, and this is why from their perception - and I stress it is from their perception - they thought that the Nato operations in Kosovo against a Slavic people - the Serbs - were really an example of Nato over-reaching itself and going on the offensive. We do not think that. We can see the humanitarian aspects - there may be some controversy over that - but that from the Russian perception it is Nato on the offensive .
Given the deployment of Trident as you have explained, do the Russians have a view on that ? --- The Russians regard Trident as a core part of the Nato nuclear forces integrated into those forces, and I should say that the Nato targeting of nuclear weapons is done partly at the headquarters in Mons in Belgium, but jointly with a group in Omaha, Nebraska which is called the Joint Strategic Target Planning staff. So, Russia sees the British system as an integrated part of the Nato nuclear forces .
And you said that Russia feels vulnerable to those forces ? --- It feels vulnerable to those forces as part of the total Nato forces, and it recognises that Nato now has a massive conventional and nuclear superiority over itself
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here is the topsoil mention....
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You have in your article are reference to B47 bombers. If you could perhaps tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury the situation about accidents on those planes ? --- The B47 bomber was one of the major medium range nuclear bombers in the United States Air Force. It experienced a number of accidents -- in one case in March 1956 where a bomber which was en route to a base in southern Europe failed to rendezvous with its refuelling tanker aircraft and disappeared with its two nuclear weapons. It is believed to have crashed and the weapons were never recovered. In another incident only four months later a B47 crashed into a nuclear storage depot at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk. All four crew members were killed and the high explosive elements within the nuclear bombs in the heat were actually seriously damaged but fortunately did not explode. If they had, it was believed that it would have had radioactive fall-out over much of East Anglia. There was another incident in the United States a couple of years later of a broadly similar kind, and throughout the Fifties and Sixties there were far more serious incidents involving the very big bomber, the B 52 Stratofortress. If I could point to perhaps two examples of that, one of these planes crashed when it was landing at Tule airforce base in the north of Greenland. All four nuclear weapons on board were destroyed in the fire, and the clean-up team had to isolate I think one-and-a-half million gallons of ice and water and remove them from the site under conditions of great difficulty because it was so radioactive and that was put into permanent store at a location in Texas. At about the same time another B 52 crashed in mid-air with the refuelling tanker over Palmares in Spain and the nuclear weapons and broke up on impact and in the case of one weapon the Americans had to recover one-and-a-half thousand tons of topsoil and rock which was severely contaminated and again that is in permanent storage because it was so unsafe .
Was there an incident with a B 52 bomber in Spokane, in the USA ? --- Indeed, there was a much more recent one if I remember rightly. In fact that was barely four years ago, and a B 52 was practising for an air show at Fairchild air force base near Spokane, Washington State, and that was one of the operational nuclear bases for the United States Airforce, and the plane crashed within 50 feet of one of the nuclear storage bunkers. The pilot and three crew members were killed in the crash and according to witnesses the pilot crashed the aircraft while attempting to avoid hitting the storage depot and probably paid with his life for trying to avoid a nuclear catastrophe
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(note from pb...according to Chuck Yeager, pilots in those situations are just concentrating on living... not avoiding civilian casualties... so he has written in his book)
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