Defence industry confident of green light for Trident successor

To many in the defence industry, the election row over Britain's nuclear deterrent carries all the hallmarks of a passing storm - for the moment at least.

"Both parties have been relatively clear that they support renewing the Trident nuclear programme," says one defence industry insider. "In principle they have all signed up to this. Everyone thinks we are still on track."

Defence companies are reluctant to contemplate the unthinkable. What might happen if the next government decides to postpone indefinitely a decision on replacing Trident, which is due next year? "That would be a big concern," says the industry insider.

Confidence was given a boost in March last year when the government announced a £300m upgrade to BAE Systems's yard in Cumbria, one of the few shipyards in the world capable of designing and building nuclear submarines. Philip Hammond, then defence secretary, said it was "another token of commitment to that programme".

But at the same time the steel was being cut on the seventh and final Astute class submarine built at the yard, making the renewal of the Trident programme even more pressing for the three big UK companies who have to nurture the skills and resources needed to build the nuclear deterrent system - BAE, Rolls-Royce and Babcock International.

The replacement of Trident - procured in the 1980s and based in the Clyde - is one of the biggest military decisions facing the next government. The system consists of nuclear warheads mounted on US-supplied Trident II D5 ballistic missiles, launched from Vanguard-class nuclear powered submarines.

The submarine system is coming to the end of its life and, given the long lead times that industry requires to build a new fleet, a decision on its replacement is needed before 2019 according to a parliamentary report prepared last month, for entry into service by 2028. Close to £1bn has already been spent on the concept phase.

Suggestions by the Labour party that the number of submarines could be reduced would not spark alarm, people from the industry said, as long as the reduction was not significant.

Any failure to renew the programme in time could lead to a serious erosion in skills that would be difficult to rebuild, one said. "There is a degree of criticality for the supply chain and for skills that does matter. But if there are just three instead of four submarines there are fewer consequences," he said.

Trident's Successor programme currently employs about 2,200 people, of whom more than 50 per cent are engineers and designers.

The MoD estimates that jobs will peak at 6,000 during the build phase from 2016 to the late 2020s and involve an estimated 850 British companies. Peggy Hollinger

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