The Silent Deep

by James Jinks

  Submarines of the Former Soviet Union

  55. ‘Russian Sub’s Sail Damaged in Collision’, Washington Times, 27 February 1992; Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage (Random House, 1999), p. 266. 56. Commander Submarine Force, US Atlantic Fleet, to Judge Advocate General, Investigation into the Collision between USS Grayling (SSN 646) and a Russian Submarine That Occurred in the Barents Sea on 20 March 1993, 9 June 1993: http://www.jag.navy.mil/library/investigations/uss%20grayling%2020%20mar%2093.pdf. 57. ‘U.S. and Russian Subs in Collision in Arctic Ocean Near Murmansk’, New York Times, 23 March 1993. 58. ‘Clinton Pledge May Alter Sub Surveillance’, Chicago Tribune, 6 April 1993. 59. MOD Archive. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid. 64. Independent, ‘Britain Stops Pointing Its Missiles at Russia’, 3 June 1994. 65. Hans M. Kristensen, ‘Russian SSBN Fleet: Modernizing But Not Sailing Much’, Federation of American Scientists Strategic Security Blog, 3 May 2013. 66. Ministry of Defence, The Strategic Defence Review: Supporting Essays, Cmnd 3999 (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1998), Essay Five, para 13. 67. Ministry of Defence, The Strategic Defence Review, Cmnd 3999 (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1998), paras 66–7. 68. Ibid., para 64. 69. Ibid., para 70. 70. Ibid., para 68. 71. Ministry of Defence, The Strategic Defence Review: Supporting Essays, Cmnd 3999 (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1998), Essay Five, para 12. 72. Rear Admiral Rob Stevens, ‘Introduction’, in Edmonds (ed.), 100 Years of the Trade, p. vi. 73. Hansard, House of Commons Debates, 15 January 2001, Vol. 361, Col. 48. 74. Hansard, House of Commons Debates, 24 October 2000, Vol. 355, Col. 127. 75. Hansard, House of Commons Debates, 1 November 2000, Vol. 355, Col. 724. 76. Hansard, House of Commons Debates, 5 February 2001, Vol. 362, Col. 358–9.

  Power Projection

  77. Harrap, ‘The Submarine Contribution to Joint Operations’. 78. Ibid., p. 87. 79. Charles Brooking, Ann Hodgetts and Paul Hogan, Safety Management of the Introduction of the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile into Royal Naval Service (Frazer–Nash Consultancy, 2010). 80. Harrap, ‘The Submarine Contribution to Joint Operations’, p. 87. 81. House of Commons Defence Select Committee, Fourteenth Report of Session 1999–2000, ‘Lessons of Kosovo’, HC 347, 24 October 2000, col. 154; Guardian, ‘Briefing: General Sir Charles Guthrie, Chief of the Defence Staff’, 25 March 1999. 82. House of Commons Defence Select Committee, Fourteenth Report of Session 1999–2000, ‘Lessons of Kosovo’, HC 347, 24 October 2000, col. 155. 83. Harrap, ‘The Submarine Contribution to Joint Operations’, p. 87. 84. House of Commons Defence Select Committee, Fourteenth Report of Session 1999–2000, ‘Lessons of Kosovo’, HC 347, 24 October 2000. 85. Harrap, ‘The Submarine Contribution to Joint Operations’, p. 87. 86. Peter Almond, ‘Son of a Sub Gives SBS Frogmen New Weapon’, Sunday Times, January 2004.

  Seven Deadly Virtues

  87. Stevens, ‘Introduction’, in Edmonds (ed.), 100 Years of the Trade, p. xiii. 88. Harrap, ‘The Submarine Contribution to Joint Operations’, pp. 84–6. 89. Ibid., p. 86. 90. See Stephen Bridgman, My Bloody Efforts: Life as a Rating in the Modern Royal Navy (Authorhouse, 2013), p. 533. 91. Stevens, ‘Introduction’, in Edmonds (ed.), 100 Years of the Trade, p. xiii. 92. Ibid. 93. Memorandum from the Ministry of Defence (May 2003), House of Commons Defence Select Committee, Eighth Report of Session 2002–03, ‘Defence Procurement’, HC 694, 23 July 2003. 94. Ibid. 95. Ibid.

  East of Suez

  96. ‘Former Submarine Commander Captain Stephen Upright is Running York’s Merchant Adventurers’ Hall’, The York Press, 5 October 2011. 97. ‘Nuclear sub shows the flag in Gulf: Royal Navy counters a threat from Iran’, Independent, 1 April 1993. 98. ‘Navy joins major Asian exercise’, Independent, 15 April 1997. 99. ‘All change for submariners’, Navy News, August 1998. 100. ‘ “Absolute focus” as we launched missiles at Iraq’, Plymouth Herald, 28 March 2013. 101. Ibid. 102. Daily Mirror, ‘Gaddafi Dead: The Incredible Story of the British Nuclear Submarine That Secretly Played a Part in Tyrant’s Downfall’, Daily Mirror, 24 October 2011. 103. MOD Press Release, ‘Submariners’ “Pride” in Libya Operations Medal’, 13 December 2012. 104. MOD Press Release, ‘Royal Navy submarine home from Libyan operations’, 4 April 2011. 105. MOD Press Release, ‘Royal Navy fires cruise missiles at key Libyan targets’, 20 March 2011. 106. MOD Press Release, ‘Submariners’ “Pride” in Libya Operations Medal’, 13 December 2012. 107. MOD Press Release, ‘Triumph home from striking another blow’, 20 June 2011. 108. ‘Horror on board Plymouth nuclear submarine as crew battles to survive’, Plymouth Herald, 4 June 2014. 109. Ibid. 110. Ibid. 111. Ibid.

  Overstretch?

  112. Hansard, House of Commons Debates, 21 July 1998, Vol. 317, Col. 201W. 113. Ministry of Defence, Delivering Security in a Changing World: Future Capabilities, Cmnd 6269 (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 2004), paras. 2, 5, 7. 114. Private information. 115. ‘HMS Triumph: Life on board a Royal Navy submarine’, BBC News Online, 30 July 2012. 116. Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator, Annual Report 2012/2013 (Ministry of Defence, 2013); ‘Ageing nuclear submarines could put sailors and public at risk, report warns’, Guardian, 4 August 2013. 117. Ibid. 118. ‘No British submarines to patrol Falkland Islands’, Sunday Express, 10 March 2013. 119. ‘England v Argentina … we bring on the sub, Navy sends deadly show of strength’, Sun, 20 May 2012. 120. ‘Submariner tells of battle to save HMS Tireless crewmates engulfed in flames’, Guardian, 12 February 2009. 121. Ministry of Defence, ‘Board of Inquiry report into the loss of two Royal Navy Submariners on board HMS Tireless in 2007’, 12 June 2008, para 38 and footnote 65. 122. ‘Submariner tells of battle to save HMS Tireless crewmates engulfed in flames’, Guardian, 12 February 2009. 123. Ibid. 124. ‘Parallel Parking in the Arctic Circle’, The New York Times, 29 March 2014. 125. Private information.

  11 AND THE RUSSIANS CAME TOO: TODAY AND THE FUTURE

  1. Sir Kevin Tebbit speaking at a Royal United Services Institute Seminar on ‘Cabinets and the Bomb’, 2 September 2009.

  The ‘Astute’ Class

  2. (Sea) (ST(S) 7027). 3. House of Commons Defence Select Committee, Sixth Report of Session 1990/1991, ‘Royal Navy Submarines’, HC 369, 12 June 1991, p. xviii. 4. John F. Schank, Frank W. Lacroix, Robert E Murphy, et al., Learning From Experience, Vol. III: Lessons from the United Kingdom’s Astute Submarine Program (Rand Corporation, 2011), p. 20. 5. Ibid., pp. 13–14. 6. Ibid., pp. 35–7. 7. Ibid., p. 40. 8. ‘We’re learning from Astute submarine flaws, admiral promises’, Guardian, 26 December 2012. 9. Schank, Lacroix, Murphy, et al., Learning From Experience, Vol. III, pp. 43–4. 10. Ibid., p. 45. 11. Ibid., p. 46. 12. Ibid., pp. 45–7. 13. ‘We’re learning from Astute submarine flaws, admiral promises’, Guardian, 26 December 2012. 14. Ibid. 15. Ministry of Defence, ‘Report of the Service Inquiry into the Grounding of HMS Astute on 22 October 2010’, 1 January 2011. 16. Ibid. 17. ‘Navy sailor gets life sentence for deadly gun rampage’, Guardian, 19 September 2011. 18. ‘Trail-blazing U.K. Attack Sub Proves Itself in the U.S.’, Defence News, 5 December 2011. 19. ‘Slow, leaky, rusty: Britain’s £10bn submarine beset by design flaws’, Guardian, 16 November 2012. 20. ‘Britain’s nuclear hunter-killer submarines were doomed from the start’, Guardian, 15 November 2012. 21. Rear Admiral Simon Lister, Letter to the Guardian, 16 November 2012. 22. MOD Defence in the Media Brief, 16 November 2012. 23. Conversation with Rear Admiral Simon Lister on board HMS Astute, 15 August 2011. 24. Sunday Times, ‘Sub’s Commando Pod to Attack Pirates’, 2 December 2012. 25. ‘Trail-blazing U.K. Attack Sub Proves Itself in the U.S.’, Defence News, 5 December 2011. 26. Conversation with Ian Breckenridge on board HMS Astute, 15 August 2011. 27. Conversation with Lieutenant Owen Rimmer on board HMS Astute, 15 August 2011. 28. Conversation with Rear Admiral Simon Lister on board HMS Astute, 15 August 2011. 29. Conversation with Lieutenant Commander Rob Tantam on board HMS Astute, 15 August 2011. 30. Conversation with Rear Admiral Simon Lister, on board HMS Astute, 15 August 2011. 31. Ibid. 32. ‘Trail-blazing U.K. Attack Sub Proves Itself in the U.S.’, Defe
nce News, 5 December 2011. 33. Conversations with the crew of HMS Astute, 15 August 2011. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Conversation with Rear Admiral Simon Lister on board HMS Astute, 15 August 2011. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. ‘Trail-blazing U.K. Attack Sub Proves Itself in the U.S.’, Defence News, 5 December 2011. 41. Conversation with Simon Lister on board HMS Astute, 15 August 2011. 42. ‘Astute grapples with America’s newest submarine in a test of the “best of the best” ’, Navy News, 1 February 2012. 43. Ibid. 44. ‘Awesome Astute “surpassed every expectation” on her toughest test yet’, Navy News, 1 March 2012. 45. ‘Navy “will not have enough submarines to protect UK” ’, Daily Telegraph, 16 November 2011; private information.

  Current and Future Threats

  46. ‘Russian subs stalk Trident in echo of Cold War’, Daily Telegraph, 27 August 2010. 47. Ibid. 48. Private information. 49. ‘Nuclear submariner tried to pass secrets to Russians to “hurt” Royal Navy’, Daily Telegraph, 12 December 2012. 50. Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton, House of Commons Defence Select Committee, Sixth Report of Session 2010–2012, ‘The Strategic Defence and Security Review and the National Security Strategy’, HC 761, 3 August 2011, Evidence Taken before the Defence Committee, Q241, 11 May 2011. 51. Air Chief Marshal Lord Stirrup, ibid., Q270, 18 May 2011. 52. ‘Submarine patrols up 50 percent over last year’, Barents Observer, 14 April 2015. 53. ‘MOD forced to ask US for help in tracking “Russian Submarine” ’, Daily Telegraph, 9 January 2015. 54. ‘Did Russian submarine nearly drag Scottish fishing trawler to a watery grave?’, Daily Telegraph, 21 March 2015. 55. Much of the information in the following pages is taken from recent editions of Jane’s Fighting Ships. See Stephen Saunders, IHS Jane’s Fighting Ships, 2013/2014 (IHS Jane’s, 2013). 56. Freedom of Information Release, JIC(85)7, Soviet Naval Policy, Report by the Joint Intelligence Committee, 19 July 1985. 57. Private information. 58. ‘Bulava SLBM launch investigation looks towards design faults’, IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly, 13 October 2013. 59. ‘Nuclear subs construction hits post-Soviet peak’, Barents Observer, 1 July 2014. 60. Ibid. 61. Stephen Saunders, IHS Jane’s Fighting Ships, 2012 (IHS Jane’s, 2012), pp. 669–70. 62. Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage (Random House, 1999), pp. 231–59. 63. ‘This is what the Internet actually looks like: The undersea cables wiring the Earth’, CNN Online, 5 March 2014. 64. ‘Top Secret Nuclear Sub Used to Prove North Pole Claim’, Barents Observer, 29 October 2012. 65. ‘Another Super-Secret Sub in the Pipeline’, Barents Observer, 14 December 2012. 66. Private information. 67. Private information. 68. Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator, Annual Report 2012/2013 (Ministry of Defence, 2013); ‘Ageing nuclear submarines could put sailors and public at risk, report warns’, Guardian, 4 August 2013. 69. ‘Navy “running out of sailors to man submarines” ’, Daily Telegraph, 20 August 2012. 70. Private information.

  And the Russians Came Too

  71. Though Hennessy did not see the Trident missile burst from the Atlantic off Florida as the test was delayed by a week after an electric storm thwarted it on the appointed day. 72. ‘Navy Detects Russian Sub off U.S. East Coast’, CNN Online, 6 November 2012. 73. Mitch was the Weapons Engineering Officer on board HMS Vanguard when Richard Knight and Hennessy recorded The Human Button for BBC Radio 4 in 2008. He was the last voice in the documentary, saying: ‘One away’ as the second movement of Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’ rose up behind the final stage of the firing chain (in the studio that is; not on Vanguard). 74. Conversation with David Young, 10 November 2012; in December 1962 Harold Macmillan commissioned a study of what the UK could manage alone if the United States pulled the plug on the Nassau Agreement he negotiated with John F. Kennedy to provide the UK with Polaris missiles, after his administration had announced the scrapping of the Skybolt stand-off missiles which the British Government was relying upon to prolong the effectiveness of the Royal Air Force’s V-bombers; see especially TNA/PREM/11/4148, Amery to Thorneycroft, 15 January 1963; Thorneycroft to Amery, 28 January 1963, reproduced in Peter Hennessy, Cabinets and the Bomb (Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 163–5. 75. Conversation with Sir Kevin Tebbit, 11 November 2012.

  Successor

  76. Downing Street Press Briefing, afternoon of 4 December 2006, ‘Press Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on Trident’; ‘The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent’, Cmnd 6994 (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 2006); Hansard, House of Commons Debates, 4 December 2006, Vol. 454, Col. 22. 77. The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent, Cmnd 6994 (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 2006), p. 7. 78. Ibid., p. 5. 79. The letters are dated 7 December 2006 and reproduced in Hennessy, Cabinets and the Bomb, pp. 333–7. 80. 56 Liberal Democrat, one Independent, 2 Social Democrat, 6 Scottish National Party, one Ulster Unionist Party and 3 Plaid Cymru MPs voted against Trident. 81. Hansard, House of Commons, Debates, 14 March 2007, Vol. 458, Cols. 298–407. 82. See the letter of 14 March 2007 from the Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, and Defence Secretary, Des Browne, to Dr Adam Whitehead, MP, reproduced in Hennessy, Cabinets and the Bomb, pp. 339–41. 83. For details of these, and extracts from the Cabinet Committee records, see Hennessy, Cabinets and the Bomb, pp. 33–59. 84. Tony Blair, A Journey (Hutchinson, 2010), pp. 635–6. 85. Private information. 86. Private information. 87. Quoted in Peter Hennessy, The Secret State: Preparing for the Worst 1945–2010 (Penguin Books, 2010), p. 355. 88. Quoted in Matthew Parris, ‘House of Lords Library Note, Prospects for Nuclear Disarmament and Strengthening Non-Proliferation’ (House of Lords, 15 January 2010). Mr Brown delivered his speech at the United Nations on 24 September 2009. 89. Private information. 90. Private information. 91. See Hennessy, Cabinets and the Bomb, p. 35. 92. Hansard, House of Commons Written Statement, 19 July 2005, Vol. 53WS, Col. 59WS. 93. Freedom Fairness Responsibility: Our Programme for Government (Cabinet Office, 2010). 94. Private information. 95. Private information. 96. ‘Securing Britain in an Age of Uncertainty: The Strategic Defence and Security Review’, Cmnd 7948 (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 2010). 97. We have added some private information to that which was published in Securing Britain in an Age of Uncertainty. 98. Hansard, House of Commons Debates, 18 May 2011, Vol. 528, Col. 355. 99. Private information. 100. ‘PWR-3: A new nuclear plant for the UK’s Successor Submarines’, Warship Technology, January 2013. 101. The United Kingdom’s Future Nuclear Deterrent: The Submarine Initial Gate Parliamentary Report (Ministry of Defence, 2011). 102. Ibid., p. 5. 103. Discussion at MOD Abbey Wood, Wednesday, 10 August 2011. 104. Ronald O’Rourke, ‘Navy Ohio Replacement (SSBN[X]) Ballistic Missile Submarine Program: Background and Issues for Congress’, Congressional Research Service, 25 September 2013. 105. Sam LaGrone and Richard Scott, ‘Strategic Assets: Deterrent Plans Confront Cost Challenges,’ Jane’s Navy International, December 2011: 17 and 18. 106. ‘PWR-3: A new nuclear plant for the UK’s Successor Submarines’, Warship Technology, January 2013. 107. Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator, Annual Report 2012/2013 (Ministry of Defence, 2013); ‘Ageing nuclear submarines could put sailors and public at risk, report warns’, Guardian, 4 August 2013. 108. ‘Hammond challenged over two year delay in revealing nuclear submarine fault’, Daily Telegraph, 6 March 2014. 109. By international agreement underground testing, which in the past has been fundamental to the process used for assuring warhead designs, ended in 1991. In 1998, the British Government ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the international agreement prohibiting tests of nuclear weapons. In order to explore how ageing nuclear weapons work, scientists, not only in Britain but worldwide, have been required to develop computer models to simulate nuclear warheads, how they age and how they explode. The United States built the National Ignition Facility (NIF), located in Livermore, California, which uses 192 lasers to create around 4 million joules of energy, while the United Kingdom has built ORION, a smaller relation, 100 times less powerful than NIF. 110. Conversation with Tony Johns, 9 June 2011. 111. Defence Budget. Priorities and Choices
(US Department of Defense, January 2012). 112. And the contrast does not just consist of outsourcing of the task to private industry. In the summer of 1977, Hennessy, as a Times journalist, had undertaken a tour of MOD Research and Development establishments, which included Ships Department Bath and what Hennessy called its ‘Deterrent Hut’. This was, like most buildings on the site, a component part of a temporary hospital thrown up rapidly in the late 1930s to take the victims of bombing raids on Bristol lest war came. The security was modern but the building terribly run down. In fact, when it rained there were leaks at one end. The forbearing members of the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors simply moved their blueprints to a dry area when this happened. It was plain they were working on hull designs for a Polaris replacement boat if a future government commissioned one (this was a highly sensitive subject inside the Callaghan Government and the Labour Party). So struck was Hennessy by their zeal that he mentioned it to a nuclear insider. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘their dedication to the deterrent is so keen that if we run out of money, they’ll find ways of keeping it going even if they have to fix the Polaris tubes to the Royal Yacht!’ 113. Conversation with Tony Johns, 17 June 2012. 114. Conversation with Tony Johns, 17 July 2012. 115. Private information. 116. Conversation with Tony Johns, 9 June 2011. 117. ‘We’re learning from Astute submarine flaws, Admiral promises’, Guardian, 26 December 2012.