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United States-United Kingdom: British Lawmaker Suspects Secret Nuclear Weapons Collaboration By David Ruppe “I think that is not only what is possible, I think that is what has been going on for some time. That is my belief,” he said in a recent interview with Global Security Newswire. Simpson, who opposes developing such weapons, saying they might encourage insecurity and proliferation by some states, said his suspicions are fueled by more than 250 exchange visits by U.S. and British nuclear weapons scientists last year. “We know that [there have been] transfers of huge numbers of staff between the U.S. and the U.K. programs,” he said. A Labor Party backbencher who is one of the Labor government’s most outspoken critics on national security issues, the House of Commons member said his case is bolstered by previous secret U.S.-British nuclear weapons collaboration and the Bush administration’s push to develop nuclear weapons for attacking underground bunkers and incinerating chemical and biological weapons stores. In addition, he said the government has dodged his requests for more information. Spokesmen for the British and U.S. nuclear weapons establishments rebutted elements of Simpson’s charges but refused to comment on the nature of the scientific exchanges. “The U.K. is not planning any new nuclear weapons, nor are we modifying current systems to lower their yield,” said Alan Price, head of communications for the United Kingdom’s national laboratory, the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), in e-mailed comments. “Cooperation takes place across areas of mutual scientific interest, but we do not comment on the details,” he said. “I think it’s quite hard to pin down exactly what they’re doing because it’s such a secretive area,” said Nicola Butler, an analyst with the Acronym Institute. “Having said that, I think the U.K. is following very closely what the Bush administration is doing because … the U.K. [nuclear weapons capabilities are] so dependent on the U.S., she said. No Channeling U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Bryan Wilkes denied a specific point of Simpson’s theory, saying U.S. scientists were not involved in any work on nuclear weapons with yields below five kilotons, an activity that has been prohibited by a 1993 law. “We’re not breaking the law,” he said. Commenting on Simpson’s charges, he said, “The implication is we’re not able to do [the research], but there are all of these visits, so ‘Could it be the Americans are getting this done through their allies?’” Wilkes said. “I don’t know about the Brits … but we’re just not doing any work on it at all, even vicariously. We’re not doing it through anybody, or channeling it, or anything like that,” he said. Responses Questioned Using a standard parliamentary procedure for obtaining information, Simpson in recent months has submitted lists of questions regarding the exchange visits and various activities of the AWE. According to responses provided by government ministers, AWE staff in 2002 made 182 visits to U.S. government and contractor facilities and U.S. officials made 103 visits to similar facilities in the United Kingdom. Such visits by AWE staff increased throughout the 1990s, from 110 in fiscal 1991 to 136 in fiscal 1995, and to 235 in fiscal 1999, according to a 1999 report jointly produced by Simpson. The British government also identified U.S. sites that AWE staff visited, including the three major U.S. national nuclear laboratories, other university research laboratories, a dozen U.S. corporate facilities, and some military and Energy Department locations. The government refused, however, to explain the purposes of the visits, citing a national security exemption law. The NNSA similarly would not disclose their nature in response to questions from GSN. The refusal, Simpson said, implies some controversial work is underway, beyond the cooperative stockpile maintenance work the two countries admit to. If the exchanges were only for ensuring the stability of the existing stockpile, Simpson said, “you would have thought that it was in their interests, not just domestically but internationally, to be seen to be having a vigorous program about the maintenance and security.” Simpson put his suspicions directly to the government, asking, “whether scientific endeavours at AWE include research on new designs for nuclear warheads.” “The reply I got was rather vague and evasive … They weren’t answering that,” he said. The response, similar to one provided GSN by AWE’s Price, said there were no “plans” for a new weapon and that the government was pursuing a policy of maintaining capabilities to build new weapons if such a plan emerged. “There are no current plans for any replacement for [the] Trident [strategic ballistic missile] and no decisions are yet needed. In line with the 1998 Strategic Defense Review, it is our policy to maintain the capability to design and produce a successor weapon should this prove necessary,” the government said. Some Work Permitted by Policies That response was significant not just for its indirectness, Simpson said, but because it referenced an ambiguity in current British policy that might permit such work, short of actually building the weapons. British scientists may be designing and developing a new weapon under the rationale of maintaining skills and capabilities to do so, he said. “What they don’t say is that this minimum capability is to design and produce a successor [to Trident], and I think that gives them a fairly broad umbrella that they can shelter under,” Simpson said. “I don’t know how you can maintain a capability to design and produce a successor generation if you are not doing work on what that successor generation might be like,” he added. Price told GSN the United Kingdom maintains a “robust capability” to ensure the safety and reliability of the current British nuclear arsenal, consisting of fewer than 200 Trident warheads. The United States has had a similar policy since the mid-1990s, following its decision to halt nuclear test explosions and to create the Stockpile Stewardship program in their place. The September 1994 Nuclear Posture Review stated a still-existing Energy Department requirement to “maintain the capability to design, fabricate and certify new warheads.” NNSA spokesman Wilkes acknowledged that under that policy U.S. scientists could design, research and develop new nuclear weapons, as long as they have yields greater than five kilotons. “There’s nothing prohibiting us,” he said. No Formal Involvement Simpson said his allegations are supported by the secret U.S.-British collaboration during the 1960s and 1970s to upgrade the Polaris ballistic missile, the Trident missile’s predecessor. The work occurred over 12 years, involved 5,000 people at one point, and cost more than 1 billion pounds, before the British government acknowledged its existence and cost, he said. “It was done in almost complete secrecy. Congress didn’t even discover that this program was even in existence until the new weapons system was almost in existence,” he said. Currently, neither nation has publicly indicated any plans to develop specific new nuclear weapons. However, the Bush administration has expressed an interest in developing or modifying nuclear weapons to produce new capabilities. It is pursuing congressional approval this year to continue research on modifying an existing higher-yield bunker buster and to research and develop new nuclear weapons, including low-yield ones, through a program called the Advanced Concepts Initiative. The “current weapons stockpile cannot hold at risk a growing category of potential targets deeply buried in tunnel facilities, possibly containing chemical, biological, nuclear or command and control facilities,” said then-NNSA Administrator John Gordon in congressional testimony last year. He said the goal was to produce options for future “production and deployment.” The initiatives this year, though, have become politically charged, with congressional Democrats and some Republicans expressing criticism. Bush administration officials now say they seek removal of the 1994 ban on low-yield production only to foster scientific freedom. “We do not have anything specific in mind,” Wilkes said. The aim, he said, is to eliminate overly restrictive constraints on scientific inquiry: “Scientific freedom. Rights for scientists.” Advanced Concepts Initiative Simpson asked the British government if the United Kingdom is contributing to or receiving research and development information from the Advanced Concepts Initiative. The government responded, “Exchanges of information on a wide field of technologies take place between the United Kingdom and the United States under the auspices of the 1958 Mutual Defense Agreement. There is no formal U.K. involvement in the U.S. Advanced Concepts Initiative or the Advanced Nuclear Weapons Concepts research program under the 1958 agreement.” Simpson says he opposes developing such weapons that might be used for purposes other than deterrence and retaliation, and believes their development should be disclosed and debated within British society. Otherwise, “You create on the international level a degree of uncertainty and confusion amongst your allies and potential enemies about whether you’re lowering your own threshold within which you would be prepared to use nuclear weapons,” he said. With respect to suspected proliferators North Korea and Iran, he said, “If you were in those countries, and you were looking at what both the U.S. and the U.K. were able to get away with in terms of the development of substrategic nuclear weapons, would you feel reassured that you would be safe or not from the threat of attack or the actual attack with nuclear weapons?”
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