HMS Artful. Defence Images/BAE Systems/Flickr. Some rights reserved.An accelerating debate over Britain's nuclear-weapons policy has focused on the government's plan to replace the existing, Vanguard-class Trident ballistic-missile submarines with the Successor-class. A decision to go ahead with the programme, which will take many years to complete and eventually cost around £150 billion, is likely to be made later this year.
More recently a new ingredient has emerged to complicate matters: whether the world’s oceans are becoming transparent through new detection technologies, which could make the new submarines obsolete before they are even launched. The very suggestion brings heated denials from government sources. But the issue will not go away and is worth examining,
There have certainly been spectacular examples of unexpected naval vulnerabilities in the past. The early 20th century saw the 'Dreadnought' revolution, as navies competed to develop what were, by the standards of the day, super-battleships. That era reached its peak in the Battle of Jutland in May-June 1916, fought between the British and German fleets; but the battleships continued to be 'capital ships' through to the 1940s, though some claimed that they were becoming vulnerable to air attack.
