During the Second World War, British scientists studied the use of biological weapons, including a test using anthrax on the Scottish island of Gruinard which left it contaminated and fenced off for nearly fifty years until an intensive four-year program to eradicate the spores was completed in 1990. They also manufactured five million linseed-oil cattle cakes with a hole bored into them for addition of anthrax spores between 1942 and mid-1943. These were to be dropped on Germany using specially designed containers each holding 400 cakes, in a project known as Operation Vegetarian. It was intended that the disease would destroy the German beef and dairy herds and possibly spread to the human population. Preparations were not complete until early 1944. Operation Vegetarian was only to be used in the event of a German anthrax attack on the United Kingdom.[5]
Operation Cauldron off Stornoway in 1952. The trawlerCarella unknowingly sailed through a cloud of pneumonic plague bacilli (Yersinia pestis) during this trial. It was kept under covert observation until the incubation period had elapsed but none of the crew fell ill.[6]
The UK was a signatory of the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907) which outlawed the use of poison gas in warfare. However, during the First World War, in retaliation to the use of chlorine by Germany against British troops from April 1915 onwards, British forces deployed chlorine themselves for the first time during the Battle of Loos on 25 September 1915. By the end of the war, poison gas use had become widespread on both sides and by 1918 a quarter of artillery shells were filled with gas and Britain had produced around 25,400 tons of toxic chemicals.
Britain used a range of poison gases, originally chlorine and later phosgene, diphosgene and mustard gas. They also used relatively small amounts of the irritant gases chloromethyl chloroformate, chloropicrin, bromacetone and ethyl iodoacetate. Gases were frequently mixed, for example white star was the name given to a mixture of equal volumes of chlorine and phosgene, the chlorine helping to spread the denser but more toxic phosgene. Despite the technical developments, chemical weapons suffered from diminishing effectiveness as the war progressed because of the protective equipment and training which the use engendered on both sides. See Use of poison gas in World War I.
After the war, the Royal Air Force dropped mustard gas on Bolshevik troops in 1919, and Winston Churchill, secretary of state for war and air, suggested that the RAF use it in Iraq in 1920 during a major revolt there. Historians are divided as to whether or not gas was in fact used.[7]
Despite the signing of the Geneva Protocol, the UK carried out extensive testing of chemical weapons from the early 1930s onwards. In the Rawalpindi experiments, hundreds of Indian soldiers were exposed to mustard gas in an attempt to determine the appropriate dosage to use on battlefields. Many of the subjects suffered severe burns from their exposure to the gas.[8]
Many ex-servicemen have complained about suffering long-term illnesses after taking part in tests on nerve agents. It was alleged that before volunteering they were not provided with adequate information about the experiments and the risk, in breach of the Nuremberg Code of 1947. Alleged abuses at Porton Down became the subject of a lengthy police investigation called Operation Antler, which covered the use of volunteers in testing a variety of chemical weapons and countermeasures from 1939 until 1989. An inquest was opened on 5 May 2004 into the death on 6 May 1953 of a serviceman, Ronald Maddison, during an experiment using sarin. His death had earlier been found by a private MoD inquest to have been as a result of "misadventure" but this was quashed by the High Court in 2002. The 2004 hearing closed on 15 November, after a jury found that the cause of Maddison's death was "application of a nerve agent in a non-therapeutic experiment".
British nuclear weapons are designed and developed by the UK's Atomic Weapons Establishment. The United Kingdom has four Vanguard-class submarines armed with nuclear armed Trident missiles. The principle of operation is based on maintaining deterrent effect by always having at least one submarine at sea, and was designed during the Cold War period. One submarine is normally undergoing maintenance and the remaining two are in port or on training exercises.
Each submarine carries up to sixteen Trident II D-5 missiles, which can each carry up to twelve warheads, for a maximum of 192 warheads per vessel. However, the British government announced in 1998 that each submarine would carry only 48 warheads (halving the limit specified by the previous government), which is an average of three per missile. However one or two missiles per submarine are probably armed with fewer warheads for "sub-strategic" use causing others to be armed with more.
The British-designed warheads are thought to be selectable between 0.3 kilotons, 5–10 kt and 100 kt; the yields obtained using either the unboosted primary, the boosted primary, or the entire "physics package". The United Kingdom has purchased the rights to 58 missiles under the Polaris Sales Agreement (modified for Trident) from the United States Navy's "pool". These missiles are fitted with United Kingdom–built warheads and are exchanged when requiring maintenance. Under the agreement the United States was given certain assurances by the UK regarding the use of the missiles; however the United States does not have any veto on the use of British nuclear weapons.[9][10] Some non-nuclear components for the British nuclear warhead are procured from the U.S. for reasons of cost effectiveness.[11]
The United Kingdom is one of the five "Nuclear Weapons States" (NWS) under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the UK ratified in 1968.
In March 2007, the UK Parliament voted to renew the country's Trident nuclear submarine system at a cost of £20bn.[14] In July 2008, The Guardian claimed that the decision had already been made to replace and upgrade Britain's nuclear warhead stockpile at a cost of £3bn, extending the life of the warheads until 2055.[15]
On 25 February 2020, the UK released a Written Statement outlining that the current UK nuclear warheads will be replaced and will match the US Trident SLBM and related systems.[16]
In March 2021, the British government published the Integrated Review, titled Global Britain in a Competitive Age, which reaffirmed the government's commitment to upgrading and maintaining Trident as a continuous at-sea deterrent. The review also announced that the cap for the UK's stockpile of nuclear warheads would rise from 180 to 260 — the first time it has risen since the Cold War[17] — due to the "evolving security environment".[18]
Boudeau, Carole. "Missing the logic of the text: Lord Butler’s report on intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction." Journal of Language and Politics 11.4 (2012): 543–561.
Fidler, David P. "International law and weapons of mass destruction: end of the arms control approach." Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law 14 (2004): 39+ online.
Jones, Matthew. The Official History of the UK Strategic Nuclear Deterrent: Volume I: From the V-Bomber Era to the Arrival of Polaris, 1945-1964 (Taylor & Francis, 2017).
Jones, Matthew. The Official History of the UK Strategic Nuclear Deterrent: Volume II: The Labour Government and the Polaris Programme, 1964-1970 (Taylor & Francis, 2017).
Salisbury, Daniel. Secrecy, Public Relations and the British Nuclear Debate: How the UK Government Learned to Talk about the Bomb, 1970-83 (Routledge, 2020).
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