As if the Royal Navy did not already have enough negative headlines to contend with, The Sun newspaper reports a Trident ballistic missile failed to launch during a recent test. Here we provide some context to this story.
Following her lengthy refit and regeneration, HMS Vanguard headed across the Atlantic in October to the United States for her long-planned Demonstration and Shakedown Operation (DASO). This is a standard event for the deterrent submarines following a Deep Maintenance Period (DMP) and is intended to certify the boat and its crew are safe, competent and able to launch a Trident ballistic missile, should they ever be called on to respond to a highly unlikely nuclear attack on the UK or NATO.
The missile test took place on 30th January. The Sun report states that the first-stage boosters did not ignite and the missile fell back into the ocean. When launching Trident, the SSBN ‘hovers’ just below the surface, the tube is pressurised to equal the pressure of the sea above and then the hatch opens. The missile is expelled vertically from the boat by very high-pressure steam. It rises rapidly to the surface and into the air where the first-stage booster rocket ignites just above the water and propels the weapon up to speeds of Mach 18 and eventually beyond the earth’s atmosphere. This sequence may sound simple but is a highly complex engineering challenge, both in terms of the missile and submarine design.
Previous notifications to mariners indicate the intention for this test was that the missile would cover approximately 6,000km, descending to an impact point in the mid-Atlantic ocean between Africa and Brazil. By Trident standards this was a relatively short flight as the weapon has a range of at least double this distance.
The MoD says “the anomaly was event specific, and therefore there are no implications for the reliability of the wider Trident missile systems and stockpile”. Assuming this statement is correct then there were particular parameters, limitations or conditions for the test that would not be the case in a live firing scenario.
The Trident II D5LE missiles are shared by the UK and US from a common stockpile and are maintained by Lockheed Martin Space Systems with US Atlantic fleet and RN boats embarking the missiles at the Kings Bay facility in Georgia. (Northrop Grumman manufactures the rocket motors for all three stages of the Trident missile). This is a US industry failure as much as it is a UK problem as they are responsible for selecting the missile and preparing it for the test. The testing range is also managed by the US and data is shared by both parties.
HMS Vanguard arrived in Kings Bay at the end of October 2023 to load missiles. It should be noted that the nuclear warheads are not shared, the UK manufactures its own at AWE Aldermaston and Burghfield and mates them with the missiles at RNAD Coulport. For the missile test, nuclear warheads are not fitted and dummies of equal weight are carried instead.
This was the 192nd test of the Trident system which has an outstanding reliability record since its development in the 1990s, having only failed on 10 occasions before. The USN conducted a successful test as recently as September 2023 during USS Louisiana’s DASO event in the Pacific. Unfortunately, this is the second test failure in a row involving the RN and does not look good, even if there are nuanced reasons for the issue which cannot be made public.
In June 2016 HMS Vengeance successfully launched a missile but it took off in the opposite direction intended, heading towards the US and range safety staff commanded the missile to self-destruct. The cause of this has never been confirmed but human error seems more likely than a technical problem. Notoriously, the 2016 failure was not revealed to Parliament ahead of the vote on Trident renewal and is a much-beloved grievance held by the anti-nuclear lobby.
Since the RN draws missiles from a common pool shared with the USN, it raises the question of whether a second failure was just bad luck or indicates a systemic problem with RN procedures or the interface between boat and missile. Due to the incredible sensitivity around Trident technology and SSBNs, this kind of analysis can never be made public. The limited information available suggests this was a technical, test-related issue and not the fault of the highly professional RN submariners or a problem with the newly refitted HMS Vanguard.
The key question is the credibility of the UK nuclear deterrent. While this recent setback is unwelcome, the overall reliability of Trident is well-proven and the state of the ageing submarines should probably be of greater concern than their missile system. The Vanguard class can carry up to 16 missiles although in 2010 it was announced that only 8 missiles would be carried routinely (5 warheads per missile). Test results, which may not fully replicate a real scenario, show Trident having a failure rate of about 6%. A very crude projection would suggest if a Vanguard boat fired its 8 missiles then only one might fail and 35 nuclear warheads would still be on their way.
Source: Navy Lookout – A credible deterrent? Trident missile fails during test launch from HMS Vanguard
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The Trident D5 missiles used by the UK are owned and maintained by the United States, specifically Lockheed Martin Space Systems. Despite being part of the same pool of missiles used by US submarines, the UK missiles have unique features, including being controlled solely by the UK and using UK-built warheads.